Butts County Rezoned Burt Jones’s Family Data Center Campus

Butts County commissioners rezoned 560 acres on February 2, 2026, for a Jones family campus of 11 million square feet of data centers plus a hospital. The vote turned a two-page state filing into a live mixed-use map along Ga. Highway 16 and Interstate 75.

Interstate Health Systems LLC, partly owned by former state lawmaker Bill Jones, is the developer. His son, Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones, spent two years rewriting hospital construction rules, then lost a governor runoff in June. The zoning is still in force.

Butts County Rezoned 560 Acres in February

The tract sits in unincorporated Butts County on both sides of I-75. Commissioners shifted it from agricultural-residential, office-residential, and highway commercial zoning to planned mixed-use. Houses are barred on every pod.

The Jones family’s Butts County data center plan is filed with the state as Highway 16 Interstate Health Development, DRI No. 4560. The Georgia Department of Community Affairs marked that review completed on November 15, 2025. The filing lists a 2040 finish date and treats the work as a continuation of the nearby River Park industrial site.

Mixed-used: commercial, industrial, and hospital (medical) development consisting of approximately 11 million square feet of data center(s), 1.2 million square feet of medical office space and/or services, 450,000 square feet of hospital, and 500,000 square feet of assorted commercial, including, but not limited to, restaurants, grocery store, and/or hotels.

Georgia Department of Community Affairs, DRI No. 4560 initial form

That mix is why the name on the folder still says health. The floor area in the same form is dominated by 11 million square feet of data centers, with shops and hotels listed last.

HOW THE 560 ACRES BREAK DOWN

The three pods add up to about 548 acres inside the 560-acre rezoning. Chairman Joe Brown and Commissioners Jeremiah Hosford and Mike Wilson voted yes. Commissioner Keith Douglas was absent. Commissioner Russ Crumbley recused himself, citing a family tie to the owner.

Permits still wait on a traffic study from Bailey Jester Road to Joe Lane Road, paid by the developer, and on development agreements the board must approve first. Until those papers land, the change on the map is the hard fact.

A 2024 Hospital Law Did the Legal Work

The medical wing is not a side note in state law. It is the piece that no longer needs a certificate of need, the permit Georgia uses to ration new hospital beds. Ed Whitehouse, a consultant for Interstate Health Systems, described a hospital of at least 150 beds when he walked the site in 2024. Wellstar Health System, which runs 25-bed Sylvan Grove Medical Center in Jackson, said then that another hospital in the area was not needed.

Bill Jones, a former legislator whose businesses include fuel, stores, and restaurants, has said his wife already travels more than 40 miles to Emory in Atlanta. “Health care ought not to be about politics,” he said. Burt Jones has said the point is travel time. “It will give people access to health care in a reasonable travel time and convenience for them as well,” he said.

Butts County’s population is about 27,000, which fits Georgia’s rural definition. That is the hinge the 2024 statute uses.

THE PATH FROM A HOSPITAL BILL TO A ZONING MAP

1. 2023: Jones’s first push to rewrite hospital construction rules falls short in the General Assembly.
2. April 19, 2024: Gov. Brian Kemp signs House Bill 1339, adding a rural hospital certificate of need exemption for new acute-care hospitals that take Medicaid and Medicare, run indigent care, and meet other tests.
3. July 1, 2024: The exemption takes effect. The bill does not name Butts County. A rural county of this size qualifies.
4. October 2025: The state impact filing adds the data-center floor area around the hospital and medical offices.
5. November 15, 2025: The regional review is marked completed. Department of Community Affairs Commissioner Christopher Nunn has told lawmakers the process is a communication tool, not a veto, and that the local government keeps the final say.
6. February 2, 2026: The Butts County board rezones the land.

Whitehouse has rejected the cash-in charge. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said of claims that Bill Jones was imposing a family project on the county. The sequence still reads the same on paper: the hospital law moved first, the data halls filled in the acreage, and three commissioners closed the local gate.

The Water Plants Do Not Have 4.5 Million Gallons to Spare

The state filing behind the project puts daily water use at more than 4.5 million gallons and the price tag at $10 billion, with about $92 million a year in taxes if the campus is finished by 2040. Cooling method and megawatt load are not in that file.

Butts County, et al. Water & Sewer Authority draws a blended supply from the Ocmulgee and Towaliga Rivers in the Upper Ocmulgee watershed. Its 2024 quality report says the two treatment plants send roughly 800 million gallons of drinking water a year, which is about 2.2 million gallons a day.

PLANT CAPACITY AGAINST THE FILING

• Annual output: About 800 million gallons in 2024 from the Burford and Stewart plants combined.
• Rated capacity: 4.0 million gallons a day at Emerson L. Burford on the Ocmulgee, plus 1.0 million at Gerald L. “Buck” Stewart on the Towaliga, or 5.0 million gallons a day in all.
• Spare room: About 2.8 million gallons a day if current output holds near 2.2 million.
• The filing: More than 4.5 million gallons a day, which leaves a gap of about 1.7 million gallons a day against that spare room.

The campus would use more water in a year, about 1.64 billion gallons if the daily figure holds, than the authority treated in 2024. Something has to give: a plant expansion, a new source, a much drier cooling design, or a smaller build. None of those answers is in the two-page filing the county used as its public record.

Residential customers in the county pay a base bill that covers 2,000 gallons, then $6.50 per 1,000 gallons in county. The authority’s own average house uses 5,000 gallons a month, for a $36.50 water bill. A campus billed at industrial scale would dwarf that math, but only after the pipes and plants exist to move the water.

Thirty Campuses Are Lining Up on One Basin

Fletcher Sams, executive director of the Altamaha Riverkeeper, said in December 2025 that he was already tracking this project plus 24 other data centers in the upper Ocmulgee basin, on a corridor that is expected to add about 740,000 residents by 2060. By March 2026, basin tallies had risen to 30 planned campuses. Sixteen had posted water figures totaling 12 million gallons a day, with more than 9 million gallons a day not returned to the river.

“Here’s what I don’t know: I don’t know how many megawatts it is. I also don’t know the cooling technology that they will use to cool the chips,” Sams said. Those two blanks still sit on the Interstate Health file.

Georgia requires a state withdrawal permit for a direct river or well pull above 100,000 gallons a day. A campus that buys from a city or county system does not trigger that permit. Environmental Protection Division officials have described those users as ordinary municipal customers and have said they are folded into demand forecasts rather than given their own surface-water permit.

WHERE THE STATE STEPS BACK

• City water: A data hall on a municipal tap skips the industrial withdrawal permit that a river intake would face.
• Regional review: The DRI file is advisory. Nunn has said his agency is a repository, and neighbors talking to neighbors.
• Local veto: Zoning and utility commitment letters are the live controls, which is why three Butts County votes mattered more than the state form.
• Missing figures: Fourteen of the 30 basin campuses had not posted water estimates when trackers counted them in March 2026.

Amy Sharma, executive director of Science for Georgia, has tallied about 40 data-center plans statewide at roughly 14 gigawatts, enough, per U.S. Department of Energy conversion, to run 1.4 billion LED bulbs. Georgia Power has said data centers will take about 80 percent of new power in the state through 2031. “It’s not sustainable,” Sharma said.

The February Zoning Survived the June Runoff

Jones, a Republican, ran for governor with endorsements from Donald Trump and Gov. Brian Kemp. He led the May 19, 2026, primary with 358,184 votes, or 38.4 percent. Health-care executive Rick Jackson took 32.5 percent. Then-Attorney General Chris Carr finished with 11.9 percent and later backed Jackson.

Jackson won the June 16 runoff, 373,543 votes (52.6 percent) to Jones’s 336,011 (47.4 percent), after spending more than $100 million of his own money. Jones remains lieutenant governor until January 11, 2027. He is not on the November 3 ballot. Jackson faces Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms.

Carr had already made the Butts County tract a campaign prop. A billboard over the site, paid for by Keep Georgia Strong Action Inc., called it “Burt Jones’ $10 billion family project” and “Burt Jones’ family payday.” In October 2025 Carr put the charge in his own words.

If you honor me by allowing me to be your next Governor, unlike the Lt. Governor, I will promise you this: I will not change the rules or rig the system to enrich myself or my family on your backs or the backs of our fellow Georgians.

Chris Carr, then a candidate for governor, October 2025 post

If you honor me by allowing me to be your next Governor, unlike the Lt. Governor, I will promise you this: I will not change the rules or rig the system to enrich myself or my family on your backs or the backs of our fellow Georgians. https://t.co/3sQATRX3aY

— Chris Carr (@ChrisCarr_Ga) October 15, 2025

Jones spokesperson Kayla Lott called the filing “a simple rezoning application by a private company” and “a nonstory” that December. The board rezoned the land two months later. In June, Jones said a developer across the road had sold to Amazon, that his family was not selling that tract, and that eminent domain was not part of the deal. Amazon’s Butts County work is a separate campus. Mixing the two sites was a habit in local argument throughout the runoff, and it blurred who would actually draw the 4.5 million gallons on the Interstate Health form.

The runoff ads treated data centers as a personality test. They did not test plant capacity, return flows, or who pays if the Ocmulgee runs short. Jones lost. The P-M map did not.

Three Commissioners Called Industrial Taxes the Point

Hosford and Wilson said they voted yes because constituents talk first about property taxes. “This is an opportunity for industry to come in and help shoulder the tax burden,” Hosford said. County Manager Brad Johnson has made the same pitch, tying the campus to a thinner residential tax base and to shops residents now leave the county to find.

“We’re looking forward for some commercial or industrial tax generation to help take the burden off of our citizens, so I think not just Butts County, I think the entire region will benefit by the proposed project,” Johnson said.

Two residents spoke for the project at the hearing, including Fred Head, 72, a former county commissioner. The $92 million tax figure in the state filing is a 2040 number, not a check the county can cash this budget year. Neighboring Spalding County, which wrote tighter data-center water rules, has watched applicants drift toward jurisdictions that move faster. The Butts County vote is the other half of that comparison: a county that wanted the tax base and took the land-use risk.

Dan Diorio, vice president of state policy at the Data Center Coalition, has written that those tax dollars fund schools, roads, and public safety. That claim sits beside a water system whose spare 2.8 million gallons a day do not cover the filing, and beside a hospital that still has no named operating partner on the public record.

What the State Filing Still Leaves Out

The December 2025 public file was thin, and the February rezoning did not thicken it. Megawatts, cooling gear, a utility commitment letter, and a hospital operator are still not in the DRI initial form. Sams’s questions from last winter remain the right ones, because the river does not care that the land is now P-M.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The map: 560 acres are zoned planned mixed-use for data centers, a nonprofit hospital and medical offices, and commercial uses, with houses banned.
• The law: A rural hospital on this site does not need a certificate of need under the 2024 statute, if it meets the Medicaid, Medicare, and indigent-care tests.
• The water math: The filing’s 4.5 million gallons a day is larger than the spare capacity of the Burford and Stewart plants at current output.
• The office: Jones is still lieutenant governor. He is not the nominee for governor.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Cooling and load: No public megawatt figure or cooling design for Interstate Health’s data halls.
• The hospital: No named health system has signed on to build or run the 450,000-square-foot building.
• The pipes: No released plan shows how the authority would add 1.7 million gallons a day of treatment, or whether the campus would use recycled water.
• The tenant: No hyperscale name is on the Interstate Health pods, and Amazon’s nearby land is a different deal.

Development permits still require those county agreements. The zoning is already in place, on land Bill Jones’s company controls, under a hospital law his son helped pass, with a water demand the local plants cannot meet from the spare gallons they have now.