PROJECT TURBO DATA CENTER
To answer the question “is LLA aware and involved?”
Extracted from the Fall 2025 Newsletter
Written by Clyde Morris, Director
The Lake Lanier Association fought hard to protect Lake Lanier during what we called the Water Wars with Florida and Alabama. But, even though we won the Water Wars, new withdrawals from the Lake could bring about the same kind of negative impact we fought so hard and long to avoid.
A company called Project Turbo, LLC, has proposed a data center not far outside Gainesville that will draw its cooling water from Lake Lanier through Gainesville’s water system. Historically, a data center the size of Project Turbo’s can consume 1M – 1.8M gallons per day (gpd) with open-loop and evaporative water cooling systems. This has raised the question in many people’s minds as to how much of an impact the center might have on Lake Lanier. The cooling system the developer described was a “liquid assisted hybrid cooling design” that relied substantially on evaporative cooling. The developer originally requested 500,000 gpd from the city for their system, explaining that 80% of the water would be evaporated, the remaining 20% would be used for on-site irrigation or other non-potable uses, and the rest returned to the Chattahoochee River basin after being treated. Based on those numbers, the net result would be that no water would be returned to the lake. That plan would save the operator a lot of money for cooling expenses, but at the expense of water levels in Lake Lanier.
After the City of Gainesville declined to commit to 500,000 gpd, the developer lowered its request to 225,000 gpd, saying the earlier proposed system uses more than twice as much water as a closed-loop system – the type they now say they will use. Subsequently, during a public meeting, the data center’s developers claimed the center would use only 50,000-80,000 gpd, and that the rest of the requested supply was needed for potential fire suppression. But all this begs the question of why the center needs even 50,000 gpd if it is indeed going to use a closed-loop cooling system.
Also, to the extent that there is any wastewater return from the center, will the operator be returning those flows to the Chattahoochee River basin or transferring them to the Oconee River basin, seeing as the center will be physically located in the Oconee basin and there is reportedly no sewer system currently serving the property?
LLA is investigating all this. We’ve filed an Open Records Act request with the City and are seeking documentation from the developers to support their water usage figures. We will report what we learn in advance of the December 11 Hall County Board of Commissioners meeting, at which a vote on the data center is scheduled.
For more information, please visit The Lake Lanier Association
