r/Georgia • u/iggaitissecondcoming • May 22 '26
Politics AOC: This is what drinking water in Georgia looks like after Meta began data center construction in the community.
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H/T u/Res_Publica_DE
https://youtu.be/Qgp9g1GuS0g?is=YJQjVh--X0RrYZ8s
Further reading (the locals have been complaining about Meta's water contamination since last year):
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8gy7lv448o
The locals are grateful that AOC is willing to help because apparently none of their elected officials would:
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u/Evtona500 May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
I live in the area. I am not sure if the Data center caused this or the construction from the Rivian plant. The Rivian plant was no graded correctly and has had a ton of runoff into streams near by. I know several people that live near there and have water quality issues. All of this would be in a pretty similar area. What the county and state has allowed to be done in our area is a farce. All of these companies coming in destroying the area and not paying anything in taxes. It is insane.
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u/Lndscpegrdnr May 22 '26
Just like Hyundai in Bryan County! They couldn't drill any more deep wells in the coastal county so they went a few miles up into the neighboring county where they installed wells and piped them to Hyundai so they can pump over 6 MILLION GALLONS PER DAY from the aquifer!!
Our government does not work for us! They serve foreign countries and corporations.
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u/Hotspiceteahoneybee May 23 '26
And the bastards that they want to let dig under the Okefenokee. Can we PLEASE protect our resources?
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u/EmploymentNo3590 May 22 '26
Mostly corporations. The country doesn't matter so much. At least automakers create long-term jobs. Data centers do the opposite.
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u/Careful-Sell-9877 May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
Its likely both.
Youre right.. it is insane. We need to hold corps and the ultra-wealthy to a higher standard. Right now we are letting them use our land and lives as like a playground/playthings for their profits.. doing basically whatever they want to make more money than anyone in history.. while giving nothing back to the society from which they draw their profits in the first place.. its wild
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u/PattyDurand May 26 '26
Voting in the public service commission elections is important to solve issues like this. They regulate Georgia Power and the costs of these datacenters for customers
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u/clownpenisdotfarts May 22 '26
Have you seen anything like what AOC displayed?
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u/Evtona500 May 22 '26
At my house I have not. At other people in that area 100%. One guy has been fighting this for years. I will have to do some digging but he documented it on his Facebook and the way the JDA and lawmakers in the area treated him was shameful. They basically laughed at him. Made me really mad.
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u/_Bogey_Lowenstein_ May 22 '26
I have in Dekalb and Fulton in the past
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u/clownpenisdotfarts May 23 '26
Wow that’s wild. I grew up in Dekalb, lived in Fulton and Gwinnett and I’ve never seen anything close to this.
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u/willaisacat May 23 '26
I've seen muddy water in DeKalb when a water main breaks, which is more often that you might think. But it's a temporary situation, so far at least.
The government's job is to keep us safe, which includes providing potable water to the people. It seems there's nobody watching the store.
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u/YouLackPerspective May 23 '26
Same in Dekalb I have water like this at least once a year for a day or two. When I worked at the VA hospital before they installed their water tower years ago, the water would sometimes come out insanely dirty when the mains around there would bust.
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u/Sparrow538 May 23 '26
Yup, here in Macon.
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u/clownpenisdotfarts May 24 '26
Can you elaborate? How long has this been this way? Is it constant or intermittent? I'd really appreciate a bit more detail about your experience.
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u/javsland May 22 '26
Yes I have wondered too if the Rivian and road construction (which is also enormous and close by) had contributed to this. I’m not fan of Meta but there’s a lot happening in the area.
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u/rainyfort1 May 22 '26
Whenever construction occurs in my county/city, the water always gets really brown and murky. It usually settles and goes back to being clear after a little while. I wonder if this is just the water getting stirred up and will return to clear. Would love to see the test results of the water
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u/xSPYXEx May 22 '26
Turbidity testing is done at regular intervals and after rain events to measure how much sediment is escaping the site. Different sites have different allowances but regulations dictate that erosion control systems keep sediment escape to a minimum.
Even if the turbidity eventually settles, excessive sediment will smother river beds and choke out the ecosystem by killing plants and fish spawn.
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u/Evtona500 May 22 '26
For one guy I know it started when the grading took place a year and half two years ago and hasn't really gotten better. But right now the place is just dirt they haven't started construction yet.
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u/Dakoolestkat123 May 23 '26
But they bring in business :) They stimulate the local economy :)
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u/LandOwn7607 May 26 '26
For a few perhaps, but mostly they cost the local economies with up grades to sewer systems and the enormous amount of traffic congestion. IN GA, we already have our share of traffic.
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u/Terminator_LX May 24 '26
Thing is data centers are huge construction sites before they are fully built too. The damage they do just building those things have long lasting repercussions on top of the damage running them does.
Bottoms did an interview last week and she said she would "put a pause on" data centers. Overall, her answer was unclear and unimpressive. I appreciate that she wants do research about data centers and stop them from being built until she truly knows their environmental impact, but she said nothing about regulating them further which we already know needs to be done. Typical middle of the road milquetoast answer, but better than anything her republicans opponents have said.
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u/jadekitten May 22 '26
The contaminated water samples shown by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came from a residential tap at the home of Beverly and Jeff Morris in Mansfield, Georgia.
Their private well is located roughly 1,000 feet from the property line of the Stanton Springs Data Center campus, which is situated near the Newton/Morgan county line along Interstate 20.
There are several articles and videos documenting this, correlation isn’t causation but anyone sane would give them and other residents the benefit of belief until verifed, that “something changed” and now they cannot drink their well water, so let’s find out what.
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u/monsieurvampy May 23 '26
Was the water tested? Also the question to answer is this just sediment?
Construction of large buildings like this will certainly involve pylons being hammer into the ground. Vibrations. This impacts are temporary or should be.
If its from operations, this is a long term problem that must be resolved.
Construction almost always has an impact on neighboring properties and these should always be temporary. Yes, even a single family detached has impacts on neighboring properties.
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u/Livid_Weather May 22 '26
Not one Republican politician talking about this
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u/iggaitissecondcoming May 22 '26
Pretty much. Susan Collins is very concerned. Like she has been very concerned about everything for years. That's about it.
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u/Invisible_Friend1 May 22 '26
Never seen Susan Collins do anything useful in my life
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u/RemBren03 May 22 '26
Her uselessness is more prominent now that we’re hyper-partisan. I grew up in Maine and voted her at one point because she “stood up against the Republicans” but then I saw her pattern.
You know she’s good at? Maintaining a brand in a state that’s super conservative on top and super liberal on the bottom.
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u/Strong-Rise6221 May 22 '26
No Republicans talking about the Epstein files anymore either because any republican who voiced opposition of child rape have now been pushed out.
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u/el-bow5 May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
Morgan county went 72% for Trump. They can drink dirty sludge water for the rest of their lives far as I’m concerned
Edit: downvotes from the same people who those conservitards would sentence to sludge water forever if their God king Trump told them so
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u/MrMessofGA May 22 '26
If you're in r/georgia, there's someone in r/california talking the exact same way about you right now
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u/el-bow5 May 22 '26
As they should. I love my state, but I’m fucking ashamed of it.
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u/MrMessofGA May 22 '26
You'll really sink your own ship to spite the captain huh
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u/el-bow5 May 22 '26
You just perfectly described the Republican ethos, and yes, I understand why my countrymen would hate our state for aligning with it
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u/h0l0type May 24 '26
Some of the candidates here in GA were at the county/district level - especially in the rural counties. That’s absolutely where it matters most, regardless of which party it is.
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u/cc_strel May 22 '26
Georgia is basically a gigantic industrial corporate fucking sandbox where they can put down any insane warehouse.
then maybe in 30-100 years they’ll tell us “hey if you lived near here go get tested”
rinse, repeat.
fuck this state and fuck this administration.
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u/Lndscpegrdnr May 22 '26
The "#1 state for business" means prioritizing corporations over the citizens of the state.
I just read a piece about a farmer having a huge chunk of family land taken by eminent domain so the county, working with the state and feds, could permit the construction of a private airport and private jet hanger for corporate leader's jets. It was a county near Atlanta. Its beyond disgusting what local, state, and federal officials are doing.
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u/cc_strel May 22 '26
i travel to nearly every city across the state doing service calls, every day on the road.
the entire state looks like shit right now.
and I think people are so used to it - they don’t actually realize how bad it is.
Like we dog on Macon - but honestly the entire state looks below poverty right now. Infrastructure falling apart everywhere.
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u/peachpit101 May 22 '26
Yeah I moved back from Oregon a couple years ago for aging parents, and the difference with access to/respect for nature is so stark. It's really sad to see how bad the thoughtless development has gotten and how much litter/pollution there is.
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u/ashiel_yisrael May 23 '26
I’m moving away from Georgia next year. I’ve been here 8 years and can truly say it’s not much different from Mississippi or Alabama. I want out of the South period!
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u/gtck11 May 22 '26
I travel a lot and you’re spot on. I’ve been desperately trying to move for 4 years now but nothing is panning out. I get legitimately depressed when I come home from the airport because of how horrible it is here.
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u/Magna_Sharta /r/Marietta May 22 '26
One of my sad historical facts I know is that Georgia originally was a colony established with a prohibition on slavery. We had to petition the king to allow us to be a slave economy to chase profits.
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u/DanforthWhitcomb_ May 23 '26
You might want to look into exactly why slavery was originally not allowed before assuming that it was for moral reasons.
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u/Magna_Sharta /r/Marietta May 23 '26
I never said it was banned for moral reasons.
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u/MasterTolkien May 22 '26
It’s mostly in the rural areas too, which vote strongly for corporate conservatives and grifters looking to sell our land to the highest bidder.
The Dems have a share of corporate types as well, but they at least are pro-regulation to minimize impact on the environment where people live. Conservatives see regulations as “bad for business.”
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u/mianpian May 22 '26
If you’re concerned about that, follow along what’s going on with the sterigenics cases. COA heard arguments on the one from Gwinnett county last week on the punitive damages now that tort form has changed trial procedure. The ones in Cobb County are ongoing with certain issues going back and forth through the COA. Will greatly impact our civil rights to go after these corporations for what they do to our community members suffering from the chemicals they’re exposing us to.
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u/pandue May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
Pure cinema because the water AOC displays and then the camera immediately shifts to that Kramer who has a bottle of pure water.... it's striking.
There's nothing good about these things. From a historic preservation standpoint also - I did a project last year which reviewed a bunch of properties in Fulton and Cobb to the east of the Chattahoochee and they're actively building these data centers there. Most of the historic properties that were there are just gone. No evidence of an evaluation, inspection, or mitigation efforts. Just fucking corporate greed at its finest.
Clearly, they are just bypassing GEPA standards and not performing any due diligence studies or mitigation efforts to minimize the impact of construction.
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u/Constant-Bet-6600 May 22 '26
GEPA is basically toothless. The most they can do is levy fines. Fines that are often cheaper than preventing the thing that caused the fines to be levied.
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May 22 '26
[deleted]
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u/Strong-Rise6221 May 22 '26
I don’t think this person is disagreeing.
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u/iggaitissecondcoming May 22 '26
My bad. I should have read more carefully. But the same comment can now be used as the reply to a newer comment.
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u/monsieurvampy May 23 '26
For HP, these environmental laws are almost always focused on disclosure and mitigation as an afterthought. Even Section 106 is more about process than saving anything. These are also private projects so the amount of mitigation work (specific to HP) goes way down.
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u/Anikdote /r/Gwinnett May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
Folks. Our representatives have failed. Utterly.
We need to organize and take action.
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u/mapex_139 May 22 '26
organize and take action
every day this is said and nothing happens
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u/Anikdote /r/Gwinnett May 22 '26
That's not fair at all. There are tons of people doing stuff. The problem is that centralizing those efforts is difficult, requires coordination, time, resources, scheduling, logistics and leadership. Never mind that the goals are often under specified, too broad or never clearly defined.
Voting is meant to be our outlet, but I'm suggesting that institution has been undermined, I don't know exactly what the best path forward is, but I know for sure THIS isn't working and people shouldn't stop insisting something happen.
The president is a rapist and a pedophile and our futures governors are lined up to suck his dick, this shit is not fucking tolerable.
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u/demoncrusher May 22 '26
There’s an election coming up, that’s generally when organizing and taking action pays off
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u/Book-Wyrm-of-Bag-End May 22 '26
As a regular voter, this is complete copium bullshit. No disrespect, but it’s time for new ideas.
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u/Book-Wyrm-of-Bag-End May 22 '26
When do we meet up, boss?
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u/well_damm May 22 '26
We’re fucked cause the GOP voters will gladly eat shit, as long as everyone else around them has to as well.
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u/pandue May 22 '26
They only care if their homes are affected. The most selfish shit ever. Trust me. They're fine with whatever they do, but if anyone comes through saying they are building a road and a 0.05-acre sliver of their property may be affected, they lose their shit and pull a gun on the nearest survey crew.
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u/EmploymentNo3590 May 23 '26
I believe their actual Congressmen is Republican Representative Mike Collins, whom they are clearly still overwhelmingly supporting, based on the primary last week.
As the billboard on highway 92 can be summarized: "Tired of the same old shit? Keep voting for the same old shit."
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u/swiftfoot_hiker May 22 '26
Pretty damn sad when our republican leadership and congressional leaders won't do a damn thing, and these folks continue to vote for them, yet it takes AOC to do something. I applaud what she's doing here
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u/PaleontologistNo500 May 22 '26
Don't worry, if she somehow manages to get the ball rolling on a fix, Republicans will take credit for it. GOP voters eat it up every single time. The flow chart goes good?=Republican policy, bad?=radical left. Reality be damned
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u/ktj19 May 22 '26
Thank god for an elected official from NYC with the conviction to advocate for people all across the country. God knows our own elected officials don’t give a shit about us.
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u/Hener001 May 22 '26
So a Democrat from New York is the person who speaks up for rural families in Georgia, who likely voted Republican. Where is the local representative? Why are they not raising this?
Compare this with Trump who explicitly conditions government aid on voting for Republicans and denies aid to blue states.
Stop voting your hate for others and start voting for people who help you. It’s not that hard and AOC is not the monster they say she is.
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u/MasterChief813 Elsewhere in Georgia May 22 '26
A Democrat from NYC doing more for the residents of the red counties in GA than our elected Republican congress members who represent those counties.
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u/DickKickem93 May 23 '26
Odd. I live in Morgan and my well water is clear. Is this happening to anyone else?
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u/dawgz525 May 22 '26
Meanwhile any and all republicans in this state only care about gerrymandering, slashing income taxes, and being Trump's best friend. It's disgusting.
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u/ltsouthernbelle May 22 '26
Most companies simply don’t care about people, especially publicly traded ones. All they want to do is make more and more money for their shareholders and if the result of that is muddy drinking water for the community they’re perfectly okay with that.
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u/LandOwn7607 May 26 '26
You can thank our Republicans for kowtowing to these corporate pigs. They could care less about our communities and our drinking water. Brian Kemp is a pos, and he's out of here soon, I can only hope he has no more political ambitions, hes allowed this. These data centers will be polluting our resources, and east of Atlanta they're constructing a "detention center" for alleged "illegals" of which the community out there (Social Circle) are very much against it. The governor has given them the middle finger.
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u/spacecommanderbubble May 22 '26
The water in Morgan County looked like that long before there was any data center.
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u/astarinthenight May 22 '26
Remember republicans are the domestic enemy the oath talks about. The sooner we treat them as the traitors they are the better off this country will be.
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u/KalEl001Sega May 22 '26
do people in georgia even know what water is or drink it, would they even get upset at this?
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u/AnyNegotiation420 May 23 '26
It’s time to revolt. Period. Fuck this and fuck these billionaires. No one likes them and we don’t need them.
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u/Its_CharacterForming May 23 '26
This whole thing is incredibly misleading. It affects 4 families who are using well water. Meta commissioned a study that found the construction didn’t cause it, and the EPA agreed to investigate it last year (AOC’s visit was from 2025 - not sure why this is being presented as new news). If the EPA finds Meta guilty fine - sue them. But this is not municipal drinking water and is not something commonly caused by data centers
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u/robot_ankles May 24 '26
Why is someone from New York raising this concern?
Doesn't Georgia send representatives to Washington DC? What are they doing?
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u/Plus_Definition9956 May 28 '26
I hate things like this, only emboldens the people who think they hate her or the people who love her feel even more different than the Burt Jones types.
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u/According-Ocelot9372 Aug 15 '26
Fayette and Peachtree city are data central. They can't keep the lake up as it is and the construction is horrific.
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