The three Democrats seeking to represent Oconee County in the General Assembly in January took critical stands on data centers in a forum with representatives of the local scientific community last week.
Suzanna Karatassos, running in House District 120, and Ray Smith, running in Senate District 46, said they want a moratorium on building data centers.
Eric Gisler, seeking reelection in House District 121, said he wants to abolish tax incentives and set standards for centers, but he also said he wants to defer to local governments on the decision about building data centers.
In the Oct. 6 forum, all three Democratic candidates said the state needed to prepare for extreme heat, increase its monitoring of PFAs, or forever chemicals, support efforts to address environmental injustice in their districts, and promote renewable energy.
In questionnaires they filled out before the forum, all three of the Democrats called for more precise use of fertilizers and pesticides in farming, for increased state monitoring of foodborne illnesses to offset federal cutbacks, and Medicaid expansion to “assist Georgians struggling to access quality healthcare.”
How Republicans Ward Black in the House District 120 race, or Mack “Dutch” Guest IV in the House District 121 race, or Marc McMain in the Senate District 46 race would have answered the questions from the scientists isn’t known.
None of the three attended the forum, and none of the three responded to the questionnaire created by the scientists.
Forum Moderator Ramsey Nix posed six questions prepared by a panel of scientists at the hour-long forum and three submitted by the audience. The questionnaire contained 12 items.
Gisler, in response to one of the questions from the audience, said he would reconsider his position that final authority for data centers should rest with local governments given the regional and even state impact that those decisions could have.
Forum Organization And Format
The Georgia Assembly Candidate Forum on Energy and the Environment began at 6 p.m. on Oct. 6 at the Athens-Clarke County Library Auditorium on Baxter Street.
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| Nix 10/6/2026 |
“As part of our nonpartisan forum, we contacted all the candidates running for Georgia House Districts 120, 121, and 122, and Georgia Senate Districts 46 and 47,” Nix said at the program outset. “We provided them with equal opportunity to attend this forum.”
“All candidates were provided with an opportunity to answer questions with written responses,” she said. “Sen. Frank Ginn had a change to his schedule, so he will not be with us tonight,” she added. Ginn, a Republican, is unopposed in Senate District 47.
Nix told the audience that Ginn and Guest had agreed to answer the questionnaire, but Nix said in an email message on Oct. 13 that “Neither Ginn nor Guest ever submitted their answers.”
Incumbent Democrat Spencer Frye and Republican Carol Hubbard are running in the general election for Georgia House of Representatives District 122 on November 3, 2026, but neither of them attended the Oct. 6 forum or submitted answers to the questions.
The forum planning committee included members of Science for Georgia, Engineers and Scientists Acting Locally, C-Change Conversations, the Citizens Climate Lobby, Oconee United Methodist’s Green Team, the Scientist Network for Advancing Policy and the Coalition of Athens Scientists, according to Nix, who is a member of C-Change Conversations.
The organizers sent the 12 questions to the candidates prior to the forum, and Nix asked modified version of six of those questions at the forum.
About 50 people attended the session, according to Nix.
Data Centers
The first two questions Nix asked at the forum and the first four on the questionnaire dealt with data centers. (One of those four on the questionnaire dealt with data centers by context.)
“Georgia is becoming a hub for data centers due to tax breaks, amenable regulations, and available land,” she asked. “While data centers may grow the tech industry, data centers also have environmental and health impacts such as significant water and electricity usage as well as noise pollution. So the first part of this question is how will you protect Georgian health and property values with data center legislation?"
“So first and foremost I think that we need to pass a moratorium to halt new data center construction because we don’t have the proper safeguards in place,” Smith said.
“In terms of the types of legislation that we need to pass,” he continued. “We need to include things like community benefits agreements to make sure that local communities are getting benefits from these big developments.”
“We need to make sure that they are covering the full costs of upgrades to our transmission systems,” Smith said, “and that they’re paying their fair share of rates when they’re such large consumers of electricity.”
“I can kind of echo a lot of what Ray said except I don’t I don’t really go straight to moratorium,” Gisler said.
“I think there’s a lot of gray area between moratorium and what we’re doing right now,” he continued, “because what we’re doing right now is giving massive tax breaks to attract these data centers to come here, and we’re not asking the right questions.”
“We have not been asking questions about what they’re doing in terms of where the power is coming from, where the water’s coming from, the noise, things like that.”
“I agree with pretty much everything they said,” Karatassos said. “I do agree we should have a moratorium for a year just so that we can get in and pass some legislation.”
“If we tell them, you can’t use this much water, you’ve got to use your own energy, they’ll do it,” she said. “It’s just that no one’s telling them to. So right now, they’re just doing everything in the most benefit to them, the cheapest way possible.”
“There is no reason that these billion dollar companies should be getting tax credits,” she said. “That is absolutely absurd. We could be benefitting as a state from this money. So we should be doing that.”
Follow Up Question
‘The second part of this question is how will you ensure communities have meaningful opportunity to provide public input and comments that inform state and local decision- making in regards to data centers?” Nix asked.
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| Gisler 10/6/2026 |
“There needs to be that transparency,” Gisler said. That could go all the way up to the form of requiring a local referendum before you approve projects of a certain size.”
“A lot of these projects, they do go through local zoning and the local approvals and things like that,” he said. “So what we can do at the state level is a little bit limited.”
“I’ve seen so many videos, as I’m sure you all have,” Karatassos said, “of local communities or municipalities having meetings on these data centers where there is public outcry saying that they don’t want them for whatever reason.”
“And then the towns just move forward with them anyway,” she said. “Maybe it’s because they think that they’re going to get money for the town. They’re going to be able to abate some of the taxes in the town and the data center’s going to sort of pick up the bill.”
“But if the people who live in the city are or the town are against it, and then their local leaders are not listening to them and doing it anyway,” Karatassos said, “then what else can you do except elect new local leaders?”
“I don’t think that local officials should be signing NDAs,” Smith said, referring to Nondisclosure Agreements, “and I don’t think that projects should be able to go through of this size without the local government knowing that it’s going on.”
“We do have rules in place where you’re supposed to provide a certain amount of time for public comment on zoning changes and things like that,” he said.
“One thing that we could do is provide more guidance,” Smith added. “The state could provide more guidance to local governments for implementing things like these community benefit agreements or how to negotiate the contracts and how to make sure that these developments are not damaging to the local community.”
Extreme Heat
“Extreme heat is a serious public health issue, and vulnerable populations like the elderly, infants, and outdoor workers are most at risk,” Nix said. “So the question is, what policies do you plan to implement to mitigate the rising health risk of extreme heat and drought on Georgian?”
“I think one thing we can start doing immediately is to pass legislation for emergency centers all around the state for anyone who doesn’t have air conditioning in their house,” Karatassos said, “especially if you’re elderly or you’ve got small kids.”
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| Karatassos 10/6/2026 |
“If there’s an extreme heat wave and power goes out,” she said, “people, especially if you’ve got health problems, really need availability to be able to cool down and get to some kind of center where they can protect themselves and their family.”
“So first off,” Smith said, “Georgia does not have a uniform heat standard. Several other states do. The federal government also does not have a uniform heat standard for when it’s too hot to work, what conditions it’s too hot to work under.”
“So first and foremost,” he said, “We need to pass a heat standard.”
“We need to prevent Georgia Power and EMC’s from cutting off power during the hottest days of the summer for failure to pay,” he continued. “It is inhumane to shut off someone’s power when it is 95 plus degrees outside, 105 plus degrees outside.”
“We need to think of short and medium-term plans around protecting our most vulnerable,” Gisler said. “That would be elderly, children, things like that. I would totally be in favor of some kind of state program establishing cooling centers.”
“They should be solar powered,” he added. “We shouldn’t be powering those with fossil fuels. We have we have a solar industry here in Georgia. We have battery manufacturers.”
“So that could even help Georgia’s economy while addressing this issue,” he said.
PFAs And Policy
“PFAs, or forever chemicals, are common, longlasting chemicals used in dyes, pesticides, common household products like water resistant clothes, cleaners, and cookware,” Nix said.
“The EPA recently rolled back regulation on some forever chemicals and extended the deadline for utility companies to limit exposure to contain to contaminated water,” she continued, referring to the federal Environmental Protection Agency. “What policies or investments would you support to improve drinking water safety in Georgia?”
“First and foremost,” Smith said, “we need more thorough testing. PFAs are in everything, and elimination of all of our PFA exposure is not realistic in the short term.”
“But we need to make sure that we’re having more robust water testing standards across the state, especially if the federal government is backing down on its previous promises to do that. So, if the feds aren’t doing it, we have to do it locally.
“I really appreciate this question,” Gisler said, “because I introduced legislation last session on this. What it did was it named specific Forever chemicals, PFA chemicals, and it would require that local water systems test for those chemicals and publish their results on a state operated website.”
“Like a lot of my colleagues’ bills,” he said, “it died on the committee floor. It went to a committee, never had a hearing, never had a vote, didn’t go anywhere.”
“We have to regulate,” Karatassos said. “Just letting corporations run rough shod over us so that they can make more money at the expense of our health, of our water safety, of the water our children is drinking every day, is completely nuts to me.”
“And if the federal government is making all of these cuts,” she said, “then we have to bump up our regulations in Georgia.”
“You see things like this happening all the time,” she said, “where the water is bad in the town and it’s just left to be bad and nobody ever comes in and fixes it. And it’s a lot cheaper to fix it than it is to have thousands of people go through lifelong medical issues because of it.”
“So I fully believe in taking care of people over profits,” she added.
Environmental Injustice
“Environmental harms are not distributed evenly,” Nix said. “Landfills, industrial plants, and waste treatment facilities disproportionately are placed in communities of color and low income neighborhoods.”
“Such environmental burdens cause generational health and economic impacts,” she said. “How will you address environmental injustice in your district?”
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| Smith 10/6/2026 |
“I struggled with this question when I filled out the questionnaire,” Gisler said. “That was a very hard questionnaire, by the way. I haven’t had a test like that since college.”
“That’s absolutely right--that communities of color, communities that have lower incomes, they pay the price more than other communities,” he said. “And I think that the best way to address that would be to pass some of the legislation we’ve been talking about here.
“Monitoring for these forever chemicals and things like that so that any community is going to be safe,” he said. “A lot of that stuff falls to the local level, and I’ll be honest, I don’t know what we can do at the state level to really help that.”
“But I’m definitely open to any ideas,” he added.
“That’s the question I also struggled knowing exactly how to say,” Karatassos said of the item on the questionnaire. “Are you going to move a neighborhood? Are you going to move a garbage dump? Which is basically impossible at this point.”
“But I believe that nobody should be suffering because of where Georgia chooses to make it less safe for them because they have a lower income level,” she said. “Everyone is equal in the state, no matter what background you come from, no matter how much money you make.”
“And just because you live somewhere and you can’t afford to live in a big wealthy neighborhood does not mean that your water should be poisoned,” she said.
“I don’t think that it’s right the way that people, low-income people, neighborhoods of color, are so disproportionately affected by this,” she said. “So I’m here to fight for those communities.”
“This was a challenging question,” Smith said.
“Of course, our current federal government is trying to get rid of anything that has the word equity in it,” he said. “But if the federal government is not going to be doing that, we need to be doing that ourselves.”
“We can have the EPD enforce those things at the state level as well,” Smith said, referring to the state Environmental Protection Division.”
Site selection is a local issue, he said, but “at the state level we can provide additional expertise. We can provide additional funding to help expand water systems to neighborhoods that are in need, additional water testing, things like that.”
“I’m in favor of supporting those to make sure that our communities are taken care of, particularly our historically disadvantaged communities that time and time again have had to bear the costs of corporate expansion unfairly,” Smith said.
Renewable Energy
“What policies do you support to expand consumer energy choice and renewable energy?” Nix asked.
“I absolutely support parking lot solar, agrivoltaics,” Karatassos, referring to what is known as agrisolar or dual-use solar. “We need to get past the red tape on that so that everyone in Georgia, every household, can have solar panels.”
“They’re 70 percent cheaper than they used to be,”she added, “and uh we can set up an incentive system through the state to make it so that you can get solar at your house and plug into the transmission line. There’s no reason we should not be doing that.
“Solar power is the future,” Karatassos said, “and Georgia is the sunshine state. We get more sunshine than most other states, and there’s no reason that we should not just be a sea of solar panels on unused farmlands, on parking lots, the farmlands where the animals can graze underneath.”
“There is a million places where we could be taking advantage of solar power that we don’t,” she said.
“Obviously I’m in favor of expanding rooftop solar and community solar programs,” Smith said. “Plug-in solar as long as we have proper safety regulations in place because it can be dangerous to linemen that are working if you’re feeding power back into the grid from a house.”
“Agrivoltaics is a win-win” he said. “We have farms that are struggling in Georgia because of a variety of environmental issues, whether its tariffs making their inputs expensive or weak consumer prices making it difficult to sell their products, and agrivoltaics gives them an additional source of revenue.”
“We have lots of sunshine,” Smith said, “and we should be expanding” solar.
“I’m glad you covered agrivoltaics,” Gisler said of Karatassos and Smith, “because I went last week actually and I met with a farmer who’s doing it right now. I went to a facility. It’s a 30 acre plot that had solar panels on it. He had sheep, he had goats, he had cattle, he had donkeys out there.”
“I mean, it was so cool,” Gisler said, “And he was explaining to me that it’s really kept him afloat. So, there’s an economic benefit to that as well.”
“I co-sponsored a bill last year for plug-in solar,” Gisler said. “It got some media attention, had one hearing where Georgia Power and the EMC’s came in and just jumped all over it and killed it.”
“If you want to ask why we are where we are, it’s Georgia Power,” he said. “It’s the power companies. They stand to lose money if we grow solar energy in this state. That’s 100 percent the reason. They’ve got 25 lobbyists down there in Atlanta, talking to us every day and showing up at committee hearings like that to make sure these things don’t get anywhere.”
Final Question On Data Centers
The final of three questions from the audience returned to the earlier discussion on data centers.
“It strikes me that what data centers consume are resources that extend well beyond any property border or any town borders,” the audience member said. “Why are we letting the local towns let developers dictate to them a situation that would let them approve something that’s going to damage the rest of us? It’s not a local issue. Why should we be thinking of it that way?”
“I think that in a perfect world governments should have the final say on any large development project like this,” Smith said. “Maybe there should be an upper threshold where if it has a large enough impact there does need to be a referendum.”
“Definitely the state should step in and have guidelines in place,” he said.
“Maybe its beneficial to that local community and maybe they are getting sufficient tax breaks to offset property taxes for the locals that it’s worth it,” Smith said, “but those negative externalities are falling on people outside of that community, and that is the state’s job to make sure that those don’t happen.”
“I think it’s a great question, and I hadn’t really thought about it in those terms before,” Gisler said. “But it kind of gets the wheels turning.”
“And maybe if the facility has a certain footprint,” he said, “or is expected to use a certain amount of energy or more water, it triggers some kind of approval process at the state,” he said. “I could see us doing that.”
In his written response on the questionnaire, Gisler had written that “Local residents should have final say on location and whether datacenters are allowed in their communities at all.”
“I don’t think that data centers are the answer that so many people seem to think that they are,” Karatassos said. “And especially considering the environmental effects and every part of our life that they affect.”
“I think that the moratorium and really getting a handle on finding out what the effects are,” she said, “because we haven’t really done that in Georgia.”
“There’s a lot of things we could do in the state to make money besides just selling our natural resources up the river,” she said. “I absolutely agree that people should not be forced to live somewhere--that they’ve lived forever--that all of a sudden it’s just taken over by one of these giant data centers.”
From Questionnaire: Fertilizers And Pesticides In Farming
Question: “Nitrate run off and pesticide use have been correlated with risk of long-term illnesses, like cancer, and ecosystem degradation, for example water deoxygenation and ‘dead zones.’ How will your policies balance farmers’ technological needs while reducing the impact of previously restricted pesticides and overfertilization on agricultural workers, their neighbors, and our water systems?”
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| Karatassos And Smith 10/6/2026 |
“I’d expand cost-share funding and UGA Extension support for soil testing, precision application, cover crops, and stream buffers, so using less fertilizer is the cheaper choice,” Smith wrote.
“For pesticides once restricted for health reasons,” he added, “the people closest need protection: training and protective equipment for farm workers, notice before spraying near homes and schools, and state monitoring of wells and streams in farm country.”
“Educate farmers on soil testing and proper fertilization rates and use more nature-based solutions that lower the need for synthetic fertilizer,” Karatassos wrote.
“Expand funding to assist farmers with clean irrigation and cover crop seeds to improve soil quality and reduce runoff,” she added. “Georgia needs to regulate harmful fertilizers and pesticides where DC has deregulated them.”
“I believe we should work with experts in the field and academia to determine the correct balance for the use of these chemicals when it comes to growing food vs. ‘downstream’ impacts,” Gisler wrote.
“As I understand it, the industry is probably too reliant on chemicals today and newer technologies may help reduce that dependence,” he said. “When we find the right balance, we should be able to set reasonable regulations on usage.”
From Questionnaire: Foodborne Illnesses
Question: “The globalization of groceries has given us access to a diverse selection of produce products. At the same time, international supply chains can heighten the risk of foodborne illnesses. Recent outbreaks of foodborne illnesses, like Cyclospora and Salmonella, have resulted in recalls of common foods, including lettuce, blueberries, and eggs. What actions should we take on the state level to track and reduce foodborne illnesses?”
“Georgia is one of 10 FoodNet states, CDC’s active surveillance system for foodborne illness,” Smith wrote. “In July 2025, CDC cut the pathogens FoodNet requires states to track from eight to two, and Cyclospora was one of the six dropped.”
“That doesn’t cause outbreaks, but we find them later, after more people are sick,” he wrote. “I’d fund the Department of Public Health and the state lab to keep full active surveillance of all eight, and fund enough inspectors to trace an outbreak to its source quickly.”
“Increase all operations and staff at the Georgia Department of Public Health to make up for the cuts to the CDC, FDA and HHS,” Karatassos wrote, referring to the federal Food and Drug Administration and federal Health and Human Services.
“If the federal government is not ensuring public safety, then Georgia must do what’s right for our state,” she said. “I would also support legislation in Georgia for Urban Agriculture Incentive Zones for residential property."
“We used to be able to rely on the Federal level for much of this, but that has obviously changed,” Gisler wrote. “I am also aware that the VDL lab at UGA is aging and is losing capacity to do much of this diagnostic work,” Gisler wrote, referring to the Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory at the University of Georgia.
“If the feds are abandoning much of their prior responsibility, the state has no choice but to invest in the necessary resources to keep GA residents safe through increased local regulation,” he said.
From Questionnaire: Access To Healthcare
Question: “About 17 percent of Georgia adults lack health insurance. Since tax credits for Affordable Care Act plans expired in December 2025, more than half a million Georgians have lost health insurance. What are your views on Medicaid expansion, and what policies will you support to assist Georgians struggling to access quality healthcare?”
“We should fully expand Medicaid, and with the ACA tax credits gone it’s more urgent than a year ago,” Smith said.
“Coverage doesn’t help if there’s no one to see you,” he continued. “I’d let nurse practitioners practice to the full extent of their training without a physician protocol agreement.”
“And I’d fund LPN-to-RN bridge programs along with the nursing faculty positions that limit how many students those programs can admit,” Smith wrote.
“The first thing I will do once elected is advocate for full Georgia Medicaid expansion,” Karatassos wrote. “But I would not stop there.”
“Every person in our state should have affordable health insurance where no claim is denied and no one is going into medical debt,” she said. “Right now our for-profit system is untenable, and is designed to profit off our illnesses instead of prioritizing better health outcomes. We need to reform the entire Georgia medical industry.”
“Healthcare in Georgia is a full-on crisis, in nearly every conceivable way,” Gisler wrote. “Medicaid expansion would help, but with the hardest cuts to Medicaid from HR1 coming next year, it is probably too late.” HR1 refers to the federal omnibus tax and spending bill passed by Congress.
“I am open to any ideas from any source, from a mystery ‘free market’ solution, to a state-run exchange with a state-run public option, to a full Medicare For All solution at the state level, and anything in between,” Gisler said. “We have let this get to crisis levels, and it is only getting worse by the day.”
Video
I was unable to attend the Oct. 6 Energy and Environment Forum.
Harold Thompson did attend and, at my request, recorded the video below. There is a 2 minutes and 20 second gap in the video at 36:51 due to a technical problem with the camera.
Chris Dowd also recorded the video for APN, and that video is available at on his independent journalism site. I used the transcription from the video to fill in the two-minute gap here in writing this story.
The written answers to questions posed to the candidates as well as Dowd’s video are at the SNAP coalition web site.
In the video below, the first two questions on data centers begin at 6:44.
The question on extreme heat is at 17:52 in the video.
The question on PFAs is at 23:33.
The question on environmental injustice is at 28:44 in the video.
The question on renewable energy is at 33:50.
The question from the audience on local control of the data center decision is at 52:17 in the video.
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