PROJECT TURBO, LLC, DATA CENTER WATER USAGE AGREEMENT
Written by Clyde Morris, Director
Published on December 8th, 2025 and Updated on December 10th, 2025
We have received much feedback on the information below regarding the Project Turbo data center, and want to clarify several points.
We are not advocating for or against the data center. Our intent in publishing this information was to provide facts to help our constituents navigate through the large volume of information that’s out there. Our focus was purely on impacts to Lake Lanier, and we are not attempting to address any other issues. We have advocated for the lake and won concessions from Project Turbo that can help protect the lake if the Board of Commissioners votes to approve.
Our agreement represents a 98% reduction in the amount of water the developers originally requested. We also think the data center’s actual daily operations will represent a 99% reduction in net water withdrawals from Lake Lanier, compared to the original request. If the data center connects to sanitary sewer, we think that reduction will be 99.9%, because then the only water being transferred to the Oconee will be for irrigation.
For the record, LLA has not been paid by any entity or person to advocate on their behalf, nor would we have accepted any such payment even if it were offered, which it was not.
According to the conditions the developers have agreed to, the only water being returned to the lake will be from normal operations for bathrooms, food preparation, and the like – not from cooling operations, and will have no impact on the temperature of Lake Lanier.
While it would be far preferable for there to be no interbasin transfer to the Oconee watershed – a goal we have long championed – the average daily amount we expect the data center to use is only about 4,000 GPD (excluding a one-time filling of the cooling tanks), which is consistent with any new business having 150 employees.
The Lake Lanier Association (LLA) has investigated water usage for the Project Turbo data center proposed for 2400 Okelly Rd. in Hall County. Our goal was to determine the volume of water the data center is expected to use and the extent to which that would impact Lake Lanier.
As a result of our investigation and after extensive discussion with the Project Turbo developers, we are pleased to report that the developers have agreed to accept several conditions from the Hall County Board of Commissioners in order to receive approval of their Special Use and Rezoning applications at the Board’s upcoming December 11 meeting. Those conditions include (1) using a closed-loop cooling system, and (2) using no more than (a) 9,500 GPD of water, plus (b) the volume of water needed to initially fill the cooling systems (estimated to be 1,500,000 gallons), and (c) whatever volume of water may be needed for fire suppression in the event of a fire. These limits will, of course, be subject to Gainesville Water Resources’ commitment of 225,000 GPD of water supply.
These figures are significantly below the 500,000 GPD the developers initially requested, the 225,000 GPD Gainesville Water Resources has committed to supply, and the 50,000 – 80,000 GPD the developers estimated they would need at their public meeting in October.
LLA believes that because of these limitations on water usage, the data center will have no significant impact on Lake Lanier. As a result of Project Turbo’s agreement to limit their average water usage as described above, LLA recommends that the Commissioners incorporate these limits as a condition for approval of Project Turbo, LLC’s Special Use and Rezoning applications.
DETAILED ANALYSIS
In researching this development, we focused on five specific areas: cooling system usage, daily operational usage, Irrigation usage, interbasin transfers, and the possibility that Buford Dam would be called upon to generate additional hydropower for the plant.
Cooling System Usage
The 500,000 GPD figure initially proposed by the developers was based on their plan to use an open-loop cooling system. Such systems require vast amounts of water because most of the water is evaporated through the process of cooling the electronic equipment. When Hall County informed the developers that it could not supply that much water, the developers reduced their request to 225,000 GPD. Those who attended the developers’ public meeting in October will recall that the developers at that time reduced their estimated need to a range of 50,000 to 80,000 GPD. However, because the developers were also considering switching from an open-loop to a closed-loop cooling system, even that amount of usage seemed excessive.
We therefore inquired of the developers regarding the calculations that led them to their figures. The developers, in turn, consulted with their engineers and agreed that their closed-loop cooling system usage should be negligible, once the system is initially filled.
Daily Operational Usage
The developers estimate that, at full build out, the data center will employ 150 people at full capacity. Using standard industry tables, they estimate their daily operational usage as 25 gallons per day per employee, or a total of 3,750 GPD.
Irrigation Usage
The data center site covers approximately 120 acres. Half of the site is planned to be covered in buildings, equipment yards, parking, roads, and an electrical substation. Most of the rest of the site will be used for buffers, detention, and open space that will not need to be irrigated. As a result, land requiring irrigation should be no more than about five acres, and we estimate that no more than approximately 150 gallons per acre per day during the hot months would be needed to supplement Gainesville’s already substantial rainfall of approximately 50 inches per year. We therefore estimate the amount of water needed for irrigation at no more than 1,000 GPD.
Interbasin Transfers
An interbasin transfer will naturally occur at the project site for any water it uses that is not returned to the Chattahoochee River Basin via sanitary sewer. Even with sanitary sewer, any water used for irrigation will percolate into the ground and naturally be transferred to the Oconee River basin because that is where the land is located. Because it is greatly preferable not to create an interbasin transfer, having the project connect to sanitary sewer would be preferred. However, given the developers’ willingness to limit the data center’s usage as we’ve described, an interbasin transfer of even the full amount of the agreed volume would not have a significant impact on Lake Lanier.
Hydropower Generation
As has been widely disseminated in news articles about data centers in general, they use a lot of electricity. Our concern about the potential impact on hydropower generation was a theoretical one, based on whether the data center’s use of existing but currently untapped capacity in the power grid would reduce remaining headroom, thereby subjecting the Corps’ hydropower plants, and specifically Buford Dam, to more frequent calls for power generation.
Buford Dam generates electricity that is marketed by the Southeastern Power Administration (SEPA) to various customers throughout the Southeast. We therefore consulted with SEPA, Jackson EMC (the power supplier for the area of the data center), and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to assess our theoretical concern. Each and every expert we spoke to was confident that Buford Dam’s power generation would not be affected by the data center, due to the way the power system is structured.
Buford Dam is primarily a peaking facility, meaning it is called upon to generate electricity only during periods of peak demand. (The exception to this is that there is a small generator that continually contributes power to the grid as water is funneled through the dam to supply water downstream.) Because the data center will be using Jackson’s native load (which is largely generated using natural gas), it will not be taxing the hydropower that is generated by Buford Dam. Jackson’s native loads are typically houses, stores, schools, and existing commercial enterprises that are already accounted for in the system. Jackson tells us that any new data center, like Project Turbo’s, will be required to fund its required power generation infrastructure up front and for the life span of the project. (All those costs, Jackson says, will be segregated from the existing native load and will therefore not affect consumer prices.) As a result of this analysis, we do not believe that additional water will be released through Buford Dam for the purpose of generating power for Project Turbo, and there will therefore be no impact from the project on Lake Lanier from a hydropower perspective.
Average Daily Usage
The 1,500,000 gallons estimated to be needed to fill the data center’s cooling tanks equates to 4,109 GPD over the course of a year. Under the developers’ agreement, if the cooling tanks were filled with 1,500,000 gallons during one year, the data center’s total average daily usage that year would be no more than 13,609 GPD (9,500 + 4,109 = 13,609). (Note: our agreement does NOT require Project Turbo to fill the tanks in the first year or in any one-year period, and in fact spreading out the filling process over time should soften its impact on the Lake.) Once the tanks are full, regular daily usage will be no more than 9,500 GPD, and probably closer to half that because the 9,500 figure is twice the amount estimated to be needed for running the plant. The limit of 9,500 GPD was chosen to allow the developers a reasonable cushion of 4,750 GPD over what they will likely use, to account for estimation errors and unexpected spikes in usage.
Lake Level Update, December 10th 2025
The LLA has received many inquiries from members alarmed about recent water levels, and would like to provide some salient information that should be helpful.
We are aware of the lake level and have been in communication with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers about it. The Corps has assured us that they are discharging only the minimum amount of water required to meet the Corps’ hydropower commitment for Buford Dam, municipal water supply intakes downstream of Buford Dam, and water quality requirements further downstream requiring a minimum of 650 cfs.
The average daily discharge from Buford Dam in December to date has been 1035 cfs, and only 934 cfs in the last week.
Lake Lanier is within its normal range for this time of year. The rainy season begins in December. If you look at the historical data using the link below, you will see that the lake typically begins refilling around this time. Additionally, the Corps’ rules governing downstream support for other recognized purposes allow the Corps to store more of Lanier’s available water from December until March, when the Gulf sturgeon spawning season begins.
Please use this link to view historical lake level data.
Did you read the latest update on Project Turbo? Check out the article that answered the question “Is LLA Aware and Involved?” at lakelanier.org/project-turbo-data-center/
