EFFINGHAM COUNTY, Ga. — A month after OpenAI announced plans for a massive data center campus in Effingham County, residents who might not otherwise have much in common are finding common ground in opposition to the project.
OpenAI announced Project Camellia, a 1,400-acre data center campus, on July 22. Within days, residents began protesting, organizing meetings and challenging OpenAI and county officials.
Out of that opposition, the Protect Effingham Alliance has emerged with more than 100 members, many of whom had never met or attended a local government meeting before the project brought them together.
The alliance describes itself as a nonpartisan group focused on bringing residents together, sharing information about the project and giving the community a voice in decisions surrounding its development.
The group became a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization on National Nonprofit Day, Aug. 17. Members are planning public town halls and information sessions.
“We’re a group of concerned residents, mostly from Effingham County,” Evan Karp, the group’s media liaison, said. “We just want what’s best for our neighborhoods and our county as far as protecting our way of life. Our goal is to have a voice. It’s as simple as that.”
'It’s everybody'
Karp said confusion and concern spread quickly across the community in the days after the county and OpenAI announced the data center.
“There was a higher temperature to these discussions because … of the way the announcement was made,” he said. “People are really upset and frightened. We feel like there has been a lack of transparency.”
He said an opposition group formed “nebulously” at the open house OpenAI hosted July 23, with hundreds of residents attending, either protesting outside or going inside to get information from OpenAI and county officials.
About a week after the announcement, the Protect Effingham Alliance began organizing.
“The idea of forming the group was to make a central … place that we could come together and share information so we’re not doing double the legwork on open records requests,” John Smith, the group’s chairman, said.
Smith lives in the Belmont Glen neighborhood that borders the future data center site. He has lived in the county for several years, while others in the group may be brand new to the area or have centuries-old roots in Effingham County.
“It’s everybody,” Smith said when asked who makes up the group.
Many group members had never met each other before joining the Protect Effingham Alliance. They had not attended a city council or Effingham County Industrial Development Authority board meeting before.
Now, group members are talking virtually on a daily basis and hosting in-person meetings at least once a week.
Karp said he’s seeing familiar faces every time he attends a local government meeting.
“While it’s not great circumstances, it’s brought the community together, and that’s a good thing,” Smith said. “I think coming together and understanding each other is a big thing.”
Smith said he has learned how smart his community is, and the group is strategically bringing its diverse backgrounds and skill sets together to form committees and assign tasks. Different members are working on social media, connecting with local businesses, requesting records, researching and planning events.
“The breadth of skills that our community members have … is immense,” Smith said. “I knew my neighbors were smart. I knew a lot of them have day jobs — that they do a lot of really great things. But it’s great to see a lot of them taking those different skills that they have and using that to contribute toward the group.”
New members join every day.
“We realize this isn’t a monthlong fight,” Karp said. “We’re in it for the long term.”
The group’s goals
For the Protect Effingham Alliance, the central goal is to inform residents and give them a voice in decisions surrounding the proposed data center. The group also wants to hold local officials accountable when making development decisions as significant as the OpenAI project.
Karp said the group wants to “slow everything down,” placing pressure on public officials to seek clarity about commitments being made by the project’s representatives, particularly when those commitments have been discussed publicly or on social media but are not reflected in legally enforceable agreements.
“We want clarity. We want legally enforceable assurances. We want to have a say in the things that will affect us in our neighborhood,” he said.
The alliance also wants independent analysis of the project’s potential economic and environmental impacts rather than relying solely on information provided by OpenAI.
“The most alarming thing at the OpenAI open house was how many times we asked an official … a simple question about the data center, and they had no idea,” Karp said. “I’d really like to see our representatives not taking OpenAI’s word for everything.”
Education is also a major part of the group’s strategy. Alexis Lane, the group’s co-founder, said members are working to translate complex project documents into information ordinary residents can understand, particularly because some of the promises surrounding the project remain estimates or are not clearly spelled out in contracts.
Anna Lee HeidtHarris, the group’s other co-founder, said the alliance is also trying to serve as a community information hub, collecting research from multiple sources and publicizing meetings and action steps. The group is developing a phone-based newsletter system intended to reach residents who do not use social media or the internet.
Smith said another priority is holding elected officials accountable for transparency and for following existing zoning and other local ordinances.
“I want to know that my representative has my back,” Smith said.
The group plans to pursue those goals largely by staying engaged in the public process. That means attending county commission, city council, school board and other meetings, speaking with officials and educating neighbors about what is being proposed.
“We’re just showing up at every public meeting that we can … letting them know that we’re paying attention, and we’re engaged,” Smith said. “We’re invested in their decisions whether they’re invested in us or not.”
What comes next
Protect Effingham Alliance is planning a series of community events in September aimed at educating residents about the proposed data center and bringing more people into the conversation.
An upcoming town hall-style meeting will give residents an opportunity to share concerns, ask questions and learn about ways to get involved.
Then, the Protect Effingham Alliance plans to host its own open house later in the month, answering questions raised at the town hall. The event is expected to bring together residents, experts and other nonprofit organizations to share information gathered by the alliance.
“It’ll be a good resource for people to figure out what their next steps are and how they can get involved if they want,” Lane said.
Smith said the event will offer residents an opportunity to examine information beyond what they have heard from project representatives.
The group’s ambitions, however, extend beyond the data center debate and beyond just Effingham County.
Members agreed that Project Camellia was just “the straw that broke the camel’s back” of overdevelopment in Effingham County and the broader region.
“It’s grown fast, so fast that many of us moved here for the quiet and then watched the quiet get built over,” the group’s website reads.
The Protect Effingham Alliance hopes to tackle overdevelopment on a larger scale and unite residents who are impacted by it across the region.
“Truly everyone is impacted — every county resident … but the extra pollutants in the air don’t stop at the border,” Karp said. “This is a regional thing. It’s not just Effingham County.”
Lane said she hopes the organization becomes part of something larger.
“I hope this is the beginning of something really important for Effingham County,” she said. “I think this was much needed.”
Project Camellia research and records, as well as information about Protect Effingham, can be found at the group’s website. All future events and announcements will be posted there as well.
