SC residents push back on data center growth. Will state regulate AI-warehouses?

Touring the land was more important than the house when Jennifer Singleton was looking to purchase property in Colleton County about four years ago. She wanted to retire in a home surrounded by nature.

“When we went to look at it, my wife immediately went inside the house, and she’s like, ‘Are you not coming in?’ ” Singleton said. “And I’m like, ‘Nope. I want to walk the property. I want to see the surrounding area. I want to see the property itself, the acreage. ’”

On her 12 acres, Singleton enjoys hunting, observing wildlife and wandering the property. In the mornings, Singleton watches deer cross her yard and listens to cows mooing.

“When I envision heaven, I think there’s supposed to be an abundance of things that you love,” Singleton said. “And I envision heaven to be just an abundance of what I have where I live.”

But a more than 850 acre data center campus is pitched across the road from her property. It would diminish the rural farmland she loves, highlighting a growing issue across South Carolina — an increasing number of data centers. As residents fight local governments against them being built in their backyards, state lawmakers begin debate on how to regulate data centers.

Singleton and Miles Crosby sued Colleton County over new zoning rules that would allow for the development of data centers, large server warehouses used to power digital services like the Internet or artificial intelligence. The two Colleton County property owners, represented by lawyers at the Southern Environmental Law Center, argued allowing data centers essentially in their backyards would wreck their way of life.

“These things are industrial uses,” said Robby Maynor, a climate campaign associate at the Southern Environmental Law Center, said. “In fact, they use more resources than most other industrial uses, things like manufacturing, and so, they really need to be put in industrial parks, in the same place that we locate other industrial uses. Not near people’s homes, not near wetlands or flood plains, not near wildlife refuges or protected land. These things should be treated like the industrial facility that they are.”

As more large data centers are planned in South Carolina, some local residents have pushed concerns that the infrastructure could use up water resources, hike energy bills or create noise and light pollution in their communities.

A hearing over a planned data center campus in Colleton County drew a packed crowd and hours of public testimony opposing the project. Online petitions also garnered thousands of signatures opposing the proposed Colleton County project and a proposed Spartanburg data center, which would be built by TigerDC. In a poll of 1,200 residents by South Carolina Policy Council, nearly 80% said data centers should either build their own power independent of utilities or pay the costs of infrastructure upgrades.

An effort from some lawmakers may give the state more of a say and oversight over where data center can be located, their water use and generated noise. State Sen. Tom Davis, R-Beaufort, the sponsor of the bill, told reporters in early January lawmakers had to strike a balance between the economic benefits of data centers and the environmental concerns, like water usage and pollution. Data centers bring some jobs, developers say, and tax revenue generated by the infrastructure can help rural counties, Davis said.

“I do think that there is a balancing act here,” Davis said. “On the one hand, you want to make sure that you address the externalities. On the other hand, I don’t think we want to be Luddites and simply say ‘we don’t want you here.’ ”

House Speaker Murrell Smith told South Carolina Public Radio the country was in an “arms race” to build out data centers with China earlier this month. He said the Trump administration encouraged South Carolina leaders to build more power to accommodate the data centers.

“South Carolina is going to be a willing partner with them on that, and we’re going to lean in,” Smith said.

Where are new data centers planned?

A crowd of Colleton County residents protested a massive data center campus pitched to go near the ACE Basin, which state Sen. Chip Campsen, R-Charleston, called the most significant conservation achievement in the state. The ACE Basin is more than 200,000 acres of preserved rivers, forests, wetlands and swamps in the Lowcountry.

“There is not a need for a single data center to be located in South Carolina,” Campsen said during the public hearing.

The Colleton County data center would only impact 1.5 acres of wetlands, said Ken Loeber, a representative from developer EagleRock, during the December zoning hearing.

“I don’t mean to marginalize the impact because they are real,” Loeber said. “But again, like everything we do in our country it’s a tradeoff between what do we get vs what do we give up.”

After Loeber introduced the project at the December meeting, residents spoke for hours against the plant, often to rounds of applause and cheers. When Campsen was cut off by the board for meeting his time limit, the crowd booed and some yelled “let him speak.”

The data center would be built on more than 850 acres of private land just south of Walterboro. Developers EagleRock and Thomas & Hutton are seeking permission to build the data center campus, which doesn’t have a company or purpose tied to it yet publicly.

An artificial intelligence-focused data center slated for an industrial park in Spartanburg has also been proposed. The $3 billion data center would be built by TigerDC, the company announced Jan. 27.

And Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram, is building a data center in Aiken County, and Google is expanding its campus in Berkeley County.

How could SC lawmakers regulate development?

Lawmakers have introduced a variety of bills to put guardrails on and track where data centers can be built and how much power and water is used.

One bill, which Davis filed last week, will receive a preliminary Senate hearing Thursday. If passed, the legislation would establish a Data Center Development Office in the state Department of Environmental Services.

The office would permit new data centers for South Carolina and make sure the sites had the available infrastructure and environmental compatibility. While considering whether to give new data centers a permit, regulators will consider a variety of factors, like water demand and noise, depending on the size of the project.

The office will also help data centers find suitable locations, rather than solely review the company’s selected sites. Suitable sites include brownfields and former or current industrial sites.

“This recent debate you may have read about in Colleton County, about locating a data center near the ACE Basin, I think that raises the issue of what is the proper siting of data centers,” Davis said to reporters in January.

Under the bill, data centers would also have to meet water efficiency standards and report water use. Additionally, the legislation directs the Public Service Commission, which oversees utility rates, to approve rate structures that ensure data center company’s pay for their energy demand, rather than the regular consumer.

Noise restrictions, a concern for some residents, would also be implemented under the proposed legislation.

Another bill would require data centers to report their water use to the state, if they are large users.

Last year, Senators included some data center regulations in a larger energy infrastructure bill, but they were stripped out in the House version. A bill filed by Senate Majority Leader Sen. Shane Massey, R-Edgefield, this year would instate some of the removed guardrails, like limiting tax incentives and requiring natural resource reporting.

This story was originally published February 5, 2026 at 5:00 AM.