NAHUNTA — Perhaps Shannon Gregory’s five-minute speech carried the most weight during Tuesday’s public participation during the Brantley County Commission work session.
Gregroy, the Satilla Riverkeeper, was one of 15 citizens to speak August 4 to commissioners and the approximately 50-plus residents packed inside the County Commission meeting room. She was one of seven who spoke of data centers. Three others spoke out about animal control issues.
“I think at this point in time, we need to take the time to heal, rebuild and unify as community, rather than being at each other’s throats,” she said. “We’ve had a fire, and it’s been catastrophic. I mean, no one would debate me on that one. Let us come together as a community and stop fighting and bickering.
“We can only work better together. As we learn more, we’re learning about this in real time, I’m worried that by rushing into a data center ordinance and trying to bring in that promised tax revenue, that leaves us vulnerable to collecting someone else’s sloppy seconds because they were turned around from another community.”
She then asked commissioners for a 12-month moratorium on any type of data center approvals.
“I asked for a moratorium back in January during a public hearing in regards to data centers,” said Gregory. “Let the community heal, and let cooler heads prevail.”
Early on, Gregory highlighted the negative impacts of data centers, including the OpenAI data center in Effingham County and a water system shutdown in Cheyenne, Wyoming. She also criticized the negative financial outlook of tech giants like Google and Amazon due to AI infrastructure investments “Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Oracle are all projected to have negative cash flow in the next fiscal year because they’ve dumped all their money into this AI infrastructure buildout,” stated Gregory. “A little over a week ago Effingham County announced the monstrosity of an OpenAI data center.
“Two days prior, one of the things making news headlines was that Chat-GPT actually hacked another AI system. We have AI now working on its own to hack other AI systems. So the technology has already escaped capacity. That’s a bit alarming.”
She said the entire municipal water system in Cheyenne, Wyoming was shut down because of a rare bacteria that was caused directly from the data center.
“Bulloch County has put a ban on data centers,” Gregory said. “Effingham County that’s a hot mess right now. Bryan County is still trying to bail itself out from the Hyundai mega facility which has been draining quite a bit of water. “Clayton County’s water system fell under a cyber attack from Iran. data centers have been targeted. Do we really need a target on our back? “ She went on to say gas gas turbines used as power sources are now in a sevenyear waiting period, and a chip shortage. “If we were to start construction on a data center tomorrow, gas turbines would not be available for another seven years,” Gregory stated. “Financial institutions are warning of recessions as a result of this AI bubble that’s about to burst.” Gregory added data centers are targeting the rural communities.
“They think citizens in rural communities are dumb,” she said. “They’re looking to take advantage of us. We’ve been through a lot.”
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