COWETA COUNTY, Ga. — Nearly 20 residents of Coweta County are suing the county government and data center builder Atlas Development to block Project Sail from moving forward.
Channel 2 Action News has reported on Project Sail previously as the Coweta County Board of Commissioners held a series of public hearings about the project.
At one point, the commission passed and then extended a moratorium on data centers as they looked at ways to regulate the projects, as well as mitigate potential harm to residents.
Now, 19 residents of Coweta County are suing the government and the company, requesting a declaratory judgment from Coweta County Superior Court to block the project.
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Project Sail, if completed, would make up almost 830 acres of land in the county’s Fourth Land District.
Residents said in their lawsuit that the zoning decision made by the county ignored and/or intentionally disregarded the county’s rules, regulations, and ordinances for these proceedings, as well as regulations from the state legislature.
The lawsuit requests a judge waive sovereign immunity for the county government and that the public’s due process rights be upheld for review of the proposal.
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The plaintiffs allege in their filing that previously submitted plans were inaccurate, failing to address as much as 103 acres of wetland on the property, misstating power and water needs for the project and how it would impact the county infrastructure and not identifying that it would be near a significant groundwater recharge area.
Project Sail was first proposed for Coweta County by Atlas Development in late 2024 with an expected cost of $17 billion.
Throughout the process, including during multiple public engagement sessions, Atlas has amended its proposal, with one set of changes made as recently as January.
The residents’ lawsuit notes this as well, saying the amendments were made as an “effort to be more compliant” with a recent data center ordinance passed by the county.
With the county commission having approved the plan to move forward, the 19 residents filed suit to prevent or at least delay further work until their challenge is heard in court.
Residents say in the lawsuit that the project should have been resubmitted to state officials for consideration due to the changes.
“The impact indicated here would be about four thousand additional vehicles up and down these roads. There’s the water consumption, the power consumption, the drain on resources,” said resident Robert Lytten.
Lytten, who lives near the building site, is one of 19 plaintiffs in the lawsuit seeking to halt the project. The lawsuit says the industrial-sized data center will cause a decline in property values, ongoing construction noise, and damage to wells and homes from blasting to remove bedrock.
“And of course, there’s the long-term health effects,” said Lytten.
The lawsuit says the county said no new Development of Regional Impact filing was needed.
The lawsuit also claims that Coweta County ignored its own rules and violated state laws and residents’ constitutional rights when it approved rezoning the property.
Plaintiffs are asking the Coweta County Superior Court to declare the rezoning decision void and permanently block the data center development.
Lytten says the data center will employ relatively few workers and that the developer’s projected annual tax revenues of $ 70 to $100 million is exaggerated.
“Between six to ten million, compared to other data centers, comparable data centers,” said Lytten.
residents’
Residents now want a trial in court to appeal the proposal and its permit applications, as well as to contest property seizures taken to assist the project.
Channel 2 Action News reached out to county officials and representatives for Project Sail for a response to the lawsuit.
County officials said they do not comment on pending litigation.
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