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Hart County Puts Three-Month Moratorium on Data Centers - 92.1 WLHR.Hart County Puts Three-Month Moratorium on Data Centers There will be no data centers built in Hart County – at least not for now.At the Hart County Board of Commissioners meeting Tuesday, the Board voted unanimously to ban data centers for 180 days.Commission Chair Marshall Sayer said he’s against them, and Commissioner Joey Dorsey agreed, noting there’s not enough information on the potential impact on local resources and the environment data centers would have for the County to make a decision on whether to allow data centers.Commissioner Michael Bennett said that at a recent conference in Savannah, he sat in on a discussion about the boom in data center construction in Georgia, and he concluded they’re not right for Hart County.According to Cleanview.co, currently, there are 17 operating data centers in Georgia with another 83 planned.Most are planned for the metro Atlanta area.The 17 data centers that are up and running have a combined capacity of 1,021MW.Once the additional 83 are built, the combined capacity would be 9,231 MW, according to Cleanview.co.Those opposed to data centers across Georgia say they’re concerned about the massive strain on the power grid.Data centers require gigawatts of electricity, which they say could cause residential power bills to rise.There are also environmental concerns, particularly regarding the high water consumption data centers need for server cooling.And economically, opponents argue data centers create far fewer long-term jobs (often fewer than 50 per facility) compared to traditional industrial or retail spaces, leading to questions about the value of state tax breaks companies building data centers are being offered.Some of the companies that have built or are planning to build data centers in Georgia include Microsoft, Google, QTS, CoreScientific, Prologis, and Northern Data Group.