Episode Transcript
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Morgan Sung: Up until recently, the neighborhood of Planters Ridge in Fayetteville, Georgia was just another cozy suburb outside of Atlanta.
DorMiya Vance: And it was like real chill, real quiet, like one of those sort of like sleepy neighborhoods.
Morgan Sung: This is DorMiya Vance. She’s a reporter at WABE in Atlanta, and she covers the city’s Southside and the suburbs around it, where Planters Ridge is.
DorMiya Vance: Nothing too crazy, just nice woodland area, kind of cul-de-sac. But like, as soon as sort of the trees started coming down, the construction started, it just looked, it looked crazy. And like the way her house is set up, she can see all of it through her front window.
Morgan Sung: After reporting, DorMiya talked to this resident, Kecia Scott. Kecia had bought her house in 2024. She moved into what she thought was a sleepy neighborhood, not too far from the city, but just suburban enough for some peace and quiet. And Kecia spent a lot of time and money renovating her new home—a crisp, modern house with a floor-to-ceiling front window and views of the cozy cul-de-sac surrounded by woodlands. And then, less than a year after she moved in, the construction started.
DorMiya Vance: So it was like, torn down trees, like no more green land, just woods and tractors and machines. And then like her neighbors in front of her, they either moved or sold their house because of the construction. However, Miss Kecia, she didn’t. Like, she had just built her house. She wasn’t trying to leave despite, you know, everything that happened and despite her neighborhood being somewhat just infiltrated a little bit. It was just a lot, it was a lot. Last time I was up there, it was not great. She had like a more modern house, so like the whole front window was like just straight, you know, window floor to ceiling. So like she could just walk by and just see everything. She didn’t have any curtains either. It was tough, it tough to see.
Morgan Sung: Kecia had unknowingly built her house just across the street from a QTS development site. QTS, for Quality Technology Services, a data center company that’s built more than 75 campuses across the country. The campus going up across the streets from Kecia’s house will consist of 16 buildings, spanning over 600 acres. That’s about 450 football fields.
DorMiya Vance: These areas where some of these data centers are being built on the Southside where there is more land are sort of these more suburban residential areas and so obviously if I’m living in a nice neighborhood I don’t want to see construction for a data center right in front of it.
Morgan Sung: Data centers like these have been the backbone of the digital world for the last 60 years. Streaming a Netflix show, gossiping on a Discord call, or uploading a photo dump on Instagram, all of that processing takes place in data centers—massive, windowless buildings on sprawling campuses filled with racks of networking equipment and storage systems and humming servers. They need a lot of electricity to run and a lot clean water to keep cool. Data centers aren’t actually new, but then the AI industry exploded.
You might remember this stat from last week’s episode: generating one 5-second AI video is like running a microwave for an hour. It adds up fast, which is why AI companies are scrambling to build more and more data centers to feed this insatiable demand for computing power. As big tech companies prioritize AI, They’re building data centers all over the country, especially in the South. And as we heard from DorMiya, it’s not like these centers are all being built in the middle of nowhere.
Take the Atlanta metro area. It’s known for being a foundational hub of the civil rights movement, for its booming music and film industry, and for its excellent food scene. Now, Atlanta is one of the fastest growing hubs for data center construction. Here, and in other cities throughout the South, developers are eyeing predominantly black suburbs for their new facilities, like in Planters Ridge, where Kecia built her house.
Today, we’re heading to Atlanta to understand why the data center boom is happening here, what it means for the communities living alongside these facilities, and how residents are pushing back.
This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist, and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives.
Let’s get into it. You know how this goes, we’re opening a new tab: What’s happening with data centers in Atlanta?
For this deep dive, we teamed up with DorMiya Vance and her colleague Marlon Hyde. They’re two reporters from WABE in Atlanta, and they’ve been working on an ongoing series about the explosion of data centers around the city.
DorMiya Vance: There’s a lot of money involved, a lot of opportunity, however, my coverage kind of comes into play when it comes to, okay, cool, what are we going to do about the people that live here?
Morgan Sung: DorMiya has been covering the ways that these centers are affecting the Southside communities that live around them. And she says the impacts start well before the facilities ever come online.
DorMiya Vance: The concerns around like noise and just like appearance, like, you know, the lights, construction, and having to build these large campuses for months on end.
Morgan Sung: Construction is more than just an eyesore. It’s loud, disruptive, and in some parts of the state, so close to homes that it’s actually affecting residents’ water supply. About an hour from Atlanta is a massive data center owned by Meta. Residents there have complained about construction sediment and light pollution making their homes nearly unlivable. In a video shared with a news outlet, More Perfect Union, one resident talked about some of the effects she’s seen.
[More Perfect Union Video Clip]
Reporter Dan Lieberman: So you can see the sediment from the data center. Wow, and that’s just from the water coming out of your faucet.
Mansfield Resident Beverly Morris: Yeah, and this is what’s in our pipes. I think eventually that affected our well water.
Morgan Sung: She told More Perfect Union that she’s had to replace a hot water heater, two washing machines, and a dishwasher because of the construction sediment. Her tap water is undrinkable. And then, once these data centers are built and running, residents face other issues too. A major one, noise. A few years ago, the TV station WUSA measured noise levels around an Amazon data center in Virginia. Here’s what a neighborhood without a data center sounded like [birds and wind sounds] and the neighborhood of Great Oak near a data center [machinery hum sound]. It’s that low-frequency hum that’s just enough so that you can’t quite tune it out, going on 24-7.
The Prince William Times is a newspaper that covers a neighborhood of Great Oak, where that data center you just heard is located. They recently spoke to a resident who’s lived next to that noise for the last few years. Here’s what it sounds like in his backyard.
[Great Oak resident Rob Pixley]
If it were like a highway that never stops. This is continual. It is just inordinately loud. Some people have claimed, well, but ‘it’s just like a conversation’ that never stops, is in your bedroom and you can never turn off. So it’s not, you know, 80 decibels, but it’s constant.
Morgan Sung: And then there are the concerns about air quality. Around Elon Musk’s xAI data center in Memphis, residents have complained about respiratory issues and a rotten, sulfurous cabbage smell pervading the neighborhood. Here’s what a few residents told Time Magazine.
[Boxtown Resident Alexis Humphries]
It smell like gas now, and it didn’t smell like as before Elon came.
[Memphis Community Against Pollution President KeShaun Pearson]
I literally can taste it, I can taste the difference now.
Morgan Sung: To be clear, the reason the xAI data center is causing so many air quality issues is because it’s running its own methane gas turbines. Musk brought them in because the Memphis power grid could only provide a third of xAI’s electricity needs. Now, the Environmental Protection Agency just ruled that Musk may have acted illegally by essentially building an unsanctioned in-house power plant. It’s not the industry standard to circumvent power grid limitations like that. That’s just an Elon Musk thing.
But like we talked about in our last episode, data centers need a lot of energy to function, and the xAI situation shows just how far some companies are willing to go to secure it. In Atlanta, the city’s power grid isn’t equipped to handle the scale of data center development planned in the area. Not yet, at least.
Marlon Hyde: According to Science for Georgia, a nonprofit, they estimate that there are about 100 data centers in use and about 42 planned.
Morgan Sung: That’s business reporter Marlon Hyde, who works with DorMiya at WABE.
Marlon Hyde: In use and planned data centers are expected to draw about 14,000 megawatts of power from our grid. That’s enough to power about 6.3 million homes, according to the nonprofit, and Georgia has about 4.6 million housing units. So these data centers that are drawing more power than all of us combined in the state can use.
Marlon Hyde: The Georgia Public Service Commission before the year ended approved Georgia Power’s new plan, which is about a $16 billion plan to add about another 10,000 megawatts of new power generation to the grid to meet the rising demand for data centers. And especially for the data centers, the power has to be built now. They need new transmitters, they need new substations. So to do all of that, Georgia Power has to go to work right now. They have to start building out the grid right now so that those data centers can come in and it can support more data centers that are in the pipeline.
Morgan Sung: That brings us to another criticism of data centers, higher electricity bills for residents. All that power infrastructure Marlon mentioned, someone has to pay for it and critics worry that the costs could be passed on to residents of those areas. And as new data centers come online, all the extra energy demand is likely to raise rates. One study from Carnegie Mellon University found that by 2030, the average electricity bill in the highest demand markets could go up by 25%.
Marlon Hyde: Very recently, people are paying more and more on their bills. We’re seeing higher bills, especially, I’m a resident as well. So if you’re already seeing bills increase and we’re not talking about data centers, now we’re talking about a huge entity that’s gonna continue to draw electricity 24 seven. And I’m expected to pay for it? That’s how a lot of residents feel. And that’s where state legislators are looking in the direction of. How do you hold these data centers accountable, these data center companies accountable for what they’re causing in the community, for what they’re building and how much they are paying? There was a proposal to make data centers pay their fair share on energy costs and it didn’t end up reaching the Senate floor for a vote.
Morgan Sung: We have seen some recent evidence that big tech companies are responding to the pushback. In January, Microsoft actually vowed to foot the electricity costs for its data centers, including the cost of expanding the power grid. They’re calling it the community-first AI infrastructure plan. As part of the plan, the company will turn down any local property tax reductions and invest in AI training for local schools and libraries. Whether Microsoft follows through with the plan is yet to be seen. But the company has already developed new designs to reduce its environmental footprint in Georgia.
Last year, Microsoft unveiled its second Fairwater AI Superfactory. This one’s in Atlanta. The facility uses a closed-loop system that doesn’t rely on drinking water for cooling. Microsoft says the system uses almost zero water, reducing the strain on local water supplies. But the Fairwater site is just one of hundreds of data center campuses in the area. Is it enough to make a difference?
Virginia and Texas are leading the data center boom. There’s no comprehensive database of data centers in Georgia. So it’s hard to assess the full scope of this industry. Science for Georgia estimates around a hundred operational data centers. The data center research company Baxtel estimates that there could be almost 200. But what we do know is that Georgia is one of the fastest growing states for data center development. Media company Axios reported that as of the end of last year, the state had plans for 285 more. So what’s driving Georgia’s data center boom? Where these facilities are being built isn’t accidental. It’s shaped by policies, incentives, and longstanding inequalities. We’re opening a whole new tab on that after this break.
Morgan Sung: Let’s open a new tab: Why are there so many data centers in Georgia? The tech companies that are building these massive complexes around Atlanta aren’t actually based there. We’re getting into this with DorMiya and Marlon again.
Marlon Hyde: The data center boom here in Georgia has been largely supported by investments from major tech companies like Amazon Web Services, Meta, Microsoft, and Google. Google actually announced that they were investing $300 million to expand the data center campus and their footprint in Georgia. So we’ve also seen Amazon pledge billions into expanding its data center infrastructure here in George. So there’s a lot of money coming down south.
Morgan Sung: Okay, so here’s why so many tech companies are flocking to the Atlanta metro area.
Marlon Hyde: Georgia has land, it has power, and it has connectivity to the internet. On top of that, the state offers incentives. So looking at the liberal leaning economic advocacy group, Good Jobs First, Georgia is estimated to wave close to $300 million in sales and use taxes on data center equipment purchases in 2025. So it’s like, imagine you’re thinking of moving to another state, or, you know, even for example—we both have New York roots—imagine somebody said, ‘hey, if you’re willing to move back to New York, I’m gonna waive your first year of rent.’ You’re gonna move there pretty quickly.
Morgan Sung: Yeah, I mean, let’s talk about some of these economic incentives at work here. Marlon, you’ve reported on this a lot. What else is at play?
Marlon Hyde: Business speaks volumes. Economic development, they’re willing to give away incentives. You know, one of the first instances of reporting on data centers was Twitter known as X now, Elon Musk’s company, was applying for a $10 million tax abatement in Fulton County, a tax abate not having to pay taxes on sales and use taxes for the equipment that is being bought, mind you they’re buying millions of dollars worth of equipment. Everything we do, even right now as we’re talking, is passing through a data center, and you have to have up-to-date equipment to handle all of this processing power. So, for example, if Twitter wanted to get $200 million worth of the equipment, they would probably ask Fulton County, where their data center is, for some type of tax relief so that they don’t have to pay that money and that they could either save it and pocket it or push it forward in other ways to invest and grow their data center infrastructure. The money is here, the money is flowing and I do not see any of this investment slowing down anytime soon.
Morgan Sung: Data centers bring promises of jobs and economic growth, but Marlon, based on your reporting, are those jobs permanent?
Marlon Hyde: A majority of those jobs are not permanent. When I went to the data center that’s run by Georgia Tech, CODA in Tech Square, they had security. They had people throughout the building. But when you’re looking around, you’re not seeing 200-300 people ready and working on it. There were about 200 to 300 people involved in the actual building of it. But when it comes to the operations, you’re bringing only 20 to 30 jobs in and those are highly skilled jobs majority of the time. So, these companies are not employing hundreds of Georgians just for these data centers. It’s just, that’s not the reality.
Morgan Sung: We also need to talk about where in Georgia these data centers are being built. As DorMiya has reported, the neighborhoods closest to these new developments are predominantly Black suburbs.
DorMiya Vance: If we’re thinking about like Atlanta or Georgia and the areas that I reported on, you have to think about history. There’s certain areas that have been either redlined or certain barriers that may have been placed that were historically, systemically racist. And so there’s more Black people on the Southside that may have been pushed out. And there’s also more land, which, that land is cheaper. It’s unfortunate that that’s where the cheaper land is and that’s where the population is heavily dense, you know, people of color. From my reporting, like if I just think about the city of South Fulton, where it’s basically, you know almost 100% Black residents, and that is where data centers are coming. It goes back to sort of like, historical route and just land, like where is it located? If you’re heading north, it’s more dense. So yeah, those north Atlanta more white or more wealthy or whatever you want to name it. There’s no space.
Morgan Sung: We’re seeing a similar trend around other data centers built in other states too. Developers are flocking to areas where land is cheap and there’s a lot of it. But as environmental justice advocates have pointed out, those areas tend to be Black and Latino communities. The smelly xAI data center in Memphis that residents say is ruining the air quality, that’s in Boxtown, which was founded by formerly enslaved people after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. To this day, Boxtown is still a predominantly Black neighborhood.
Last year, residents of Jones County, Georgia, a majority white community, rejected the construction of a new data center complex. As Capital B News reported in January, the developers of that project are now trying to build it in a rural Black community in South Carolina. The community there has already been grappling with industrial pollution for generations. And in Prince George’s County in Maryland, another predominantly Black area, residents are pushing back against the development of another new data center. During a community meeting, residents confronted county officials over the history of pollution in the area.
[Speaker at Community Meeting]
I’m a three-year cancer survivor. I have been exposed to extreme environmental toxins in the PG County. PG County is the toilet of the state. Stop treating PG County as the toilet of the state. We deserve more. We deserve more.
Morgan Sung: The data center location trend is part of a larger history of environmental injustice, especially in Georgia.
[Audio clip from short film, Pine Packs a Punch]
The land has always been an important commodity in Georgia. In the 19th century, stately plantation homes spelled a way of life unique in a changing world.
Morgan Sung: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, another news outlet, analyzed years of EPA and census data. They found that communities near toxic waste sites in Georgia had a larger percentage of Black residents and lower property values. And in the city of South Fulton, where many neighborhoods are near industrial facilities, residents have been complaining about chemical odors, soil contamination, and air quality issues. And residents have left out of the loop when it comes to new industrial developments. From the 1950s to the present day. Data centers are adding to the environmental burden there.
DorMiya Vance: Really just boils down to like, you know, systemic racism and segregation, like it’s a little bit of a history lesson.
Morgan Sung: So developers are flocking to these areas that have a lot of land, for cheap, and promising that data center complexes will bring economic benefits to the marginalized communities that already live there. As Marlon has pointed out, there is so much money flowing into the construction of these facilities, all driven by the expectation that the AI industry will continue its exponential growth. But what happens if that investment dries up? Let’s open one last tab. What happens to data centers if the AI bubble pops?
Marlon Hyde: That’s a question that researchers, professors, and data center developers are all asking themselves right now as well. There’s no answer right now. You could be potentially left with a stranded asset.
Morgan Sung: Stranded assets are resources or infrastructure that are no longer valuable. They were built with a purpose, but can no longer be used and are now a financial liability. Think nuclear power plants that have been shut down or coal reserves that can’t be burned. There’s no economic value, but all of that stuff, that investment, it’s just sitting there.
Marlon Hyde: Regardless, that’s still gonna be a warehouse full of technology. You can do something with it, potentially, but it’s really up to who owns it, who’s developing it, and what are the plans for the future. There’s no real answer for what if this AI bubble pops and we’re left with, at this point, about 100 data centers that are no longer operable.
Morgan Sung: This is a nationwide question, but our eyes are on Georgia, where it’s hitting right now. Marlin told me about this one project that’s supposed to be built out by 2037.
Marlon Hyde: The Forsyth Technology Campus, it is a $21 billion, let me say that one more time, $21 Billion, over 1,600 acre data center development in Monroe County. And it has the potential to become the single largest economic project in Middle Georgia. There is a desperate need for people that can build data centers because it’s already on the books. It’s planned, it’s ready to go. They need the people to build it. Now, back to your point, there’s not gonna be many permanent jobs that comes out of it afterwards. So we’re gonna have to continue to look at are data centers worth it? Is it worth it to continue building these structures? And for cities, municipalities, is it worth to attract these data centers here? Are we gonna be left with a stranded asset where it’s a warehouse full of servers and cables, but there’s no use for it anymore? What do you do there?
DorMiya Vance: I think that’s why we’re seeing so many more like moratoriums and pauses because like these counties and cities, they want to genuinely try to understand what is it, like, what are you doing here? Are we going to have to worry about this later? What regulations do we need to put in place so our residents aren’t fearful of what you’re doing? I’m just thinking about residents of South Fulton who kind of have this issue already kinda. You know, where they have abandoned warehouses and different things that have been basically stranded there. And they’re still trying to figure out what do we even do with this from years ago.
Morgan Sung: So whose responsibility is it to deal with these data centers if they’re no longer functional?
Marlon Hyde: At the end of the day, it’s an investment from these companies and the state that are creating these data centers. So it’s also their responsibility whether or not these data centers continue to operate into the future. And if they’re just gonna be sucking up resources and not giving back anything in terms of economic development, they’re actually worsening our environment. If that all continues to be true, then it goes back on those municipalities and those data center companies to figure out what to do next.
Morgan Sung: How are local communities responding to all of this construction? Like, are people getting more involved in local government?
DorMiya Vance: 100%. There was recently, and this is around like Marlon’s reporting on DeKalb County and their moratorium, but they had a town hall and it was basically packed. It was overflowing with residents speaking out, basically like, we don’t want this.
Marlon Hyde: Residents are going to remain vocal. We are in Georgia, Atlanta, one of the hearts of the civil rights movement. People here feel connected to their local government. People here feel connected to the story and the history of Atlanta as we are a part of it at this current point in time.
DeKalb County voted to extend a moratorium, a pause on data centers being built, constructed to the summer, 2026, June of 2026. And that’s because their phones have been ringing off the hook, according to the County Commissioner. There’ve been non-stop calls, texts, emails about residents not wanting these data centers here. People showing up to community meetings, town halls, any type of forum where they can have their voice heard. People are showing up to let commissioners and the economic leaders know that they don’t want these data centers here.
And we understand that there is a need for data centers and for this infrastructure. But if you’re telling me that we need it, but it has to be built right next door to me and I have to hear it, I have be on the same power grid as it, I don’t want this around me. Go find somewhere else for it.
Morgan Sung: Is there anything that these data center operators or regulators can do to mitigate these risks if the construction of the centers is inevitable?
DorMiya Vance: Yeah, they need to have meetings. They need to talk to city officials. The mayor of Palmetto, she had a meeting and like had work sessions with Microsoft because there’s a Microsoft data center in Palmetto, Georgia. She told me that she had sort of hands-on meetings with the folks from Microsoft so they can interact with residents saying like, hey, this is what we’re building, you know, showing them exactly what they’re going to get. And I think that there needs to be more of that, however, the missing piece is the developer.
You probably won’t see the developer until like the county commission meeting where they’re trying to approve or rezone, you know, where that’s when they pop up but they need to be in the more like regular meetings, town halls. I think that that’s where they need to sort of meet the people because if you’re just going to come into our neighborhood and not even announce yourself, of course we’re going to feel away about it. Like you just want to come in here and not even introduce yourself like, hmm. So I think they just need to meet the people where they are and being that, hey, you know, AI is rising, the internet is here, we have to have these things. How can we work together so that we are getting both ends of the deal met basically.
Morgan Sung: What do you want people to know about the way that big tech is changing Atlanta?
Marlon Hyde: Lynn McKee, a professor at Georgia State University, he mentions that for places like Butts County that it’s fighting for more economic development, more tax revenue, data centers could be beneficial. Now the question becomes, what is the overall value? You know, we could see in the short-term, yes, while this warehouse is running, it’s going to be paying whatever share was determined through, you know, whatever deals and arrangements they’re making. But outside of that, what is the city giving up? You know, are we giving up land that could be used for, you know schools, hospitals, homes? Are residents getting burdened with higher energy bills with more instances of environmental pollution, sound noise pollution, things of that nature? Is it gonna be worth it in the long term to put our residents through that? If artificial intelligence is growing in importance, growing in use, you can only expect data centers to grow and for the infrastructure to continue to expand, to support it.
Morgan Sung: Georgia could actually be the first to issue a statewide pause on data center construction. Just last week, at the end of January, Georgia state lawmakers introduced a bill proposing a statewide moratorium on all data center projects until March of 2027. This legislation isn’t a ban on data centers. It’s just buying time. Putting all of these new developments on hold will give local governments and municipalities time to figure out how to regulate data centers. And at the very least, it would give residents a break from all the construction. Okay, now let’s close all these tabs.
Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced by Maya Cueva and edited by Chris Hambrick and Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. Additional music by APM. Brendan Willard is our audio engineer. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is KQED’s director of podcasts. Katie Sprenger is our podcast operations manager and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our editor-in-chief.
Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco Northern California Local.
This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by my dad, Casey Sung, and recorded on his white and blue Apple Maker Ala F99 keyboard with Greywood V3 switches and Cherry Profile PBT keycaps.
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