BOC MEETING SPEECH
June 9, 2026 — Paulding County Board of Commissioners

Good morning Commissioners, and fellow Paulding County residents.
I have been married for 37 years to my husband Michael. I'm the proud mother of nine children. In 1999 our family moved to Senators Ridge in Paulding County from West Cobb for more land and room. There, our children and their friends happily played year after year in the creek and woods that backed up to our property — the same area where a data center is now being built just over the County line in Bartow County. That project was approved in 2023 for just 126 acres with the required DRI, but has since exploded to over 2,000 acres with no additional DRI required. I find that alarming. Recently Switch the Developer has acquired more land that was to be built on by Century which is part of Senators Ridge. This newly acquired land is in Paulding County, right next to the very crowded North Paulding School campus where at least 5,000 students and staff attend. I ask the question which I don't expect an answer to now: why would Switch pay $32 million for land in Paulding County if they don't already have a spoken agreement with the County to expand into Paulding? That project now sits as close as 100 feet from neighbors who still live in Senators Ridge.

I digress. In 2014 we moved to Seven Hills because it was safer for my father who moved in with us and had advanced Alzheimer's. I was his primary caregiver until he passed away this January. We raised our nine children here — seven of them went through the Paulding County school system, and our youngest just graduated from North Paulding High School.

For years, I led an abortion watchdog group in Georgia. In 1998 my efforts helped shut down the largest abortion facility on the East Coast — Midtown Hospital, not far from Georgia Tech — and contributed to sending a notorious late-term abortion provider, Tyrone Malloy, to prison for Medicaid fraud in the early 2000s. These experiences taught me the importance of standing up for the most vulnerable, holding powerful interests accountable, fighting corruption and ensuring that State laws are upheld.

Paulding County is our home. We have a beautiful backyard where we have an abundance of fruit trees and gardens. This could quickly end with water restrictions due to data centers guzzling up our water.

As much as I hold strong to my Conservative values, I went to Rutgers University in NJ for an Environmental Science degree and care immensely about our environment and the creatures we share our planet with. Sadly, Georgia has some of the weakest environmental protection laws in the country and does not require these billion dollar corporations to pay for independent environmental impact studies nor health studies on vulnerable populations living just steps from these data farms. Neighbors around the Country are reporting having seizures, lack of sleep, and increased rates of cancer. I think we can all agree this is alarming.

Just yesterday I drove to Hiram where I met a mother and her stepson who live on part of the 500-acre tract on Bethel Church Road which is part of the 3 sites being looked into. Their landlord, Sweetwater LLC, notified them recently that they have until July 30th to move out because he is selling the acreage to a data center at the end of this month for $75 million!! He is so sure this deal is going through that he is not even charging the family rent any more. I hope the Board can understand how this along with the recent land acquisition by Switch creates real mistrust, especially after we've been told no data centers have been approved in Paulding County.

There are several reasons why data centers should not be considered for Paulding County right now in addition to many you've already heard about.

We as a Community have had no say in where this is going. Do we really want to live under 24/7 AI monitoring and surveillance? Do we want cameras on every street sign, do we want digital money and banking which could be turned off for saying the wrong thing or buying too much of the wrong thing? Do we want to contribute to this?

And did you know that AI technology is advancing so rapidly the current data farms may become obsolete? The market is already showing signs of massive overbuilding and obsolescence. NVIDIA's compact supercomputers, like the DGX Spark, and emerging mini/distributed AI setups could make huge hyperscale centers obsolete. Anyone can buy one for just $299! No cloud back up required.

Look what's happening in China right now: they have an unprecedented glut of built AI and computing data centers sitting idle or severely underutilized. After a massive multi-billion-dollar infrastructure boom, reports show that a staggering 70% to 80% of newly built capacity remains unused. Many of these state-of-the-art facilities are running at just 20% to 30% of their intended operating capacity.

Why open Pandora's box now and risk turning parts of Paulding County into stranded industrial eyesores in our countryside or open us up to million dollar lawsuits?

Commissioners, you represent us — not distant corporations. Now is not the time to allow these billion dollar corporations to get a foothold anywhere in Paulding County. Let's protect Paulding for our future, our children and our community that values people over profits.

Thank you for your time and I pray you decide to keep Paulding the place we all love and not allow data farms to replace the small amount of family farms we still have left.