By Lucille Lannigan
Growth and Development Reporter
EFFINGHAM COUNTY – Whether lifelong residents or newcomers, Democrats or Republicans, young or old, many Effingham County residents are uniting around one objective: slowing or stopping the development of data centers in their community.
It’s been about one month since OpenAI announced it selected Effingham County for Project Camellia, a 1,400-acre data center campus. Within days, residents began protesting, organizing meetings and confronting OpenAI and county officials. Out of that opposition, a group of more than 100 people has emerged: the Protect Effingham Alliance.
The group’s goal is to connect and educate residents about the OpenAI data center project.
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.”
The alliance also wants independent analysis of the project’s potential economic, environmental and 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.”
“It’s everybody:” Anti-data center group brings the community together Karp said there was an overwhelming explosion of confusion and concern 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 hosted on 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 leg work on open records requests,” John Smith, a group member, said.
Smith lives in the Belmont Glen neighborhood that neighbors the future data center site. He’s lived in the county for several years, while others in the group are either 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 of the group members had never met each other before joining the Protect Effingham Alliance. They hadn’t attended a city council nor an 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’s learned how smart his community is, and the group is strategically bringing its diverse background and skillsets together to form committees and assign tasks. Different members are working social media, connecting with local businesses, requesting records, researching and/or 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 towards the group.”
New members join every day. “We realize this isn’t a month-long fight,” Karp said. “We’re in it for the long-term.”
What is the group trying to achieve For the Protect Effingham Alliance, the central goal is to inform and give residents a voice in decisions surrounding the proposed data center and 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,” he said. “We want legally enforceable assurances. We want to have a say in the things that will affect us in our neighborhood.”
Education is also a major part of the group’s strategy. Alexis Lane, a group member, said they’re 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 spelled out in contracts.
Anna Lee HeidtHarris, a group member, said the alliance also is 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.”
Upcoming events and the future 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, according to its organizers.
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 from 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 possibly beyond Effingham County’s lines.
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 and everything Protect Effingham can be found at the group’s website: https://www. protecteffingham.org/ All future events and announcements will be posted there as well.