Citizen-led lawsuit challenges zoning for OpenAI Georgia data center

A lawsuit filed in Effingham County accuses the county commission of skipping a required public hearing for the zoning rule that paved the way for OpenAI to open a planned hyperscale data center near Rincon.

The suit, filed on behalf of three Effingham County residents, comes amid a groundswell of opposition to the planned data center, which was announced in late July after months of secret negotiations between Effingham County leaders and the California-based maker of ChatGPT software. The 15-year, $20 billion deal will make the AI software company the largest taxpayer in the county, as well as the largest electricity customer in the state, while requiring millions of gallons of water to operate.

“We filed the suit not necessarily to attack AI in general, but we filed it to attack the process here, because the people deserve transparency in their government actions,” said Greg Gilluly, a former federal prosecutor and one of the Savannah-based attorneys who filed the complaint on behalf of the three residents. 

The roughly 1,400 acres now owned by Octans Georgia, OpenAI’s local affiliate, sit on land zoned for industrial uses. That zoning code comes with a list of what’s acceptable to build by default, such as warehouses and self-storage. It also has a list of what’s allowable subject to case-by-case conditions, such as a container storage yard.