SOCIAL CIRCLE, Ga. – When, or if, they’re built, data centers proposed for sites on East Hightower Trail and for Fairplay Drive at Roy Malcom Road in Social Circle won’t have to worry about where they’ll get water, under terms of a proposed intergovernmental agreement approved last Tuesday by the Social Circle City Council. 

With a unanimous vote, the council approved the proposed agreement with Walton County for the data center projects. Walton County commissioners likely will vote on the intergovernmental agreement next month. 

According to Social Circle City Manager Eric Taylor, county officials have already seen the agreement, under which the county would supply water to the data centers. 

The agreement has already been vetted by lawyers for both the city and the county, Taylor said, which would make an affirmative commission vote a virtual certainty.   

The developer or developers behind the proposed projects were not specifically named in the agreement, but the properties delineated in the agreement closely align with separate proposals recently approved by the council.  

One of those projects is being pursued by Dermody, a nationwide industrial development firm, while the other has been associated with Atlas Development, a Carrollton-based data center developer. Interestingly, the intergovernmental agreement mentions only “a certain business” that the agreement says “is contemplating the installation of two data center campuses” in Social Circle. 

Data centers are massive facilities, often measuring 1 million square feet or more, that are filled with computer servers that store, process and distribute huge amounts of digital data. Water is a particularly precious commodity for those facilities, for which large amounts are needed for cooling down the equipment inside. 

The intergovernmental agreement, currently set for a 50-year term unless the city and the county agree to an earlier termination, and which will automatically renew for additional 50-year terms unless one party provides notice of its intent not to renew the agreement, notes that “Social Circle does not currently have a supply of water sufficient to meet the water requirements of the Data Centers and requests that Walton County supply the water to meet the requirements of the Data Centers … .” 

In turn, the agreement requires Walton County to “make available sufficient water to meet the needs of the Data Centers owned by the Business and any successor to the business at no expense to Social Circle … ” 

Beyond whatever it charges the data centers for its water – the county will negotiate rates with the data centers -- the agreement calls for Walton County to receive 35% of any franchise fees the city receives from the electrical utility providing power to the data centers. That 35% is, however, limited to just the electricity provided to the data centers themselves, and not to the entire municipal service area. 

In addition to water, data centers require significant amounts of electrical power to operate, to the extent that the Social Circle Planning Commission, which serves the city council in an advisory capacity regarding zoning issues, has begun asking data center developers pursuing those facilities in Social Circle whether they have specific comments from an electrical utility to provide their power. 

According to Taylor, the entities involved in the data center projects are still performing their “due diligence” to determine whether they will proceed with the proposed facilities. Taylor estimated Tuesday that it will be at least a couple of months before the city hears anything from developers of the data center projects regarding whether they will proceed with building the facilities. 

The intergovernmental agreement comes as the city council just recently voted to extend a moratorium on applications for data centers that had been scheduled to expire on Dec. 15. The moratorium was initially enacted in September to give the city an opportunity to work through a string of annexation, rezoning, special-use permit and related requests for proposed data centers. 

The latest moratorium will extend until March 15, or until the city council approves any proposed changes to the municipal development code on regulations and standards for data centers. 

The Dec. 18 meeting of the Social Circle Planning Commission was set to include discussion of some proposed changes, including a requirement for a minimum site size of 50 acres, submission of a water, sewer and gas impact study, compliance with water use efficiency standards, periodic conduct of emergency drills, and noise abatement, among a long list of requirements. 

 If the planning commission approves any code changes for data centers at its Dec. 18 meeting, those proposed changes would go to the city council for a final vote. The council could consider any changes at its Jan. 20 meeting, but the council is not bound by any recommendations of the planning commission.