A broad grassroots backlash against artificial intelligence (AI) data centers is gaining momentum across the Palmetto State, with six counties imposing moratoriums in the month of September alone.
Altogether, 13 South Carolina counties have enacted data center moratoriums since January and at least two more are under active consideration.
The moves come amid a roiling national debate over the facilities, particularly when they are seen as threats to local ratepayers, waterways and ecosystems when their scale is massive and they put heavy energy and water demands on local communities.
Nevertheless, with this November’s midterm elections fast approaching, President Donald Trump has doubled down on his push for data center expansion, calling the industry a “golden goose.”
“The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want data centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” Trump wrote in a recent social media post. “If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let data reign.”
Data centers move to the campaign trail
Here in South Carolina, where Lowcountry pediatrician Annie Andrews is challenging incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Darline Graham, the Democrat this week turned up the heat on the issue, launching a new website, DataCenterDarline.com on Sept. 28.
On the site, Andrews accuses Graham of supporting $70 billion in federal tax breaks for data centers and of benefiting from about $1 million in independent campaign spending by an AI-connected super PAC.
The estimated tax breaks were the result of corporate tax changes in Trump’s 2025 Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Graham has said she supports, though she was appointed to replace her late brother, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, after the Senate voted on the bill.
“Darline Graham has been loud and clear about supporting data centers and tax breaks for them,” Andrews said in a Sept. 28 release. “But where is her plan to cut your taxes or lower your costs? South Carolinians deserve a senator who answers to them — not the special interests spending millions to put her in office.”
In a Sept. 29 statement, Graham spokesman T.W. Arrighi pushed back hard, telling the Charleston City Paper that Andrews, who supports a national moratorium, “always chooses the liberal Washington-knows-best agenda over South Carolina values.”
“Sen. Graham believes local communities and states should decide where data centers go, how they operate and make sure taxpayers don’t end up footing the bill,” Arrighi said.
Meanwhile, in the governor’s race, both candidates support a mix of state and local regulations to protect ratepayers and local interests.
“When I sit with families across South Carolina, the conversation keeps coming back to the power bill,” Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rep. Jermaine Johnson told the City Paper Tuesday. “So when large out-of-state companies want to build data centers that draw as much electricity as a small city, I believe we owe those families an honest answer about who pays.”
In addition, Johnson said, he supports a statewide moratorium “until our state has a comprehensive approval and oversight process in place” for new facilities, including a requirement that operators provide their own power.
On the other side of the aisle, a spokesman for GOP candidate and current
Attorney General Alan Wilson, said his candidate supports “strong statewide standards for data centers,” such as those contained in Beaufort Sen. Tom Davis’s regulatory bill, which failed to get out of the S.C. Senate earlier this year.
“Data centers that come to South Carolina should pay their own way, provide for their own power and water needs, and never leave families footing the bill through higher utility rates,” said campaign spokesman Woods Wooten.
Stopping short of endorsing a statewide moratorium, Wooten added: “Alan understands why counties are hitting pause. Communities deserve clear rules before massive projects move forward.”
Hitting the brakes
Of the 13 local moratoriums passed to date, the ones that drew the most statewide attention were in Colleton and Spartanburg counties, where data center opponents focused their fire on two specific projects.
According to Southern Environmental Law Center spokesman Robby Maynor, whose group has filed lawsuits challenging both projects, the cases are instructive because they highlight the different concerns that exist in rural and urban areas of the state.
In rural Colleton County, that concern was sparked by a $6 billion, 850-acre project proposed by Eagle Rock Partners and Thomas and Hutton, which opponents said would drive up power rates and threaten the nearby ACE Basin, a landmark state conservation project that has received global accolades.
“It was basically right in the middle of one of the most important conservation areas on the East Coast, on the headwaters of the Ashepoo River,” Maynor said. “In my opinion, that’s a really good example of bad siting, and the way data center developers look to rural areas where maybe lax zoning or a lack of resources make it hard to enforce rules.”
But after that project was delayed by the county moratorium, Eagle Rock shifted its attention to a new 1,200-acre site in the western portion of the county — a site that got a major boost on Sept. 14, when Colleton County Council voted to lift its moratorium in a portion of the county west of I-95.
If completed, the project would contain a total of 10 buildings and serve a major AI company such as Microsoft or Meta, officials say.
“We are excited to bring this opportunity that will provide meaningful investment, jobs, and long term investments to Colleton County,” an Eagle
Rock spokesman told the City Paper in a Tuesday statement.
In Spartanburg, on the other hand, the major concerns involve a different set of environmental issues, Maynor said, such as air quality in residential areas.
Driving those worries, he said, is the $3 billion Valara data center project, which includes its own natural gas plant for power and was grandfathered in before the county’s moratorium took effect.
“Natural gas is a fossil fuel, and just like other fossil fuels, it creates significant air pollution,” Maynor said, pointing to an SELC-commissioned study from the Harvard School of Public Health showing potential negative health impacts from natural gas generation in another part of the state.
Valara project sponsor NorthMark Strategies Group did not respond by press time to a request for comment on the project.
Asked about the larger picture, Maynor said the county moratoriums are a natural response to the legislature’s inaction on statewide regulation.
“Without statewide action, the buck stops at the county level,” Maynor said. “So counties are taking things into their own hands.”
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