Bulloch County

What the County has done so far

• February: a 90-day pause on data centers outside city limits (Statesboro Herald ↗).
• May 5: commissioners extended the pause through the end of 2026. The same day they voted 5 to 0 to start the process of a zoning change that would ban data centers outright (WTOC ↗, Herald ↗).
• After that: County staff wrote the ban text, and the appointed Planning and Zoning Board voted to send it forward with a recommendation to approve (Herald ↗).
• August 4: commissioners tabled the ban 3 to 2. That left the pause in place, and a vote on the next step was expected the following month (WTOC, August 5 ↗).
• September 1: commissioners voted down the ban, 4 to 3. Commissioner Timmy Rushing moved to deny it and leave the pause in place through the end of 2026, and Commissioner Ray Davis seconded. Rushing, Davis, Commissioner Ray Mosley and Chairman David Bennett voted to deny. Nick Newkirk, Toby Conner and Anthony Simmons voted against denying it. Bennett cast the deciding vote, saying an outright ban would put the County in legal jeopardy (The Georgia Virtue ↗).
• August 18: the planning director showed a different draft. It would allow data centers only in certain overlay districts, with design, noise, setback and lighting rules. Commissioners took no action (Herald ↗). Read the County's draft text (April 27 version, PDF ↗) and the planning director's overview slides (August 18, PDF ↗).
• October 6: the committee below was approved (Grice Connect ↗).

So the County does not have a permanent ban. It has the pause, and the pause ends on December 31, 2026.

The Data Center Committee

Each commissioner nominated three people. The list passed 3 to 1. Here it is as the Bulloch County meeting packet and Grice Connect ↗ reported it. The "background" column is what the news story listed, not something we checked.

Commissioner Nick Newkirk said at the meeting that he asked for a seat on the committee and was turned down. He said the commissioners had never set rules about who could serve. "I'm the one that's going to vote on it at the end of the day," he said, "and I felt like I needed to be on the committee so I could hear everything that's going on."

Newkirk voted for the ban on September 1, and his request for a seat is on the record. The story does not say which commissioner cast the one "no" on the committee, so we are not guessing.

First meeting, October 27. The committee met at the North Main Annex. Commission Chairman David Bennett told members their job is to review the County's draft ordinance and give technical and environmental recommendations (WSAV ↗). So the County's own draft is the starting point.

What we heard on October 27

We were in the room. Here is what we heard. These are our notes, not a transcript.

• Committee member Alana Olson (Coastal Communities United) asked the big question: is this committee here to tweak the County's draft, or to ask whether Bulloch County can handle a data center at all? Her worry was water. The County and the City of Statesboro would probably need agreements to share it.
• As we heard it, committee member Nick Shealy said that deciding whether the County can handle a data center is not the committee's job. That is for the Commissioners. Committee member Ben Watkins said the question is not "if and when" but how.
• As we heard it, the committee voted unanimously to make asking the Commissioners to extend the moratorium a priority for its next meeting, Monday, November 2. The moratorium ends December 31. (WSAV's report says no action was taken. We were in the room and heard a vote.)
• Chairman Bennett reminded members that their personal phones and laptops can be searched through an open records request if they use them for committee business. He asked anyone with a conflict of interest to fill out a financial disclosure, and those are public too. Eight members make a quorum.

The water problem. Here is the part that jumped out at us. The City's ordinance says every data center "must connect to the public water and sewer systems" (City Ordinance 2026-01 ↗). The County's April draft ↗ says municipal water and sewer are required too. So the City and the County are both pointing data centers at the same kind of tap. Whose tap? How many data centers can it fill? When it needs upgrades, who pays? Those answers should be on the table, in public, before anything is approved.

Our questions for the committee, the City and the County

1. Will the committee take public comment at any point?
2. Will it consult the public?
3. Which municipal water system would serve data centers under both the City's rules and the County's draft, and how many can it support? Will the City and the County put their agreement in writing, in public, before anything is approved?
4. When that system needs upgrades, who pays?
5. Will the City or the County ask a data center's end user which PFAS chemicals it plans to handle, including the ones it calls trade secrets, so we know whether the facility and the sewer system can actually process them?

Why we ask about PFAS. Because Chemours, a PFAS maker, is moving into the data center business. It told its investors that sales of its Performance Solutions products rose 8%, and it credited demand from data center and semiconductor customers (Chemours, page 18, PDF ↗). WECT reported on September 1 that Chemours is also marketing a data center cooling fluid, Opteon 2P50, that is "broadly considered" PFAS and is still under EPA review (WECT ↗; Chemours' launch, Data Center Dynamics ↗). And one more fact for the public record: Georgia Ethics Commission filings show The Chemours Company gave $1,000 to Sen. Billy Hickman's campaign on January 8, 2026 (Ethics Commission ↗). We have not found any link between that gift and any decision in Statesboro. We are asking anyway, because what goes inside the building should be on paper before anyone breaks ground.

The community forum. Georgia Southern's Institute for Vibrant and Engaged Communities held the last of its three "Weighing the Options" talks. It says the forums are for talking, not for making a recommendation, and it plans to give a report to city and county leaders (Herald ↗). Our members were there, and we will keep showing up.

What we don't know yet

• What the committee is supposed to produce, and by when.
• Whether its meetings are open, and where the dates will be posted.
• Whether neighbors of a proposed site get a seat or a chance to speak.
• What the County will do when the pause ends on December 31, now that the ban was voted down.

One more thing from the same meeting

The same night, commissioners voted unanimously to raise the design and engineering contract for road work on Burkhalter, Cawana and Harville roads. The City picked Kimley-Horn at $1,195,700 (Grice Connect ↗), up from a first estimate of about $1 million. The City and County split it evenly, about $597,850 each. The news story does not say the road work is tied to a data center.