LISTEN: Over the weekend, the Effingham County Board of Commissioners held its first public meeting on the OpenAI data center, planned to begin construction in 2028. GPB’s Jillian Magtoto reports. The Effingham County Board of Commissioners held its first public meeting on the OpenAI data center on Aug. 29, 2026, since conversations began last October. Just under a hundred people attended the Effingham County Board of Commissioners meeting on a Saturday morning. They would hear publicly, for the first time, how the $20 billion deal arrived to their county. Initial conversations with OpenAI and the county's development authority began last October, according to the county's timeline. But the public was informed in July. Grumbles across the room complained that this presentation should have occurred months ago. "When I ran, the concern was we're sick of warehouses, and we're sick of the cookie-cutter housing developments," Effingham County Commissioner Beth Helmly said in response. "We've got to progress." Those grumbles soon articulated into speeches at the podium from members of the public. And not long after, a major project proponent, Commissioner Roger Burdette, apologized for not telling the public sooner, even offering to support a moratorium on future data center developments. "I should have done something different because this is a high-profile thing," Burdette said. "And I didn't read that. I didn't see that." He said visits to other data centers assured him and…
*This content (including text, artwork, graphics, photography, and video) was provided by the third party(ies) as referenced above. Any rights or other content questions or inquiries should be directed to such third-party provider(s).
