For too long, local governments have played defense when massive tech companies roll into town. The old playbook was just trying to mitigate the damage—making a data center slightly less noisy or slightly less ugly. But mitigation isn’t a community benefit. It just makes a massive industrial intrusion slightly less painful.

These hyperscale facilities extract immense value from our land and our power grid. In exchange, we must extract generational value for our neighborhoods. As recent reporting highlights, the under-the-radar climate impacts of data centers are staggering—these buildings are essentially giant heaters. We aren’t going to let our communities absorb the costs while tech giants walk away with the profits.

If a data center wants to build here, they have to become an active, positive part of our civic and ecological infrastructure. Here is the strict new baseline we are demanding before any facility gets a green light.

Part 1: Strict Zoning Limits & A Hard Cap on Size

We are ending the era of rubber-stamping unchecked industrial sprawl.

  • The 500,000 Sq. Ft. Cap: We are drawing a line in the sand. No single data center facility in DeKalb County will be permitted to exceed 500,000 square feet. Massive, million-square-foot mega-campuses are simply not a fit for our communities.
  • Mandatory Special Land Use Permits (SLUP): Data centers are no longer a “by-right” use. Every proposed facility will be required to go through the SLUP process. That means they face intense county scrutiny, community input, and a public vote by the Board of Commissioners before they can build.

Part 2: Environmental & Power Protections

Before a shovel hits the dirt, developers have to prove they aren’t harming our microclimates or draining our local grid.

  • 100% Renewable Energy Mandate: Data centers cannot just plug into the grid and burn fossil fuels. We are requiring operators to power their facilities with renewable sources, relying on on-site solar energy generation and clean energy power purchase agreements to offset their massive footprint.
  • Ban on Toxic Diesel Generators: When the grid blinks, data centers usually fire up massive, polluting diesel generators. Not in DeKalb. We are mandating the use of industrial-scale battery storage systems for all backup power needs. Leave the diesel in the past.
  • Neighborhood Battery Microgrids: Since we are requiring those massive battery systems, they shouldn’t just sit there. Facilities must design their battery storage to act as a bidirectional microgrid, pushing power back into the surrounding residential grid to keep the lights on in our neighborhoods during a blackout.
  • Targeting the Urban Heat Island Effect: Data centers blast out industrial levels of heat, fundamentally changing the temperatures of the surrounding blocks. Developers must conduct comprehensive Environmental Impact Assessments measuring this thermal impact at the property line.
  • Mandatory Cooling Interventions: To counteract this heat, we will require massive on-site mitigation, including a mandated 50% tree canopy coverage, “cool” high-albedo roofs, and green roofing.
  • Neighborhood Cooling Funds: If the developer physically cannot meet the on-site canopy requirements, they will pay a fee-in-lieu directly into a ring-fenced fund. Those dollars will be spent only in the immediate surrounding neighborhoods to plant street trees, build park shade structures, and protect the community from the heat.

Part 3: Water Stewardship & Environmental Justice Auditing

Data centers are notorious for consuming millions of gallons of local drinking water for their massive cooling towers and then dumping the heated, chemically treated water back into the municipal sewer system. In DeKalb County, our water is a vital public resource, not a cheap industrial coolant.

  • Mandatory Closed-Loop Cooling: We are banning “open-loop” and evaporative cooling systems that constantly drain municipal water. All data centers must utilize advanced “closed-loop” cooling systems that recycle water continuously or use state-of-the-art liquid and air-cooling technologies. If they need water, they must use reclaimed gray water, not DeKalb’s potable drinking supply.
  • On-Site Pre-Treatment: Any wastewater that a facility does discharge must be fully pre-treated on-site. We will not allow data centers to dump PFAS laden chemically treated industrial runoff into our aging sewer infrastructure or place an undue burden on the Snapfinger Wastewater Treatment Plant and the South River watershed.
  • Auditing by the Environmental Justice Commission: We are not just writing these rules; we are enforcing them. The newly established Environmental Justice and Sustainability Resident Review Group will act as the public watchdog. This resident-led commission is legally empowered to audit the water, energy, and thermal data reported by the data centers. They will conduct regular reviews to ensure these facilities are hitting their sustainability targets, protecting our high-risk neighborhoods, and fully honoring the terms of their Community Benefit Agreements. If the developers break their promises, the EJ Commission will bring it directly to the Board of Commissioners to hold them accountable.

IF A DATA CENTER IS APPROVED….

Part 4: The “Public Dividend” Community Benefit Agreement

We are requiring a Community Benefit Agreement (CBA) to get a zoning permit or a tax break. This is the new cost of doing business.

  • The “DeKalb AI” Compute Carve-Out: We are requiring a 2% in-kind capacity carve-out. The developer must provide free, dedicated, high-speed server space to power the DeKalb County School System’s next-generation tech, run local government services, and—crucially—host a secure, private “DeKalb AI Assistant” that is totally free and accessible to every single one of our nearly 800,000 residents.
  • Small Business Access: If you run a local business with under 50 employees, you will get access to a portal powered by this free capacity, giving mom-and-pop shops the same AI logistics and marketing power as corporate giants.
  • Emory Health Research Mission: We will dedicate a portion of this free server space strictly to local university partners like Emory, giving researchers the massive computing power they need to run models to cure cancer and drive public health breakthroughs.
  • The AI Tech Dividend Fund: As a firm fiscal policy from the Board of Commissioners, we will not allow all of the new tax revenue generated by these massive developments to vanish into the county’s general fund. Instead, we are ring-fencing a dedicated ratio of those tax revenues directly into a neighborhood fund. This money will be used to install rooftop solar, upgrade HVACs, and weatherize the homes of low-income residents and seniors living near the facility, wiping out their power bills and offsetting the neighborhood grid strain.
  • Waste-Heat Indoor Farming: Instead of venting heat into the sky, we will require developers to pipe that thermal exhaust into adjacent vertical indoor farms. We will partner with local agricultural co-ops to grow fresh food year-round for our local food banks.
  • WorkSource DeKalb Global Training: We are mandating a tech training pipeline focused on residents living within a 3-mile radius. We aren’t just training folks to work in the local facility—we are paying for globally recognized certifications so our neighbors can step into high-paying tech jobs anywhere in the world.

Have Your Say

This is a turning point for how we handle industrial growth. We want to hear from you. Please step up to the mic during public comment and let us know what you think about stopping massive data centers, holding them accountable, and securing a true public dividend for our neighborhoods.