A public forum on data center development in Hale and Marengo counties runs from 4:30 to 6 p.m. today at the Wallace Community College lecture hall at the Demopolis SportsPlex, 186 Field of Dreams Drive. It is free and open to the public.
Katherine Eddins, a conservation attorney who lives in Gallion, will facilitate. Four speakers are scheduled: environmental attorney Gerald Pouncey Jr. on best practices; Katherine Moore, president of the Georgia Conservancy, on planning and policy; Danny Johnson of the Atlanta Regional Commission, on water; and Jeff Berry on infrastructure and rural impacts. Time is reserved for questions.
No company has been named, no site announced, and nothing filed that the public can read.
Eddins has said aggregators are optioning land along the Alabama Power transmission line running from the river in Greene County through Demopolis and Linden, and that no deal is final. That assertion dovetails with significant infrastructure projects the Greensboro Watchman and Times-Standard-Herald have been documenting through recent coverage: a new Alabama Power substation site in Hale County, financed in part through the U.S. Department of Energy, and a 500 kilovolt line listed in regional planning documents as running roughly 63 miles from Greene County to South Bessemer, in service by 2030.
Utility filings justify that line by citing overloading on the Greene County to Moundville 230 kilovolt line, the same line a 250 megawatt solar project near Greensboro has contracted to plug into. None of the filings regarding that corridor name a data center, but it does deliver electricity at the scale a large one would need, and it is being built.
No developer has identified itself in either county. No megawatt figure, water withdrawal estimate or generator count has been disclosed. Most of the land in question lies outside any municipal zoning authority, which means decisions that would ordinarily be made in a public hearing may instead be made at a closing.
Both The Greensboro Watchman and the Times-Standard-Herald will continue reporting on land transactions, utility filings and federal records tied to the corridor. Readers with documents or firsthand knowledge are encouraged to make contact.
