LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Georgia is in the middle of a data center boom. There are more than 270 data centers across the state. Opposition to them is uniting citizens across traditional partisan divides. Grant Blankenship of Georgia Public Broadcasting reports.
GRANT BLANKENSHIP, BYLINE: By mid-July, rumors that a data center was coming to the city of Albany in southwest Georgia demand attention.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Is this going to happen?
UNIDENTIFIED CITY MANAGER: No, it hasn't happened yet. It isn't happening yet, no.
BLANKENSHIP: To be clear, the city manager says there's no data center deal in Albany. But city leaders are putting on a series of public sessions on data centers anyway to clear the air. Meanwhile, out in the lobby of this high school auditorium, Lauren Dorminey is organizing for another meeting.
LAUREN DORMINEY: And we will have citizens lining up for their five minutes for as long as it takes, if they'll allow it.
BLANKENSHIP: She's rallying people in Albany to organize in nearby Mitchell County against the construction of a natural gas power plant, which the state wouldn't even need without the data center boom. Mitchell County is majority white and Republican, while the county surrounding Albany is majority Black and Democratic. Dorminey says she's been trying to get people to look past those labels.
DORMINEY: So I've told people we're going to have to come together. You're going to have to sit beside people that don't look like you because we all drink water, and we're all on the same aquifer.
BLANKENSHIP: University of Tennessee sociologist Nikki Luke studies the connection between electrical utilities, civil rights and democracy. And she's been paying attention to how data centers are breaking down political silos.
NIKKI LUKE: There's crossing racial lines, crossing class lines. People are finding solidarity across difference in fighting data centers.
BLANKENSHIP: Because, she says, the data center issue is landing in communities - often white, often suburban, veering into rural - which historically haven't been saddled with this kind of environmental burden. And so, even if this is new to them...
LUKE: They're learning from environmental justice communities and from urban communities about how to grapple with what's happening.
BLANKENSHIP: Lauren Dorminey tells people she believes that unity is the last thing data center developers want.
DORMINEY: And I have to remind them that they are banking on us being red team-blue team.
BLANKENSHIP: A hundred and fifty miles to the north of Albany, in the small city of Monticello, Terri Saunders...
TERRI SAUNDERS: I am the chair of the Jasper County Democratic Party.
BLANKENSHIP: ...And Mary Patrick...
MARY PATRICK: I'm the chair of the Republican Party.
BLANKENSHIP: ...Have teamed up to fight an effort to annex a chunk of property out in Jasper County into the city limits of the county seat, Monticello. Patrick says her research taught her annexations like this are a data center red flag.
PATRICK: The thing with the data centers, I've been reading about them for over a year. And the MO is kind of you annex the property. And then pretty much you get to do whatever you want once you annex it.
BLANKENSHIP: For one thing, there's a data center moratorium out in the county, but not in the city. And an annexation like this was the first step in a data center development in a neighboring town. There, developers promised to quintuple tax revenues. Patrick and Saunders have been rallying their fellow party members at city council meetings that get a little rowdy.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Listen to me very clearly. We do not want a data center.
BLANKENSHIP: The city council ultimately approved the annexation. So Patrick and Saunders say they will continue to work together, the way Saunders says they did the last time the county faced what felt like an existential crisis.
SAUNDERS: When we had the tornado in the north part of the county in '23.
PATRICK: (Laughter).
SAUNDERS: January of '23.
BLANKENSHIP: Mary Patrick says now, like back in '23, party labels don't matter.
PATRICK: I don't go up to people and say, are you a Democrat?
SAUNDERS: (Laughter).
PATRICK: You know? And I've never had somebody come up and say, are you a Republican?
BLANKENSHIP: Patrick says all they want to do is preserve what they have. For NPR News, I'm Grant Blankenship in Monticello, Georgia.
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