Several homeowners near Meta’s massive Newton County data center have filed a lawsuit accusing the tech company and others of tainting their water and destroying their rural way of life.
They allege the extensive tree clearing, blasting and excavation required to construct the more than $1 billion campus disturbed the area’s underground aquifer, polluting their well water with silt and sediment that clogged their water lines and damaged their appliances.
The clear-cutting of swaths of trees led to sporadic dust storms while, at night, the data center’s bright white lights can be seen from their homes and obscure the stars, according to the complaint.
“The Plaintiffs did not consent to the introduction of muddy water, turbidity, silt, sediment, fines, clays, excessive evening light intrusion, noise, particulate and chemical air emissions onto their properties.” the complaint, filed in Gwinnett County on Monday, reads.
Credit: (Ben Gray for the AJC)
Credit: (Ben Gray for the AJC)
The legal action is the culmination of years of frustration and concern about the facility and comes at a time when power-and-water intensive data centers, and the tech companies behind them, face increasing blowback nationwide. Georgia in particular has positioned itself as a key market in recent years, doling out billions of dollars in tax breaks in a play to benefit from the frantic artificial intelligence boom.
Still, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll in April found nearly 53% of likely Republican primary voters disapprove of a data center in their community. Among their Democratic counterparts, opposition topped 75%.
The lawsuit also names the Joint Development Authority of Jasper, Morgan, Newton and Walton Counties, a government agency known as a JDA, which manages the industrial park occupied by Meta and provided key tax incentives for the construction of the facility. These counties receive annual payments from Meta of up to $5 million, according to the complaint.
Located 45 minutes east of downtown Atlanta, the project first broke ground in 2018. Meta, founded by Mark Zuckerberg, owns popular social media apps Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
In a statement to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Meta said a study the company commissioned found that groundwater flows away from the plaintiffs’ properties, adding that all water used in the construction and operation of the facility comes from a local utility.
“While we are committed to being a good community partner,” the statement continued, “we will still defend ourselves from baseless lawsuits.”
A JDA spokesperson said Monday the authority “received notice of the lawsuit today and will thoroughly review the matter and respond as appropriate.”
This dispute received national attention earlier this year when U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, visited the home of two of the plaintiffs, Beverly and Jeff Morris, who say their water has turned a murky brown since the construction of the data center.
The Morrises, who filed suit with three other families, declined to be interviewed by the AJC but allowed a reporter and photographer to visit their home and they showed how their new neighbor and the alleged water issues affect their daily life.
The couple paid $265,000 to buy the house and its 6-acre lot in 2016. What once was a forest has been clear-cut of most of its trees, revealing one of Meta’s data centers across from their driveway.
Credit: (Ben Gray for the AJC)
Credit: (Ben Gray for the AJC)
The AJC reporter witnessed the 55-gallon water tank that the Morrises fill up each morning at a neighbor’s home to give their horses their daily water. The couple flushes their water filter every two days, collecting jars of the muddy runoff that ranges from the color of iced tea to used fry oil. Water jugs are clustered in corners of their house to supply an office water cooler placed in their kitchen, which they use for cooking, cleaning, drinking and giving to their dog.
Shortly after her visit to the Morrises’ home, Ocasio-Cortez brought a jar of what she said was their muddy water to a congressional hearing where she pressed a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official on whether the agency was aware of the water quality issues faced by people living near data centers. The exchange went viral online.
“The only difference between clean water and this,” Ocasio-Cortez said, turning the jar over in her hand — “is a data center.”
Credit: (Ben Gray for the AJC)
Credit: (Ben Gray for the AJC)
In an unsigned letter following the hearing, EPA said neither the agency or the state of Georgia regulates private drinking water wells.
A June 2025 letter Meta sent to the Morrises and obtained by the AJC apologized to the family and laid out some steps the company would take to dim and obscure the lights from the data center.
But the company said that a review it commissioned determined the construction and operation of the campus was likely not the cause of the water issues the family was experiencing.
Credit: Courtesy Beverly Morris
Credit: Courtesy Beverly Morris
Meta’s data center complex was among the first of its kind in Georgia, joining only a handful of large computer server warehouses that primarily powered cloud services and digital platforms. In hindsight, it acted as a harbinger for what was to come once generative AI shook the tech landscape in late 2022.
Since then, metro Atlanta went from the sixth-largest data center market in the U.S. to the second-largest in the world by 2025, according to data from real estate services firm CBRE. It’s part of an unprecedented spending spree on digital infrastructure to power AI by Big Tech firms, including Meta.
With that sudden surge in development has come a swift backlash. Concerns over data centers’ power needs, water usage, size and proximity to residential areas has led many cities and counties to implement moratoriums and rewrite their zoning codes.
Examples like the Morrises’ murky water have been cited as warning signs for others to heed when contemplating whether to accept these projects.
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