What happened
- The first of two public forums on Bradley County's $11.3bn Project River campus produced no vote, no rezoning decision and no annexation date — only a second forum, set for 09-12, 10am-noon at the same PIE Center venue. Panelists from Azure Energy and Wright Brothers Construction took pre-submitted questions on the 850-acre site's 1,000MW gas plant and 500MW biomass facility. The disclosure that drew jeers, boos and hisses was a logistics number rather than a power one: 380 to 500 timber trucks per day. Attendees also pressed on odor, noise and endangered species, and one complained the pre-submitted-question format allowed no live audience questions. Developers said the project "is not a data center," has no signed power contracts, and cannot begin environmental or traffic studies because engineering is only 20-30% complete and must wait on zoning. (Cleveland Banner, NewsChannel9)
- ⚠️ Out of window (the underlying council meeting was Tuesday 09-01, before this run's 09-02 15:00 ET window opens) and not on the existing record — checked Datacenter Sites, Google Capex, and every digest from 08-25 forward for "Michigan City" and "Project Maize"; none carry it, and this is the first time this specific site has entered the map at all. Flagging because it fits the exact backlash pattern this thread already tracks (Camellia, El Paso, Bradley County) and was missed entirely until now. The Michigan City, Indiana Common Council gave first reading to an ordinance that would moratorium future data-center projects, while explicitly exempting "Project Maize," the $832M Google data center already under construction on a converted 70-acre former Federal-Mogul windshield-wiper plant (Google took over the Phoenix Investors-originated project in April 2026; it has no disclosed power/GW figure). Councilman-at-large Bryant Dabney said he wants the pause to run at least a year past the facility's certificate of operation (targeted 2027, so through roughly 2028) and rejected exempting Project Maize's successors the way the current build is exempted: "We've already collected permitting fees from the building of the current center. That would kind of be a breach of contract" — meaning the moratorium, if passed, is squarely forward-looking. Residents raised air-quality and unnamed-chemical concerns and said too little research preceded the original approval. The ordinance goes to the Planning and Zoning Committee, with second reading set for the council's September 15 meeting — a dated resolution point. (ABC57, WSBT, Construction Review Online — Project Maize background)
- Bulloch County, Georgia commissioners voted 4-3 against a permanent ban on data centers in unincorporated areas, with Chairman David Bennett casting the tiebreaking "no" vote, even as he said "I don't think that this community needs a large-scale, 'Meta,' data center" — citing legal exposure from an outright ban over targeted regulation. The county's existing moratorium stays in effect through December 31, 2026, and commissioners created a 21-member "Working Group on Data Centers" (three citizen nominees per commissioner) to study mitigation options before it expires. This is the same pattern already on this thread from Bradley County and Michigan City — pause-not-ban as the default landing spot — but a distinct county not yet on the record. (Statesboro Herald, The Georgia Virtue)
- A coalition of nine environmental-justice and community groups, plus U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a state senator and a Detroit City Council member, are pressing Mayor Mary Sheffield to adopt a data-center moratorium the Council itself already recommended in March 2026 and that she has not acted on. The City Planning Commission is drafting ordinance recommendations, expected "in the coming weeks" as of this report, while the administration has informally paused permitting new data centers in the meantime; Council Member Scott Benson wants regulations in place by year-end. Named local flashpoints: a Google 1GW proposal that moved off Detroit's Packard Plant site to Van Buren Township after pushback, and a dropped Shoemaker Street proposal. Not on this map anywhere — checked Datacenter Sites and Grid & Turbines plus a repo-wide grep for "Detroit"; the only hit is an unrelated Gaza-war reference. (Planet Detroit)
The wider story
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which carries how it developed before and since.
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part of Where the Capex Lands
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