Atlanta City Council stalls data center task force proposal as mayor plans strategy group

The Atlanta City Council is refining a task force on the impact of data centers, following widespread opposition to a proposed facility in southwest Atlanta.

A data center task force resolution by Council member Kelsea Bond was working its way through the City of Atlanta approval process when city staff announced Mayor Andre Dickens’ effort to create a data center strategy group just before the Aug. 17 meeting.

City council members expressed concerns about a duplicate effort by Dickens, stalling Bond’s resolution and sending it back to committee.

“I’m loathe to reinvent the wheel … when we should be operating as one effort, one city,” Council member Alex Wan said.

Wan, along with other council members, supports an effort to review data center best practices and asked to “hit the pause button” until the two proposals can be reconciled. Wan referred to Dickens’ internal deadline of Oct. 30.

An unknown number of data centers are operating in Georgia. While Bond estimates 75 data centers in the state, other sources count between 100 and 200.

Bond introduced the data center task force to examine the development, location, and regulation of data centers in response to a growing opposition to the potential data center in Adair Park.

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“I believe that local policy makers are responsible to be fully informed of these risks that the rapid expansion of data centers poses, and I believe this task force will bring all the right experts into the room to drive these conversations,” Bond told Rough Draft.

Opposition to data centers center on the negative impacts on electric grid capacity, water supply, noise, and cost to taxpayers.

“We’ve heard so many concerns about the negative impacts of data centers on utility bills, the environment, heat islands, and public health.” Bond said. “Data center developers and big tech companies are pushing local governments hard to approve new facilities, and it’s the responsibility of policymakers to be fully informed about the consequences of data center expansion as we consider land use and zoning decisions in the City of Atlanta.”  

Bond had asked for 23 members of the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability and Resilience, the Mayor’s Office of Technology and Innovation, Atlanta City Planning, MARTA, the Department of Transportation, Watershed Management, and other stakeholders to join her effort. She said environmental experts and public health experts are not currently listed as part of the mayor’s working group.

Wan said Atlanta Chief Strategy Officer Zaffer Sange circulated a memo on Dickens’ plan. Bond said the administration is “aligning city departments to create a common policy framework to guide this task force because this is very rapidly changing technology.”

“It’s a lot to understand if you’re not an engineer,” Bond said, adding that data center meetings should be held in public, documented, and recorded.

In a social media post, Bond said Atlanta residents “deserve to have local representatives who understand the real environmental, public health, and cost risks that data centers pose to our communities. We need decision-making shaped by what’s best for the working people of Atlanta, not wealthy tech companies.”

“This kind of conversation needs to be had. There are a lot of bad acting data centers all over the state of Georgia and all over the country, but there are also a number of innovations that are underway to address the environmental concerns, the water usage concerns, concerns around power usage, and most importantly, the public health concerns. We need to have a very public and robust conversation about this,” Council member Wayne Martin said.

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