Walton County Board of Commissioners Chair David Thompson reported to the Hard Labor Creek Reservoir Management Board last week that his efforts to obtain $7.5 million from a company wanting water from the reservoir for an additional data center in Social Circle have been unsuccessful.
Thompson said the approach from the data center operator came after Archer Western, contractor for the $141.5 million treatment plant under construction on the reservoir, said it was an ideal time to reverse an earlier decision to scale back the plant from 12 to 16 million gallons per day. Based on that advice, the Board voted in November to add $7.5 million to the Archer Western contract to go back to the originally planned 16 million gallon per day facility. In December, Thompson said, he was approached by the data center company saying it would cover that $7.5 million cost for that upgrade. Thompson made his announcement on Tuesday before the Management Board and the Walton County Water and Sewer Authority voted to approve a resolution authorizing the Authority to issue revenue bonds for $44.2 million for additional funding of the water treatment plant. Social Circle is home to a massive Meta data center at Stanton Springs and other smaller centers, but none of them draws water from Hard Labor Creek Regional Reservoir, which at present does not have an operating treatment plant. Oconee County is a partner with Walton County on the Hard Labor Creek Reservoir and the treatment plant, but all three of Oconee County’s members of the seven-member Management Board said Tuesday’s meeting was the first time discussion of use of that water for a data center had come before the Board. Apalachee River Intake The Hard Labor Creek Regional Reservoir is designed as a pump and store facility, with initial water feeding the reservoir from Hard Labor Creek. |
| Thompson (Center), Kirouac 9/1/2026 |
When demand for that water exceeds the ability of Hard Labor Creek and its tributaries to maintain the reservoir, water will be drawn from the Apalachee River, which runs along the western border of Oconee County. The water from the river will be pumped to the Hard Labor Creek Reservoir.
At the meeting on Tuesday, Project Manager Jimmy Parker reported that “site staking, clearing and grubbing is underway” for the intake facility on the Apalachee River under construction to accommodate that future use of the river’s water.
“In-channel rock blasting is expected to occur in December,” Parker said.
The intake facility is upstream from the dam and decommissioned hydroelectric plant across from New High Shoals.
The Walton County Water and Sewer Authority holds the permit for withdrawal of water from the river for future pumping to the Hard Labor Creek Regional Reservoir.
On Tuesday, the Management Board and Water and Sewer Authority agreed to renew the contract with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) for monitoring of the Apalachee River at a cost of $87,100 for five years.
The monitor is on a bridge upstream from the intake facility, Parker said, and additional monitors are in place downstream.
“It will be years before you ever start drawing from the Apalachee,” Thompson said when discussion on Tuesday turned to the intake facility.
Oconee County Reaction
Oconee County is a minority partner in the Hard Labor Creek Regional Reservoir, responsible for 28.8 percent of the costs and entitled to that same percentage of the water.
 |
| Parker 9/1/2026 |
Oconee County Commissioner Chuck Horton said in a telephone conversation on Friday (Sept. 4) that he had not heard of Thompson’s plans for use of the water from the reservoir for a data center until the meeting on Tuesday.
County Commissioner Mark Saxon, who is chair of the Management Board, said in a separate telephone conversation on Friday that discussion of the data center use of water from the Reservoir has never come up at a Management Board meeting or a meeting of the Board’s executive committee.
Saxon said he had heard Thompson speak of this before the Tuesday meeting.
County Administrator Justin Kirouac, the third Oconee County member of the Management Board, said in an email message on Friday that “There hasn't been Board discussions about any user.”
John Daniell, Chair of the Oconee County Board of Commissioners, who is not on the Hard Labor Creek Management Board, said in an email message on Friday that “data center development was being investigated by Social Circle. The data center debate was well publicized.”
“Walton County was involved as it relates to water supply,” he said. “I am not aware of any limitations on how either county uses water from the reservoir.”
Project Financing
Parker on Tuesday reviewed the funding for the treatment plant and water transmission system as a lead-up to passage of the resolution authorizing issuance of the new revenue bonds.
Gov. Brian Kemp has allocated to Walton County $50.3 million of federal monies allocated to the state through the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 as post-COVID stimulus funding.
Walton County issued $69 million in bonds in 2022 for the project, and those monies have earned $3.2 million in interest.
The Georgia Environmental Finance Authority has awarded the project a $2.9 million loan.
The project will use $3.2 million in unused funds from bonds sold in 2008 for the reservoir construction.
Oconee County has pledged $12 million in revenue bonds. Those monies are not to be used for the transmission lines, which only will serve Walton County.
Parker’s budget shows $35.6 million in funds generated by the bond sales authorized on Tuesday, bringing the total cost of the project to $180 million.
Because Oconee County does not need the water from the reservoir, depending instead on the much closer Bear Creek Reservoir in Jackson County, it agreed to contribute only $12 million to construction of the water treatment plant itself.
Both the Hard Labor Creek Management Board and the Walton County Water and Sewer Authority, meeting jointly, approved the resolution on the new bonds that Walton County will sell. The Management Board only operates in an advisory capacity to the Authority.
Thompson’s Report
As the Board and the Authority were about to pass the resolution on Tuesday, Thompson said that “We originally planned a 16 million gallon plant. And then due to cost constraints, and we’d already bonded the project, we had to scale it back to 12 million.”
“Then the opportunity came up in December,” he continued. “Costs started dropping on a lot of the stuff, and Archer Western said if you want to go back to 16 million, instead of it being 20 something million dollars it was only seven and a half (million dollars).”
“And the decision had to be made then,” he said. “I felt good about it because the negotiations were going very well for the data center. And they said they would pick that up.”
“But I knew all along if they didn’t, Walton County was going to have to stand for that,” he said.
Parker, in an email message exchange on Sept. 2, said “The City of Social Circle and Walton County had been in discussions with a company proposing two data centers in the Social Circle area, however the company elected to build those facilities in another location.”
“Had the data center projects come to fruition, there was a provision in the development agreement that the ‘company’ would reimburse the full amount of $7,500,000 to secure the desired water supply capacity.”
“The data center company has since omitted the Social Circle sites from consideration, so the additional funding will be the full responsibility of Walton County,” he added.
“That is essentially what Chairman Thompson was recapping in yesterday's meeting.”
Video
The video below is of the Sept. 1 meeting, held in the Historic Walton County Courthouse in Monroe.
Thompson made his brief reference to the data centers beginning at 13:07 in the video.
 |
| Saxon, Parker, Thompson, Kirouac (L-R) 9/1/2026 |
No comments:
Post a Comment