Data centers, water & secrets: Companies using NDAs to hide water usage in Georgia

Our Take

Credit to Justin Gray and WSB-TV for prying loose what a lot of local officials would rather keep quiet: some proposed metro Atlanta data centers are on track to use millions of gallons a day, and the specifics are getting locked behind non-disclosure agreements before residents ever get a vote. That's the pattern we track nationwide — the deal gets structured so the water math is settled before the public meeting even happens.

An NDA on water usage isn't a technicality. Water utilities are public infrastructure, funded and maintained by ratepayers, and when a single facility's draw approaches what an entire town uses, that's a capacity and pricing question for every household on the system — not proprietary corporate data. If elected officials are signing agreements that keep those numbers from the people who'll be sharing the aquifer or the treatment plant, the secrecy itself is the story, regardless of what the final gallon count turns out to be.

Georgia is far from alone here — check our facility map to see what's proposed or under construction near you, and if your community is being asked to sign off on a project without seeing the water and power terms, our take-action page has steps for pushing that information into the open before the ink dries.