“The mayor signed a non-disclosure agreement, showed up to the first meeting, and said you would be cut off from speaking if you said the words 'data center.' He said, 'This is not about data centers. This is about rezoning.' And we were all sitting there like, rezoning for what, Joe?”

…questions, and his answers were: no, the site won't be too loud or bright thanks to lots of forested buffer. No, it won't raise utility rates. No, toxic wastewater won't flow into the creek behind Schaefer's house. If we do need to remove some of our coolant, you know, we truck that off-site.

The first time local native Thatcher Rotenberry heard about a possible data center was in June. The developer announced a new data center campus at an undisclosed location. Then in September, the city council voted to rezone a residential area, but wouldn't say why. The

The answer to that question didn't come until September, on the day of the rezoning approval, according to Brookwood Mayor Joe Barger. After that, the city passed a reported $314 million tax break for data center construction. He also says there are not three Brookwood data center projects in the…

don't know what they're talking about, and they get their information from incorrect sources, and they think they know everything and they're ignorant.

A second parcel of land has already been rezoned for a company tied to data center development. And the owner of a third parcel of land has an address tied to a company called Provident Data Centers. As for the non-disclosure agreement, Barger says that just prevents him from leaking info to other…