Project Eagle data center, Dry Branch, Georgia

On Thursday, September 18, 2025, Twiggs County commissioners approved rezoning 291.5 acres from agricultural land to general industrial for the Pine Ridge Technology Center, a data center planned by Eagle Rock Partners in the unincorporated county near Dry Branch, Georgia. The developer valued the project at up to $5 billion and said it would double the county's tax revenue and bring 500 to 600 new jobs.

About two dozen residents spoke against it at a hearing the day before, raising the environment, energy use, water and the local black bear population. Ken Loeber of Eagle Rock Partners told the commissioners the jobs would not all require advanced degrees: "There is a perception that everyone that works in these things has a Ph.D. in Computer Science, and that's just not factual." He said noise from the site would not exceed 55 decibels.

Question and answer sessions were held September 16 and 17, and the commission voted at the courthouse on September 18.

Resident Meg Couillard Bevan said: "If we have to have a new data center here let's make sure that we have everything in order and that we're doing the right things." John Wilson, who has spent nearly four decades arguing for land preservation, led the opposition: "The data center - you can build it anywhere. So why would you put it in an important place like this," he said. He said the facility would need deep wells drawing water on the scale of a town of thirty thousand people.

His case rested on the Ocmulgee River corridor, land historically inhabited by the Muscogee Creek Nation, and the fencing the campus would need, which he said would split the local black bear population into what he called upper bears and lower bears. To win approval, the developer offered a guaranteed property tax return of at least $175 million, $100,000 for school career training and another $100,000 for fire, public safety or recreation, and agreed the site would not be used for cryptocurrency mining.

Residents who believed the commission rushed the rezoning sued to overturn it, arguing the county skipped a regional impact review that a state panel added for data centers in November 2025 and that commissioners' actions "were an abuse of its police and zoning powers." Eagle Rock's Ken Loeber had told commissioners that waiting "would kill" the project, and the county's attorney, Kerry Howell, argued the review requirement did not apply while it was paused for data centers.

In its December 2025 response, the county denied the rezoning was made in haste or through "fraud, corruption, or a manifest abuse," and denied that residents have a substantial interest in the case; the county's filing is the newest word on the lawsuit, which remains before the court. Nancy Lubeck, one of the plaintiffs, said communities are left "flying blind" on what these facilities will do to the state's power grid and water supply.