PRESS RELEASE
Full Statement by Commissioner Peter Hubbard with Mayor Kiesha Lance Bottoms
Thank you all for being here today. This issue directly concerns the lives and property of hundreds of thousands in Georgia, and the power bills and natural resources of all 11 million residents in the state. I’m grateful to be supporting Keisha Lance Bottoms for Governor, and I want to thank her for her leadership on this issue.
Every good contractor knows the rule: “measure twice, and cut once.” That’s true when you’re building a fence, and it’s especially true when we’re talking about how we use our farmland, our water, our powerlines, and our critical infrastructure.
Georgians deserve a Governor who knows that true leadership doesn’t always mean moving fast and breaking things. Sometimes, the hardest thing to do, and the right thing to do, is slow down. The Georgia State Legislature, under true bipartisan leadership, wanted to take on these issues - considering over 20 bills in this year’s session. Unfortunately, as we have seen too many times before, special interests got in the way.
Today, we’re giving away hundreds of millions of dollars to the richest companies in the world, and at the same time, Gov. Kemp is telling agencies like the Public Service Commission that we can’t give our workers a raise or hire more staff because we don’t have the money. It does not make sense, and the people of Georgia are counting on us to chart a new path forward.
What does that path look like? First, let me tell you what it doesn’t look like.
Right now, in Texarkana, Texas, Rick Jackson’s data center project is using nondisclosure agreements to hide critical information from the public because he knows what he’s doing is unpopular.
It’s so unpopular that a local petition effort had already gathered 2,000 signatures in late July. It turns out that people don’t like having these projects shoved down their throats.
In Coweta County, more than 14,000 Georgians have signed onto an effort to put the issue to a vote, and I’m calling on Rick Jackson to put his money where his mouth is and publicly support those citizens’ right to control their own natural resources.
So, what should our new path forward look like?
Data Centers should not be allowed here in Georgia, unless they agree to the following conditions:
Pay Their Own Way using Clean, Renewable Energy - Georgians shouldn’t be paying for outdated, unhealthy, and expensive fossil fuel expansion when cheaper, cleaner alternatives exist. We should strengthen what we have before building anything new.
Full Disclosure - No NDAs, counting upstream water and power usage and construction as well as operations. A closed loop system may reduce water usage once it’s filled, but the gas plant powering the data center will use billions of gallons over the lifetime of that facility. Similarly, communities should know if they’re supporting a private company’s mass surveillance.
Protect residential neighborhoods, Farmland and Our Natural Resources - Families should be able to sleep at night without a jet engine going constantly next door. If a family’s well suddenly can’t produce clean water, then the richest companies on earth should simply pay to fix it.
Use Union Labor - The middle class is disappearing and this is an opportunity to bring thousands of families into it - but only if we prioritize good jobs.
Load Flexibility - What OpenAI agreed to in Effingham - allowing the utility to curtail up to 1 GW of their total 3.2GW capacity during stressed grid events - should be standard.