Bessemer, Ala. Delays Vote on $14.5 Billion Data Center
City Council holds off amid concerns over water use, environmental impact
July 16, 2025 – Bessemer, Alabama has put the brakes on a proposed $14.5 billion data center.
Bessemer’s City Council voted Tuesday to delay a vote to rezone 700 acres of land for the site. The decision comes just weeks after the City’s zoning commission voted to recommend the proposal to the City Council. Only one member of the zoning commission had opposed the approval.
Logistic Land Investment’s proposed data center has received pushback from local residents and environmental activists alike, who have raised concerns about the center’s impact on the local community and environment.
Logistic’s representative Brad Kaaber told the council that the center would bring 330 high-paying jobs and that all regulations regarding noise, health, and environmental risks would be followed. Still, residents voiced concerns over transparency and location.
"We know the city wants their data center but there's other places they can put this," said local resident Ron Morgan, who spoke at the July 15 City Council meeting. David Havron, resident of neighboring county McCalla added, "We're not against data centers, we're just against where they are putting it. Move it to an area that's built up for this or further away from the community, we'd be fine with it."
The proposed data center would include 18 buildings totaling around 4.5 million square feet. The end-user for the center has not been disclosed, and city council members have signed a non-disclosure agreement prohibiting them from discussing it.
On Monday, representatives from the Center for Biological Diversity warned the council that failure to delay the rezoning proposal could result in potential legal action. The environmental group argued that water usage from the facility would severely endanger the watercress darter and the recently discovered Birmingham darter.
The project’s total water usage remains a mystery. A regulatory filing by county officials estimated that the site would consume up to two billion gallons of water per day. Meanwhile, reports surfaced Saturday that Logistic had requested two million gallons of water per day for the project, a figure 1000 times smaller than the county estimate. A smaller data center in Jackson County, Alabama uses more than 182 million gallons of water per day.
Even if the data center used only two million gallons of water per day, it would still strain local resources. The Warrior River Water Authority, which services the area where the data center would be built, has said it cannot supply that amount of water without significant upgrades to its facilities, which would take years to complete.
Frustrations about the project’s lack of transparency were not just limited to county residents. Jefferson County Commission President Jimmy Stephens told the city’s planning and zoning commission in June that he had not been informed about the project.
“No one has,” he said. “The way I found out about this project was through the news media. Normally we were in the loop, in this particular incident we weren’t.”
Member discussion