Effingham County postpones OpenAI data center site plan review

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated twice with comment and subsequent clarification from Effingham County.

OpenAI’s hyperscale data center site plan review has been removed from the agenda for the Effingham County Commission’s regularly scheduled Tuesday meeting.

The move comes as county leaders try to tamp public outrage about the data center plans, which were negotiated in secret and announced in late July. 

The county requested more time to review the site plan so the company agreed to a short postponement that should not delay the project timeline, an OpenAI spokesperson said in an e-mail to The Current GA on Monday.

A county spokesperson, via email, confirmed OpenAI’s statement about the postponement. The county’s own announcement on Facebook a few hours earlier attributed the delay to a request from Octans Georgia, OpenAI’s local affiliate. That Octans request was simply a formality done at the county’s request so the item could be removed from the agenda ahead of time, the spokesperson wrote.

The county’s development authority hired a public relations company in the wake of public backlash, spending $77,000 from mid-April through July to try to answer questions and concerns about the  planned data center.