Molena reservoir, Flint River to supply Hampton data center

The city of Griffin recently agreed to supply treated water to the city of Hampton (in part to supply a new data center) with a maximum amount of up to 5 million gallons per day. The agreement includes a phased approach, so for the first three years, only 750,000 gallons per day will be supplied. The data center project will be on more than 600 acres near Lower Woolsey Road and Atlanta Motor Speedway and is under construction.

The primary sources of water for the city of Griffin are the Flint River and two reservoirs, including the Dr. Brant D. Keller Water Treatment Plant and Reservoir near Molena in Pike County (formerly known as Still Branch Reservoir). The Flint forms the entire western border of Pike County, around 23 miles of river, as it flows southward, separating Pike from Meriwether County.

Gordon Rogers of the Flint Riverkeeper says the organization is keeping an eye on the project and the city of Griffin’s related permits to withdraw from reservoirs and the Flint River. He said there was a move in the 1990s to regionalize a lot of public services – such as water supply – and the city of Griffin became one of those regional water suppliers. Rogers said the group has been working closely with the city of Griffin for decades on water conservation and efficiency and that overall the city has been diligent about following proper and innovative procedures to protect the Flint as a water resource. 

“For years we’ve been working with the city of Griffin and and other utilities in the upper Flint basin. The goal is to be efficient with withdrawals – minimize the withdrawals and maximize the returns. The key is to achieve a proper balance between external customers and internal future needs.”

“It is the Riverkeeper’s, and other conservationists’ job to keep an eye on the drought aspect of this water usage. We’ve never seen all of the upper Flint utilities operate at the top end of their permits during a drought. That’s never happened because they haven’t yet approached the top end of what they’re legally allowed to withdraw.”

On the ‘returns’ side, Rogers said that a draft federal National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) discharge permit is currently under review for the data center, and the comment date closing soon. Information on the permit and how to comment can be viewed at:

https://geos.epd.georgia.gov/GA/GEOS/Public/EnSuite/Shared/pages/util/StreamDoc.ashxid=1167588&type=PERMIT_FILLED_OBJECT.

The deadline for public comment is March 27, 2026. Once the comment period is close and an actual permit is issued, there is a 30-day period when area citizens and other concerned parties could legally appeal the permit in terms of the cleanliness and amount of water that is going to be discharged, the portion of what they are purchasing from the city of Griffin and what will be returned back to the natural source. 

“The owner of the water system – which is essentially the citizens – need to be conscious of how big those permits are and how much water is being shipped away. That is their future. Their permits will likely never get any larger. And, on the discharge end, part of conservation is making sure that when people are done with the water, it’s treated to a suitable quality – and then returned to the system, whether it’s a creek that connects to the river or to the river itself. There’s going to be some evaporation at a data center as it cools the operation which is what the water is used for,” he said. “We need the water to be clean and available for citizens. If it is being put back into system upstream of where it was taken out – and in this case it would be – then that’s not such a bad thing. If the water is clean it can actually be beneficial. But that’s a big if. It’s got to be clean.”

Learn more by contacting Flint Riverkeeper at gordon@flintriverkeeper.org.

Rogers noted that several additional data centers are proposed east of Highway 41and that water would likely not return the water to the Flint River source.

“There are other data centers getting ready to supply water on the other side of the ridge (east of Highway 41) and that water is not coming back to the Flint once it gets over there,” said Rogers. “We have been successful on one of them at getting that volume of water minimized down to about 30,000 gallons of water a day – which is about the amount that a large subdivision would use. A lot of our advocacy work at Flint Riverkeeper has been focused on permits that keep a reasonable cap on withdrawals, with returns being as large as possible and as clean as possible.”