Coweta County residents file appeal to stop massive data center on protected rural land

A group of Coweta County residents is taking their own county to court, fighting to stop a massive data center campus on nearly 830 acres of rural conservation land.

The lawsuit and appeal, filed Tuesday in Coweta County Superior Court, names both Coweta County and Atlas Development, LLC as defendants. Seventeen residents, farmers, longtime landowners, and neighbors, are asking a judge to throw out the county's decision to rezone the land and block the project entirely.

At the heart of the fight is a stretch of undeveloped land near Welcome to Sargent Road and Wagers Mill Road, tucked inside the Middle Chattahoochee River basin and designated by the state of Georgia as a "Most Significant Groundwater Recharge Area" — one of the state's highest environmental protection designations.

The project, internally known as "Project Sail," would convert that land from rural conservation zoning into full industrial use to accommodate what the appeal describes as a "hyperscale" data center campus, a massive, industrial-scale computing facility engineered for extreme workloads.

Residents say they never saw it coming, and they believe it goes against the county's own rules.

A rezoning residents call illegal

The appeal argues Coweta County's Board of Commissioners ignored its own rules, violated state law, and residents' constitutional rights when it approved the rezoning.

Atlas Development first filed its rezoning application in December 2024, seeking to convert the land from rural conservation to light industrial use. But when the county adopted a new Data Center Ordinance in December 2025, Atlas amended its application in January 2026, this time seeking an even more intensive industrial classification, the broadest range of industrial operations allowed under county code.

Residents say that significant change should have triggered a new round of environmental review and public comment. Instead, the appeal says, it didn't, and citizens were cut out of the process entirely.

The county had previously placed a 180-day moratorium on data center applications while it developed its new ordinance, which it adopted Dec. 16, 2025.

What residents say they stand to lose

The petitioners are a mix of adjacent landowners, nearby residents and concerned citizens — many of whom say they bought or kept their property specifically because of its rural character and the county's own land use plans, which designated the area for rural and agricultural use, not heavy industry.

The appeal lays out a detailed list of what residents say they will lose if the project moves forward: declining property values, years of construction noise and blasting, damage to private water wells from ground vibrations, increased traffic, light pollution that would erase the rural night sky, the departure of wildlife and the constant hum of massive diesel backup generators running around the clock.

One peer-reviewed study cited in the appeal projects that the rezoning could trigger an estimated $118 million decline in residential property values across approximately 1,215 parcels within 1.25 miles of the site.

Construction, the appeal notes, could last up to 10 years per the developer's own estimates.

Coweta County data center environmental concerns

The appeal also raises serious environmental red flags. The property sits within the Middle Chattahoochee River basin, in an area the Georgia Department of Natural Resources designates as a "Most Significant Groundwater Recharge Area." The original regional impact study filed for the project incorrectly stated the land was not in a significant groundwater recharge area, the suit contends.

Hyperscale data centers consume millions of gallons of water for cooling and require an immense amount of electricity, straining the power grid. Even so-called "closed loop" cooling systems, which the county's own ordinance requires, use glycol-water mixtures and other chemicals that the appeal says could catastrophically affect the local watershed if not properly managed.

The appeal also challenges the economic case made for the project. While the developer's public-facing website claimed $100 million in annual tax revenue, the suit points to the developer's own linked fiscal impact study, which projects $434.1 million over 21 years or roughly $20.7 million per year. An independent analysis cited in the appeal estimates actual revenue at full buildout could range from just $3.6 million to $11.7 million annually.

The appeal argues that promises of an "economic boom" from hyperscale data centers rarely materialize, noting that aside from temporary construction jobs, economic studies from comparable projects show the promised benefits largely fail to appear.

What residents are asking the court to do

The petitioners are asking the Coweta County Superior Court to declare the rezoning decision void, find that the county violated its own ordinances and the Georgia Constitution, and permanently block Atlas Development from building or operating the data center campus on the property.

Because the appeal was filed within 30 days of the county's written decision, the filing seeks to halt further action on the project while the court reviews the rezoning decision.

In a statement, Coweta County said it does not comment on matters involving pending litigation.