TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2026   |   Brandi Owczarz, Gordon Gazette

​

At the Tuesday night, Feb. 3, 2026 meeting of the Gordon County Board of Commissioners, all five members voted unanimously to place a moratorium on the building of data centers in the county until the Unified Land Development Code (ULDC) can be updated with regulations for the building and operations of such centers.

 

Commissioner Chad Steward suggested the moratorium during the data center discussion in Tuesday night’s work session, saying he was going to bring the motion before the Board in the regular meeting.

 

Gordon County’s Unified Land Development Code is a comprehensive set of local regulations governing land use, zoning and development within the unincorporated areas of the county. It uses building, zoning, and development ordinances to control density, land use and infrastructure, with the purpose of protecting public safety, the environment and controlling growth.

 

When the ULDC was written in 2009, there really was no such thing as data centers, and now that they are becoming a huge economic factor in the state, the county wants to be pro-active in regulating the construction and operating of any data centers if builders were to find interest in Gordon County.

 

Gordon County Administrator Jim Ledbetter made many of the same observations in the work session discussion Tuesday night that Community Development Director Derron Brown made two weeks ago in the original meeting that began data center discussion.

 

“Gordon County, right now, currently has zero regulations, ordinances or codes pertaining to data centers exclusive of whatever you might quantify a data center as,” said Ledbetter. “So if a data center is an industrial operation, a data center right now could locate in Gordon County under whatever rules we have for industrial. There are some locations that are allowing data centers in agricultural locations. So we are the Wild West right now. I don’t know of any specific data center project that is coming here, but I do know that there are data centers that are looking at Gordon County and every other county that can meet that sweet spot of adequate power and adequate gas and gas pipelines. Water is not as big a deal now because they’re going to these closed loop systems. So what does that mean? I know a lot of people are talking about this on social media; a lot of them are just flat wrong about data centers. So we’ve all been studying and taking seminars on this, I’ve looked at other state ordinances.”

 

The big three data center counties in Georgia - Jackson, Spalding and Wayne – caught Ledbetter’s attention and he has particularly been reviewing the ordinances pertaining to data centers in those counties. Ledbetter said that those three counties have state-of-the-art ordinances on data centers.

 

“The bottom line right now is, we have zero regulations in Gordon County pertaining to data centers,” said Ledbetter. “The reason for that is, these are relatively new. We need regulations. I don’t think data centers are all bad. There are data centers that might be noisy; they might have batteries that we don’t like the toxicity of or they might have high water consumption. The best data centers, the kind that we would want to attract, are not going to produce that type of noise and have built-in sound continuation, they’re going to have setbacks and vegetative buffers, they’ve got to have noise studies that are done, they will be no more than 55 decibels at the property line (normal speaking voice), they will have closed-loop systems and emergency plans with the right kind of fire suppression. They will be designed so they do not make a negative impact on the system.”

 

Ledbetter addressed those on social media who are saying the County should outlaw data centers.

 

“You know, we can do that but it’s only going to last as long as the law suit lasts,” said Ledbetter. “Then we will have a court telling us that we have to allow them and would have to allow them under our existing rules for which we have none right now, except for the general rules on industry.”

 

According to Ledbetter, Jackson County has good regulations on how to build data centers to not be a nuisance; while Spalding County has good regulations on closure and removal when a data center has ended its needs. He said that he wants to combine those two philosophies into one ordinance for a county ordinance in Gordon.

 

“That way, when data centers come, we will get the benefits of them and not the burdens,” said Ledbetter.

 

Ledbetter also mentioned Loudoun County, Virginia, where there are currently 200 data centers in that area alone. Ledbetter has studied that county extensively, saying that a seminar presentation on Loudoun County offered advice such as, there must be restrictions on power usage, there must be a power usage plan, a water closed loop system and other needs. The good thing about Loudoun is that the county has a $1 billion dollar budget, with $900 million of that budget coming in from data center revenue.

 

“We guesstimate that in Gordon County, if we had three to five data centers, or three to four data centers, our millage rate could be reduced to next to zero,” said Ledbetter. “That is, we would have no ad valorem taxation or very small ad valorem taxation.”

 

Ledbetter said that right now, our neighbors are getting data centers, mentioning Bartow and Floyd counties.

 

“People are saying (date centers) are going to use up electricity (if placed in Gordon),” said Ledbetter. “Well, they’re going to use it up next door; electricity is regional. Electricity is a Southern region thing. They are sucking that electricity up in Adairsville from Gordon County. People say, ‘what about our water resources?’ Well, we require a closed-loop system that will have minimal impact. You can have environmental rules to protect the environment. Right now, these are the types of things we are looking at. But right now, we don’t have any of those rules.”

 

Ledbetter said that the social media comments from people saying data centers will ruin the environment could be true in certain circumstances if strict regulations are not put in place.

“That wouldn’t be true if you get the right data centers,” said Ledbetter. “If you get the right spot with the right regulations, it would be a money maker for Gordon County. The Loudoun County, Virginia guy was explaining that data centers basically consume four cents of county budget for every dollar of revenue the county would generate. Residential neighborhoods, on the other hand, basically consume every penny they generate in tax revenue, and I think industrial and commercial generate around 40 cents on the dollar.”

 

“There are many counties around the state that are facing this (issue) and each county is looking at it differently,” said Commission Chair Bud Owens.

 

Steward said that he has been keeping an eye on the bills moving around at the state legislative session concerning data centers.

 

As the Gazette reported last week, legislators have already proposed seven bills that would attempt to regulate data centers by eliminating tax breaks, prohibit costs from being passed on to residential electricity customers or temporarily halting their construction.

 

“There are a lot of concerns within those bills about protecting citizens,” said Steward. “That being said, in the regular meeting, I’m going to make a motion that we put a moratorium on data centers so we can work on making sure we are protecting our citizens.”

 

Once the regular meeting began, Steward did bring that motion and all five commissioners voted to approve a moratorium on the building of data centers until the ULDC can be updated.