05/11/2026
🚨 SHOCKING: Georgia Data Center Secretly Drained Nearly 30 MILLION Gallons of UNBILLED Water—While Neighbors Were Ordered to Stop Watering Lawns in a Drought
In Fayetteville, Georgia, families were getting urgent notices to conserve water, stop watering their lawns, and cut back wherever possible because of drought and chronically low pressure.
At the very same time, the massive QTS data center campus (owned by Blackstone) was quietly pulling more than 29 million gallons through secret, unbilled industrial pipes.
That’s roughly 44 Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of water, consumed over a period that may have stretched as long as 15 months.
One hookup was installed without the utility even knowing about it.
The second was never connected to any billing account.
When the company finally received a retroactive bill for $147,474, it paid it in full—with no fines and no real consequences.
Local attorney James Clifton, who lives in the affected Annelise Park subdivision and obtained the public records, put the frustration plainly:
“We get this notification from Fayette County water system saying you need to stop watering your lawns to help conserve water. So the first thing they do is lean on the individuals and the citizens to stop water consumption, when we have QTS that’s just absolutely draining us—most months it’s the number one consumer of water in the county.”
The utility’s director defended the situation by calling QTS their largest customer and saying, “They’re our largest customer and we have to be partners. It’s called customer service.”
She blamed staffing shortages and a new billing system for the oversight.
This 6.2-million-square-foot campus keeps expanding, with more buildings planned.
Much of the unbilled water went toward construction—dust control, concrete work, and near-constant landscaping—while the company promises that a future closed-loop cooling system will use far less once it’s fully running.
Fayetteville’s city council has already voted to ban new data centers entirely.
They’ve seen what’s coming.
As AI drives a boom in these power-hungry, water-intensive facilities, ordinary communities are left dealing with strained resources, higher future costs, and declining quality of life—while the big players get special treatment.
We have to stop these data centers before they do irreversible damage to our water systems, power grids, and neighborhoods.
Enough is enough.
Our resources belong to the people—not to Big Tech and private equity giants.
