Residents of a small Georgia town are enraged after discovering an enormous new data center had used approximately 30 million gallons of water without initially paying for it.

Community members first noticed when their water pressure was unusually low.

Upon investigation, officials discovered two “industrial-scale water hookups” feeding the data center campus.

“One water connection had been installed without the utility’s knowledge, and the other was not linked to the company’s account and therefore wasn’t being billed,” POLITICO reports.

POLITICO explained further:

All told, the developer, Quality Technology Services, owed nearly $150,000 for using more than 29 million gallons of unaccounted-for water. That is equivalent to 44 Olympic-size swimming pools and far exceeds the peak limit agreed to during the data center planning process.

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The details were revealed in a May 15, 2025 letter from the Fayette County water system to Quality Technology Services, which outlined the retroactive charge of $147,474. The letter did not specify how many months the unpaid bill covered, but when asked about it Wednesday, Vanessa Tigert, the Fayette County water system director, said it was likely about four months. A QTS spokesperson said the timeframe was 9-15 months.

Once the data center was notified, it paid all retroactive charges, a QTS spokesperson said in an email, noting the unmetered water consumption occurred while the county converted its system to smart meters.

The Fayette County water system confirmed the data center’s meters are now fully integrated and tracked. Tigert, the water system director, blamed the issue on a procedural mix-up.

“Fayette County is a suburb, it’s mostly residential, and we don’t have much commercial meters in our system anyway,” she said. “And so we didn’t realize our connection point wasn’t working.”

The incident became public last week when a county resident obtained the 2025 letter to QTS through a public records request and posted it on Facebook, prompting outrage from residents concerned about the data center’s water consumption.

According to Daily Caller, QTS is owned by “New York City-based alternative asset manager and private equity firm Blackstone.”

One individual said the 615-acre Fayetteville-based data center campus, named “Project Excalibur,” is “absolutely draining us.”

“We get this notification from Fayette County water system saying you need to stop watering your lawns to help conserve water,” said attorney and property rights advocate James Clifton, according to Daily Caller.

“So the first thing they do is lean on the individuals and the citizens to stop water consumption when we have QTS that’s just absolutely draining us — most months it’s the No. 1 consumer of water in the county,” Clifton continued.

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“The Fayetteville campus is one of the largest data center developments in the country,” POLITICO stated.

The campus, which is partially operational, has plans for up to 16 buildings.

Daily Caller noted:

Meanwhile, the county water utility did not fine QTS, arguing that it was the community’s largest customer and should now be a partner, a decision that further angered the host community, according to Politico.

Data centers have become political flashpoints across the U.S. Last week, PJM Interconnection — the largest U.S. power grid operator, which serves over 67 million consumers across its operational area — released a white paper detailing the potential need to take drastic measures as its infrastructure is now strained by data center expansion and disruptive environmental policy.

 

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