Savannah City Council voted unanimously on August 27 to impose a 155-day moratorium on large-scale data centers within city limits. The pause covers data-center developments with an electrical capacity of 10 megawatts or more, along with construction or conversion of industrial buildings of 200,000 square feet or larger for data-center use.
The policy conversation has since spread beyond Savannah. On September 11, the Chatham County Board of Commissioners enacted its own moratorium on large-scale data centers in unincorporated parts of the county, following earlier pauses in Savannah, Garden City and Bloomingdale.
The project that pushed the issue into view is not inside Savannah at all. It is OpenAI’s Project Camellia in neighboring Effingham County.
What the ordinance actually does
The 155-day window gives Savannah time to develop zoning classifications and standards for a category of development that its existing code was not written to handle. City officials have pointed to electrical demand, water use, land use, neighborhood effects and infrastructure costs as issues that need to be understood before large facilities are approved.
Before the moratorium, Savannah had no defined use or classification for data centers in its zoning ordinance. Applications therefore would have required an individualized determination about how a proposed facility fit within existing classifications rather than moving through a data-center-specific rule set.
The 10-megawatt figure is the moratorium’s trigger, not a previous maximum written into Savannah’s zoning code. OpenAI says it is contracting with Georgia Power for 3.2 gigawatts of power for Project Camellia, with delivery planned in phases between 2028 and 2032. Since 3.2 gigawatts equals 3,200 megawatts, that planned power requirement is 320 times Savannah’s 10-megawatt threshold.
Why Effingham changed the math
OpenAI announced Project Camellia on July 22. The company describes it as a long-term data-center project it is designing and developing in Effingham County, rather than a completed facility or one already operating at the announced scale.
OpenAI has also said the project remains at the beginning of the development process, with significant work still required on infrastructure, phasing, design, financing and the operating model. That distinction matters because the proposed 3.2-gigawatt power requirement describes the planned buildout, not current consumption.
For Savannah, the announcement made a previously abstract zoning question immediate. City officials have said operators have already shown interest in the area, giving the council a reason to create standards before an application forces those decisions to be made case by case.
Project Camellia itself sits outside Savannah’s jurisdiction, so the city moratorium does not stop it. What the project did was give local officials a nearby example of the scale that future proposals could bring.
The pattern spreading across the country
Savannah is not acting alone. Governing reported in August that dozens of localities had adopted data-center moratoriums as communities tried to catch their zoning and infrastructure rules up with the pace of new proposals.
The recurring concerns include electrical demand, water use, noise, land consumption and the infrastructure needed to support very large facilities. Moratoriums give local governments a temporary window to decide where data centers belong, what studies should be required and what development standards should apply before approvals resume.
The Savannah-area response now extends across several jurisdictions. Garden City and Bloomingdale acted earlier, Savannah adopted its 155-day pause in August, and Chatham County followed with its own restriction in September. That makes the debate less about a single OpenAI proposal and more about how the region plans for a new class of industrial development.
What residents should expect next
Savannah’s moratorium does not permanently close the city to data centers. It gives staff and council time to establish a defined use, development standards and a process for evaluating the infrastructure effects of future proposals.
Chatham County’s September 11 action now creates a similar pause in unincorporated areas. The county moratorium is scheduled to expire on February 16, 2027, with the possibility of an extension while officials complete their regulatory work.
Inside Savannah, the practical effect during the moratorium is straightforward: new data-center development at 10 megawatts or more, and covered industrial-building conversions, are temporarily paused while the city writes the rules that would govern them.
The bigger decision comes when those temporary restrictions expire. A moratorium does not answer whether Savannah should become a major data-center market. It determines whether the city gets to write that answer before the next proposal arrives.