Congratulations to Lowndes County for the astonishingly forthcoming Data Center Considerations session after the Lowndes County Commission Regular Session on July 28, 2026. They covered many topics of general concern, including water and power usage, zoning, and land use.

Videos: Data Center Session @ LCC 2026-07-28, Lowndes County Manager Paige Dukes, Questions filtered by: Dr. Michael Noll, Verbal Moratorium: Chairman Bill Slaughter

Lowndes County Manager Paige Dukes conducted the session. She revealed that the Commissioners have directed staff to draft a datacenter ordinance by around September, or in about six weeks, as Chairman Bill Slaughter told me afterwards.

She said the public would get to see the draft ordinance before the Commissioners approved it. She did not say anyone would get to see it before it appeared on an agenda for approval, which is how you’ve seen the Commissioners handle the recent Alcohol Ordinance and the Comprehensive Plan.

More clever than I had anticipated, she said that same afternoon she had asked Dr. Michael Noll to take question cards from the audience and pick questions to relay. So the head of Lowndes County Against Datacenters (LCAD) thus became the Lowndes County Commission filter for public questions.

Dr. Michael Noll and Questions, 2026-07-28 –jsq for LAKE

The first question he relayed was from me, “What if a datacenter comes in before a county ordinance or moratorium?”

What if a datacenter comes in before a county ordinance or moratorium?, 2026-07-28 –jsq for LAKE

This is related to U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 10: “No state shall… pass any … ex post facto law….”

Dr. Noll tried to refer the question to County Attorney G. Walter Elliott, but the County Manager quickly said it wasn’t for him, the Commissioners decide.

The Chairman said that, “We are not going to move forward with a datacenter in Lowndes County until we have an ordinance in place before we will even consider one.” Also, “We are not going to allow a datacenter until we have everything in place to regulate a datacenter here in this community.” However, he would not commit to putting that in writing for the Commissioners to vote on.

Chairman Bill Slaughter, 2026-07-28 –jsq for LAKE
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHqF0q1-eTw&list=PLP7bvYMxVlM8&index=3&pp=iAQBsAgC

I’d like to know in what open meeting of the Lowndes County Commission was this unwritten moratorium decided upon?

If there was no such meeting, then it seems to me either the Commissioners are in violation of the Georgia Open Meetings Act or they are just expressing personal opinions, which have no binding effect on the Lowndes County government.

The Chairman also said it could be years before any actual datacenter application comes in. Afterwards I pointed out that’s not what happened in Irwin County.

https://wwals.net/issues/datacenters#irwinco

There was discussion in which the Commissioners indicated they thought datacenters were only going near major infrastructure, such as I-75. Well, Irwin County and Early County are nowhere near I-75. Irwin County is on a major Georgia Power power line, as I confirmed with Georgia Power Southwest Regional Director Joe Brownlee before he left, but not on a major highway.

Georgia Power Southwest Regional Director Joe Brownlee, 2026-07-28 –jsq for LAKE

Commissioner Demarcus Marshall said that in the many presentations and meetings the Commissioners and Staff had attended, a main theme was transparency. I applaud the county for this step towards transparency. There is, nonetheless, room for improvement.

Commissioner Demarcus Marshall, 2026-07-28 –jsq for LAKE

Commissioner Scottie Orenstein talked about how they were all trying to do the best for the community.

Commissioner Scott Orenstein, 2026-07-28 –jsq for LAKE

Commissioner Michael Smith and the Chairman noted that of the counties around here, Lowndes is the most capable to deal with something like datacenters. Maybe, but why have Brooks and Cook Counties, the City of Adel, and Madison County, Florida, already passed datacenter moratoriums, while Lowndes County still has no moratorium or ordinance a year after the site was rezoned?

And while Lowndes County looks big and capable next to its neighbors, it is a gnat compared to any of the big trillion-dollar AI companies.

Commissioner Michael Smith, 2026-07-28 –jsq for LAKE

Commissioner Mark Wisenbaker asserted that he would never do anything to harm Lowndes County, and noted that his family had been here since the beginning. In case you didn’t know, when the county seat moved from Troupville to Valdosta, they bought the land from Mark’s Wisenbaker ancestor.

Commissioner Mark Wisenbaker, 2026-07-28 –jsq for LAKE

Commissioner Joyce Evans did not say anything, probably because she has difficulty with public speaking due to her medical condition, which, fortunately, is gradually improving. Get better, soon, Joyce.

Now I believe them all when they say they’re trying to do the best for the county as they see it. But I still remember when this County Commission (including some of the same Commissioners), less than a year after passing a resolution opposing the Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline, accepted money for an easement on county-owned land, calling it “a good business decision”. Only Commissioner Demarcus Marshall voted no on easement.

It is also not clear to me that the Commissioners understand the industry they are dealing with. DC BLOX and landowner Pope Langdale do not know who the end-user AI customer wil be: Microsoft, Google, Apple, or somebody else. Any of those companies has a larger market cap than the state of Georgia, with CEOs beholden to nobody and nothing but the financial interests of their executives and shareholders. They have repeatedly stated in public that they aim to replace workers with AI. How that benefits Lowndes County is not clear to me, and it is clear to me that making billionaires richer is not to our advantage.

Fortunately, many businesses that laid off workers and replace them with AI are having second thoughts now that the AI companies are charging. The AI bubble is likely to pop, for that reason, and because Chinese companies are rapidly leapfrogging U.S. companies with less expensive methods, witness the stock market yesterday. If we’re all lucky, it will pop before datacenters are built in south Georgia or north Florida.

For once, the County Manager’s slides were on the county website before everyone left the room. Look on lowndescounty.com, Government, Departments, Planning, Data Center Considerations Presentation:

https://lowndescounty.com/DocumentCenter/View/4631/Data-Center-Considerations-Presentation;

I thanked her for that during her presentation and she acknowledged that.

Here is the LAKE video playlist of the presentation. I took the video in one long take, but the camera split it into three for size. (LAKE videos of the Regular Session will follow.)
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLP7bvYMxVlM8&si=I8FDLHsoBmncgHNx

For much more on datacenters, see:

https://wwals.net/issues/datacenters

-jsq

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