VIDEO: Colleton County data center proposal draws opposition at zoning hearing

Our Take

Credit to Live 5 News (WCSC) for getting cameras into a zoning board of appeals meeting that most of the country will never hear about, yet it's the same story playing out from South Carolina to Virginia to rural Ohio. An 850-acre footprint doesn't get proposed quietly — it means new substations, new transmission lines, new water demands, and a fight over land use that residents usually learn about only after the paperwork is nearly signed.

What we don't know yet, and what matters most, is who's actually behind this project, what power utility is on the hook to serve it, and what ratepayers and neighboring landowners are being asked to absorb in exchange for a facility that typically employs a small permanent workforce once construction wraps. Zoning boards of appeals are supposed to be a check on exactly this kind of mismatch between scale and process — the fact that Colleton County residents showed up in numbers to object suggests they smell the same thing we track everywhere else: big infrastructure, small local say.

We'll be watching how this vote lands and whether it sets a precedent for how much scrutiny these deals get before shovels hit dirt. If you want to see how this compares to other proposed and operating sites nationwide, check our facility map, and if you're in a community facing a similar hearing, our take-action page has resources for getting organized before the vote, not after.