Residents Stopped a Data Center, but a Gas Plant Still Threatens This Black Community

For nine months, the Rev. Edward Moultrie of St. Paul CME Church and his congregation filled county meetings, urging officials to reject a proposal for a massive data center near their church and homes. They warned that the project near Walterboro, South Carolina, would threaten the waterways they rely on and bring pollution to their […] The post Residents Stopped a Data Center, but a Gas Plant Still Threatens This Black Community appeared first on Capital B News.

Oct 6, 2026 - 16:47

Residents Stopped a Data Center, but a Gas Plant Still Threatens This Black Community

For nine months, the Rev. Edward Moultrie of St. Paul CME Church and his congregation filled county meetings, urging officials to reject a proposal for a massive data center near their church and homes. They warned that the project near Walterboro, South Carolina, would threaten the waterways they rely on and bring pollution to their doorstep.

On Monday, they won.

In January, two weeks after Capital B first wrote about the proposal, residents sued Colleton County over its effort to change the zoning code to allow data centers in rural areas. This week, the Southern Environmental Law Center reached an agreement with the county to resolve that lawsuit.

The fight in Colleton County underscored a pattern in where these facilities are proposed. Last year, after a majority-white county in Georgia blocked a data center, the data center developer, Eagle Rock Partners, proposed a similar project in Colleton County, where the share of Black residents is nearly twice as high. Analyses have found that communities closest to U.S. data centers regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency are “overwhelmingly” nonwhite.

Moultrie said the settlement “is a relief.”

“I can’t preach to my people that God is making a way for them and offering them hope, and then have something like this come into the community to take people’s hope away,” he said. “Black people here have worked hard all their lives to survive and thrive and protect their land. It gives us some kind of sense of pride knowing that we’re not going to go by the wayside or be destroyed or taken for granted — for now.”

With the settlement, the county has agreed to establish a “Data Center Exclusion Area” that prohibits data centers across the majority of the ACE Basin in Colleton County, which is a rural area home to ecologically sensitive animals and some of the most important waterways in South Carolina.

The exclusion area includes the land where the data center was proposed in December 2025. The data center would have been over 800 acres, making it one of the largest in the South, which has become the epicenter of data center development.

“I have lived in the ACE Basin my entire life, right here in Colleton County. My family has been here for generations. The original data center complex that was proposed would have surrounded my property on three sides and completely changed the area,” said Miles Crosby, one of the residents who brought the lawsuit. “I’m thankful we could reach an outcome that not only prevents data centers from surrounding my home but also protects the majority of the ACE Basin in Colleton County from data center development.”

In the first half of 2026, at least 115 data centers nationwide were blocked by local residents. The blocked projects’ price tags totaled roughly $200 billion, according to Data Center Watch, a group tracking data center development.

At the same time, data center development continues to climb. August saw the most money ever spent on data center construction in the U.S., up more than 73% over the past 12 months.

The struggle for local Black communities is not over. A new fossil fuel plant, partially proposed to keep this and other data centers running, is moving forward in a majority-Black area located in Colleton County. The methane gas power plant would result in more than $30 million in local health care costs as residents begin to struggle through respiratory illnesses, according to a pollution analysis by the Southern Environmental Law Center.

The pollution from gas power plants — fine particulate matter known as PM2.5 — can penetrate deep into the lungs and bloodstream, causing respiratory and cardiovascular disease. It is linked to asthma attacks, strokes, dementia, and cancer. Black Americans have the highest death rate from such pollution in the U.S.

Chris DeScherer, the South Carolina office director for the Southern Environmental Law Center, said the group will continue to “help ensure that any data center projects in Colleton County and beyond are developed responsibly with respect to surrounding communities and natural resources.”