Sydney Martinez, Campus Carrier news editor

The Northwest Georgia Regional Commission held a public meeting on Oct. 2 to answer questions from Summerville residents about the possible development of data centers on the nearly 133 acres of the former Northwest Regional Hospital. The project, as of now, is to prepare the land for a data center campus, which will be completed by Atlas Development. The data centers will then be sold to tech companies like Meta and Microsoft. The campus is expected to be completed by the end of 2032 and will include a total of seven buildings if the plan is approved.

Data centers are physical locations that store online data. These centers house computing machines and servers to store, process and manage digital data, which has required more storage in the last couple of years due to artificial intelligence (AI). These buildings use fans to cool down as well as water that absorbs heat generated by the machines. Data centers impact surrounding areas through an increase in electricity and 
water usage.

Brian Carroll, professor of communication and a resident of Rome for 22 years, said that artificial intelligence (AI) is here, and we are already using it. He believes that we should be careful with how it’s being used because other data centers can use up to 200 million tons of water that Rome cannot provide.

“The impact is not just one data center,” Carroll said. “The explosion of data centers across the country, including here in Georgia, they’re going to affect us all. We have a pretty established track record of when data centers go in, that your power rates go up. In Loudon, Virginia they’re paying 267% more for power than they were before data centers.”

The Rome Development Authority purchased the vacant land using the 2013 and 2017 Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) funds that voters said were for job creation.

Sergio Ortega, a member of the Libertarian Party, is upset by the fact that local voters’ tax money was used to purchase land and sell it to Atlas Development for profit. 

“Floyd County has a history of misusing SPLOST funds,” Ortega said. “[Floyd County was] sued for it in the 90s and lost that battle. And so, my question is, ‘Are we doing it again?’ Are we misusing SPLOST funds for things that weren’t prioritized by taxpayers when they approved the 1% sales tax?”

Atlas Development bought 100 acres from the Rome Development Authority for $5.7 million. The land has been rezoned for heavy industrial use to facilitate the development of the data technology park. 

A resident raised concerns at the meeting about how the rezoning would impact surrounding neighborhoods.

“You can’t tell me that a business that is only allowed to go into heavy industrial doesn’t have a noise level,” the resident said to the representatives. “We’re going to hear that 24 hours in a day because they don’t turn off at night.”

The Rome City Commission visited data centers in Douglasville to learn about the operations and noise levels of similar centers.

“The bus was louder than the data center,” Spencer Hogg, President and CEO of the Rome Floyd Development Authority, said at the meeting. “A lot of these horror stories that you [hear] are from first-gen technology, they’re from different states that do not have an integrated power solution, and they are from places that were not set up to serve these types of businesses.”

Because this project is being developed near a residential neighborhood, Rome residents and officials have questions about potential impact on the economy and water infrastructure.

State Senator Chuck Hufstetler has proposed a bill to prevent Georgia Power from passing data center infrastructure costs to residential and small business customers. Legislators will be able to vote on this bill in January. 

At the meeting, Berry’s Chief Information Officer, Penny Evans-Plants, represented the Summerville Park Neighborhood Association. She expressed the concerns of nearby residents, the first being the sudden surge for the data center’s consumption.

“We are concerned about our current water infrastructure, which was not built for this sudden surge in consumption,” Evans-Plants said at the meeting. “Second, we’re concerned about the strain on our local power grid. The exponential energy demand from these facilities is expected to drive electricity costs up for local residents.” 

The third concern regards light and noise pollution from the constant humming of the servers, which Evans-Plants shared could “disturb our sleep and elevate stress levels.”

While some officials emphasize the project’s long-term benefits, residents continue to call for transparency, accountability and a clearer understanding of how such developments will truly serve the local community.