Project Camellia<\/a>,\u201d a 1,400-acre data center campus proposed for the Savannah Gateway Industrial Park in Effingham County. Supporters called it an economic game-changer, but neighbors said they are concerned about the environmental impact and local resources.<\/p>\n\u201cWe did not find out about this until Tuesday and only through Facebook, which I think is unfair to the citizens of Effingham County,\u201d said Cindy, an Effingham County resident. \u201cWe\u2019re all worried about the impacts on our environment, for the water, the noise pollution, the wildlife, the waterways.\u201d<\/p>\n
Katie Broome, another Effingham County resident who protested outside, said she is worried the project could raise the cost of living and questioned the short notice ahead of the open house.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s going to be even more people moving to Rincon looking for jobs, which is going to keep increasing the cost of living out here,\u201d Broome said. \u201cGiving us literally a day notice makes it 10 times harder to stop something than if we had months\u2019 notice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Broome also said she believes county leaders should have been more open with the public about the project.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think they should\u2019ve been more open about that since some of these people are people that we elected,\u201d Broome said. \u201cI think a lot more people are going to pay a lot more attention on who they elect into office.\u201d<\/p>\n
OpenAI representatives said they expected concerns and said the open house was meant to be an early step in addressing them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe absolutely understand the concerns people have on data centers,\u201d said Aaron McLear, OpenAI communications staff. \u201cFor us, doing it the right way is meeting the community on day one, open and transparent about what this project is about.\u201d<\/p>\n
McLear stated that OpenAI has been collaborating with county leaders for months on the project, and the site was already zoned for industrial use, originally intended to be a transportation warehouse.<\/p>\n
McLear said OpenAI is telling residents their electricity costs will not go up because of the project and added that OpenAI plans to pay for all of the energy it uses, including future gird upgrades, and that the company plans to protect resources and use minimal water. <\/p>\n
For more information on Effingham County\u2019s data center plans and Project Camellia, click here<\/a>. <\/p>\nCopyright 2026 WTOC. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EFFINGHAM COUNTY, Ga. (WTOC) – Chants and questions filled an Effingham County open house Thursday night as OpenAI…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117818,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[580,85,58739,59511,157,58811,16966,59784,59782,59783],"class_list":["post-117817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-openai","tag-chatgpt","tag-data-center","tag-effingham-county","tag-effingham-county-data-center","tag-openai","tag-project-camellia","tag-protest","tag-savannah-gateway-industrial-park","tag-wtoc","tag-wtoc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}