1srelluc
Diamond Member
Residents in Fayetteville, Georgia, noticed low water pressure last year. The utility discovered two unaccounted-for water connections at one of the nation’s largest data center campuses.
The neighbors of a data center in Georgia are steaming after they discovered the facility had sucked up nearly 30 million gallons of water — without initially paying for it.
Outrage started bubbling up last year when residents of an affluent subdivision named Annelise Park in Fayetteville, Georgia, noticed their water pressure was unusually low.
When the county utility investigated, officials discovered two industrial-scale water hookups feeding a data center campus located 20 miles south of downtown Atlanta. One water connection had been installed without the utility’s knowledge, and the other was not linked to the company’s account and therefore wasn’t being billed.
All told, the developer, Quality Technology Services, owed nearly $150,000 for using more than 29 million gallons of unaccounted-for water. That is equivalent to 44 Olympic-size swimming pools and far exceeds the peak limit agreed to during the data center planning process.
The details were revealed in a May 15, 2025 letter from the Fayette County water system to Quality Technology Services, which outlined the retroactive charge of $147,474. The letter did not specify how many months the unpaid bill covered, but when asked about it Wednesday, Vanessa Tigert, the Fayette County water system director, said it was likely about four months. A QTS spokesperson said the timeframe was 9-15 months.
Once the data center was notified, it paid all retroactive charges, a QTS spokesperson said in an email, noting the unmetered water consumption occurred while the county converted its system to smart meters.
The Fayette County water system confirmed the data center’s meters are now fully integrated and tracked. Tigert, the water system director, blamed the issue on a procedural mix-up.
“Fayette County is a suburb, it’s mostly residential, and we don’t have much commercial meters in our system anyway,” she said. “And so we didn’t realize our connection point wasn’t working.”
The Fayetteville campus is one of the largest data center developments in the country, covering 615 acres with plans for up to 16 buildings. Right now, the campus is partially operational.
County officials say the campus will generate tens of millions of dollars in annual property taxes, but the facility’s massive scale and appetite for water and electricity has helped galvanize local pushback against more data centers. The Fayetteville City Council voted last month to ban new data centers in every zoning district within the city.
Ha! Too late, the city/county bought the data center "Monorail" scheme hook line and sinker.....Not that they will have a place to toss in a line before long.
