Some Effingham families have been here since the Salzburgers built the church at Ebenezer, and some have only been here since last spring. Either way, we all call it home.
There is a large data center planned near Rincon, and a lot of neighbors have questions about it. We started writing down what we learned so nobody has to figure it out alone.
Everything here comes from a public document you can look up yourself, or from what we were told directly by people speaking for the project. If we get something wrong, just send us a message and we’ll fix it. We’re trying to give everyone the transparency we haven’t been given enough of lately.
We are a group of residents from all over the county, not a political party, working for responsible growth and a real say in it.
Build for the future. Don’t bulldoze the roots.
— your neighbors in Rincon, Guyton, Springfield, and beyond.
The place itself
Worth saying first, because it matters to us, and we want to protect it.
New Ebenezer
The Salzburgers landed here in 1734 and built Jerusalem Lutheran Church, which is still standing and still holding services today. It’s the oldest church building in Georgia. You can even see the thumbprints from the original builders pressed into the bricks.
The land
Pine forests, hundred-year-old live oaks, wildlife everywhere, and family tracts passed down six or seven generations. For a lot of us this ground holds everything: where our people are buried, where our kids learned to drive, and where we intend to stay.
Rincon
The biggest town in Effingham. Many of us live there or drive through it every day. Ball games on a Friday night, churches full on Sunday, the same faces behind the same counters. It’s grown fast, so fast that many of us moved here for the quiet and then watched the quiet get built over.
What’s happened so far
The timeline of what we know about the data center project. (Click the plus signs for more info.)
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The Public Service Commission approved a 757-megawatt gas plant in Rincon mainly to provide power for data center companies looking at Georgia. You can read the order at psc.ga.gov under dockets 56298 and 56310.
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Georgia EPD published a draft permit for up to 2 new gas-fired units at plant McIntosh, right outside Rincon. It projects 429.7 tons of nitrogen oxides, 233.6 tons of fine soot, and over 5.5 million tons of greenhouse gases per year.
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1,440 acres near Rincon, with a 50% property tax break for the data center company for fifteen years. That agreement was made before the project was announced publicly.
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Set up as staffed tables rather than a public meeting. There was no transcript, and nobody's promises went on the record. We went, asked questions, and wrote down the answers.
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Commissioner Beth Helmly proposed the idea to hold a public forum specifically for Project Camellia. The commissioner suggested this should include "discussion of a moratorium on further data centers” and a review of related county ordinances. Watch the recording here.
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The state had a public hearing to discuss the proposal for two more gas-fired power units at Plant McIntosh, right outside Rincon. Check back here for their decision to approve or deny the permit.
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PSC declined to object to the contract for Project Camellia’s electricity terms, allowing it to be approved without a public vote. All details of this important contract were hidden from the public.
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The County Commission will present their case for Project Camellia in a public “work session” and answer some pre-approved questions.
Send them any and all questions you have about the project. Find out how to do this on our Announcements page!
Questions neighbors keep asking
We’ve been digging through the important documents to share what we learn.
Is it really that big?
Yes. At full capacity, the data center will use 3.2 gigawatts of electricity. [1] For perspective, that’s as much power as 2 million Georgia homes [2]— almost half the households in the entire state. Or roughly half of all of New York City’s total electrical consumption, including homes, businesses, and subways. [3] This is not just a regular industrial building. It’s more like its own city.
Will we be able to hear it?
Not in the way anyone is picturing, but that’s the problem. We were told this facility will be air-cooled rather than water-cooled. Heat that doesn’t leave in water has to leave through fans, and the fans run every hour of every day. That’s not something that can easily be adjusted once it’s running.
What people report near these facilities is a low hum and a vibration you feel more than hear. [4] Through the floor, at three in the morning, through closed windows. Ordinary noise ordinances measure the wrong thing, so a facility can sit legally inside the limit while you still can’t sleep. We were told by the company that no noise study has been done for the neighboring areas, including Blandford Elementary. When a noise study is completed, OpenAI staff told us they do not plan to show the results to the public.
Will it lower my property taxes?
Maybe, eventually. One portion of your tax bill goes to the county, and another (usually the bigger one) goes to the school district. Through an initiative called Project Zero, Effingham County is trying to erase only the county’s portion of your tax bill by 2028. That’s a goal, not a schedule, and it depends on revenue that hasn’t arrived yet. OpenAI’s 50% tax break is already signed for fifteen years. [5] Ours still has to pass a public vote that has not been scheduled.
Are y'all against jobs?
No, of course not. We live here and we like being employed just like everyone else. The problem is, the “400 promised jobs” are just an estimate: the contract itself says OpenAI would still be compliant if they only provide 240 permanent jobs, as long as they invest enough in their own equipment and buildings. [6] If they provide even fewer jobs, they only have to pay a financial penalty while still keeping their tax abatement.
Another important comparison: the Hyundai megasite in Bryan County sits on about 2,900 acres, and Hyundai says more than 8,500 people will work there once it's fully operational, plus about 6,900 more at nearby suppliers. [7] Meanwhile, this data center will sit on 1,440 acres. The estimated" 400 jobs will not arrive all at once — only about 80 per phase, with the last phase ending in 2034. In other words: half the land, but one-twentieth the jobs. And nothing in that agreement says these jobs must be filled by locals.
How much water will it use?
Nobody would give us an actual number for daily use. The company told us the cooling system holds about 1.3 million gallons when it's full, and that water has to be hauled off by truck if it ever needs to be drained. Nobody would say exactly how often that happens. The IDA's own materials still don't give a water figure — they say the amount “will be determined once the site design is final.” [8]
Here's what we do know: Effingham County is building a new water plant that will open at about 12 million gallons a day, permitted for up to 23 million. [9] The county already uses 3 to 4 million of that, and Hyundai's plant and the development around it account for another 6.6 million. That's most of the opening capacity already spoken for, before any data centers are built.
What about the air?
Georgia Power is asking the state for a permit to add up to two more gas-fired units at Plant McIntosh, right outside Rincon. This is in connection to the huge GA Power expansion that was approved to support the surge of data center developers looking at Georgia. [10] Even without this expansion, Plant McIntosh is already the 4th largest emitter of carbon dioxide pollution in the entire state. [11]
The draft permit itself projects 429.7 tons of nitrogen oxides a year, 233.6 tons of fine soot, and over 5.5 million tons of greenhouse gases. [12] Nitrogen oxides and soot are linked to asthma and breathing trouble, hitting kids and older folks the hardest. [13] And anything released into the air eventually settles into our creeks, ponds, and fields. [14] Anybody who fishes or farms knows the air and water are connected.
A lot of us are on wells, too. In Newton County, a family living about a thousand feet from Meta's data center started having well problems within months of construction: sediment, then taps that ran dry. [15] Meta claims its facility wasn't the cause. But nobody tested the wells before construction, so there was no way to know. That's why we want well testing done before any construction starts.
I live fifteen to twenty minutes away. Will this affect me?
Yes, and we've seen how. On July 25th, the county issued a boil water advisory for four subdivisions — Staffordshire, Belmont Glen, Cedar Ridge, and New Haven — after work on a water main at Hodgeville and Blue Jay Roads caused a drop in pressure. [16] One resident said she went three days with no running water, then three more days boiling it, and only learned about the advisory after service came back. That's the system we have now, before any work starts on this data center.
A project this massive needs transmission lines, substations, water/sewer mains, and wider roads. All of that has to cross somebody's land eventually. And we know how eminent domain goes around here: you don't get a vote, you usually just get a letter. Work can start quickly on the land your family has cared about for generations. Right now, the county says about sixty property owners will be affected by the water pipeline project alone. [17] That's before anyone starts running power to a data center.
Has this particular company built one of these before?
Barely, and that's not an insult, it's just the honest truth. Until recently, OpenAI rented computing space from Microsoft instead of building its own. Its first purpose-built site, in Abilene, Texas, took about a year and a half to build. It’s only been operating since September 2025, less than a year. So nobody has seen this company run a facility at this scale for long, anywhere. Effingham will be an experiment, not a sure thing.
According to reporting by The Information, the Abilene facility went offline for days at a time during its first winter because of power and cooling problems. [18] In March 2026, OpenAI and Oracle both dropped their plans to expand the site, and Microsoft took over that extra space instead. [19] And OpenAI doesn't actually own the Abilene site — a company called Crusoe built it, and OpenAI rents.
Here in Effingham, we don't know who will build or run this either. The signed agreement isn't even with OpenAI directly. [20] It's with an affiliate called Octans GA, LLC, and it can be handed off to other companies. So the tax break, and whatever obligations come with it, could end up belonging to a company nobody here has heard of yet.
Isn't this already a done deal?
Not necessarily. The tax agreement is signed, but the project isn't finished being approved. As of the August 4th commission meeting, the county's regional impact review wasn't complete and OpenAI hadn't submitted a site plan yet. State permits are still open for public comment. And neighboring communities have been able to slow things down — Bulloch County passed a moratorium [21] on data center applications in February, and Springfield is voting on one this month. [22]
Does the company actually have to keep any of its promises?
This is the question we asked the most, and the answer worried us the most. We asked officials whether the promises about how this place will be run are in a contract anywhere — water usage, noise, chemicals, pollution, backup power, well testing, cleanup, or what happens if the company walks away. It always came back to just a few written agreements: the tax break, Georgia Power’s agreement about rates, and the agreement to create 400 jobs by 2034.
Everything else was just an idea or an intention. The most concerning thing we were told by OpenAI staff was this: if residents have complaints about the data center project once it’s started, they will be expected to bring their complaints directly to the company, and “the company will address it.” We weren’t able to get a clear answer about who residents will be able to turn to if problems come up later.
What about the $80 million OpenAI pledged for the community?
In most of OpenAI’s marketing, they use these words: pledged, plan to, intend to, expect to. These are all words for things nobody is actually required to do. Even the 25-year contract with Georgia Power on flexible power use is concerning, because that is only between OpenAI and Georgia Power. The county can't enforce it and residents have no standing under it.
We still can't verify many of the other promises made by the company. We haven’t seen a signed benefits agreement for the $80 million pledge to support the community. OpenAI has also promised to put $71 million toward local students — but once you look at the fine print, all this means is each student interested in coding will get a one-time $100 credit they can only use if they have a ChatGPT account. [23]
So if someone knocks on your door with a list of promises, make sure to ask: which document is that in, and can I read it? If the answer is a website, that should tell you all you need to know.
What people are saying
Sent in by neighbors all over the county. We publish them as they come. We want to give y'all a voice, since they would not.
Swipe left and right to read messages.
If you want to help
Here are some things you can do today.
Don’t miss a deadline to send your comments in
Click here for more info on how to send and write your emails in the most effective way. Make sure to check out the community calendar so you don’t miss any important dates.
Come to the next community meeting
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Tell one neighbor
Many people in this area still don’t quite know how this data center project might affect them.
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Contact your officials and let them know how you feel
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Pictures from our neighbors
Things that make this community worth protecting…
Want to share yours?
Send them to us at hello@protecteffingham.org