Google Project Evergreen (Dorchester County) data center, Dorchester County, South Carolina

Google is building a data center campus, first known as Project Evergreen, on 206 acres at the Winding Woods Commerce Park along U.S. Highway 78 near St. George in Dorchester County, South Carolina, one of two new Google campuses in the county. At a packed community meeting in St. George on May 28, 2026, Google said the work was on schedule and that portions of the two data centers should be running later this year.

Google bought the Winding Woods land in early 2024 under the aliases Project Evergreen and Gannett Enterprises LLC, and said at first it would hold it for future needs while developing its Pine Hill site near Summerville. In September 2024 it announced a $3.3 billion South Carolina investment and broke ground on both Dorchester County campuses, which it valued at $2 billion together. Google has said the two campuses will create more than 200 full-time jobs and that it wants to hire locally.

Water has been the fight at St. George. Dorchester County, which supplies the water, had agreed at Google's request to keep the site's usage secret, until Mount Pleasant resident Frank Heindel sued under the state Freedom of Information Act; in a January 2025 settlement the county agreed to publish the site's daily and monthly water use and pay $10,000 of his legal fees. Heindel said the agreement gives the St. George site first priority for uninterrupted water, so rural residents could be restricted in a crisis while the data center keeps running: "a monopolist, like Google, should not control a secret portion of the public's daily water supply." For comparison, Google's older Berkeley County data center withdrew 847 million gallons in 2023.

At the May meeting Google's Lilyn Hester said the company pays for its own power and water: "The water's coming from Lake Marion," she said. "We are not relying on an aquifer to get our water." St. George resident George Felder raised flooding: "Because we already have a flooding issue. And then with them coming in, they're adding more to that flooding problem." Harleyville resident Timothy Lewis asked what Google would do for the community, while Town Council member and mayor pro tem Betty Walker Collins said she hoped it would add jobs and invest in "major issues" on that end of the county.

The county gave Google's Pine Hill site some of the largest tax breaks it has granted, fixing its property taxes at 4 percent of assessed value for at least 40 years, and Dominion Energy agreed to power that site at a special rate less than half what residential customers pay. Hester said Google receives incentives and that the county's tax revenue check from the company begins next year.

Google says it will keep holding community meetings and takes questions at [email protected]; oversight of the county's water deal and incentives rests with Dorchester County Council.