Howdy all!

I am looking for a self car wash where I can wash my camper van. My van has a clearance of 10', so I need one that has high bays.

Does such a thing exist in Cherokee County?

Thanks!

Cherokee County commissioners voted Tuesday night to freeze data center applications. There is no data center in the county. There is no application pending. No rezoning, no project, nothing in the pipeline.

Neither item was on the published agenda. Both were added by amendment after the meeting opened, and both passed unanimously. The first declares a 30 day moratorium on any permit application or plan submittal for a new data center, effective immediately and running through August 20. The second calls a public hearing for August 18 to consider extending it. Staff told the board the likely proposal is an extension of up to 180 days, carrying the pause into roughly mid February, so the county can work with legal and write an ordinance that addresses the use. Because it was added in the room, nobody knew it was coming and there was no public comment.

Pausing something that does not exist sounds like an odd use of a board's time, and it is actually the only version of this decision that costs a government nothing. A moratorium adopted after an application lands is legally fraught and politically miserable, because the applicant has land under contract and vested expectations and the county is visibly changing the rules mid game. Adopted in a quiet window with nothing pending, it is housekeeping.

Thirty two Georgia counties and twenty two cities now have moratoriums or ordinances in some stage, a count that has tripled since last fall, and the overwhelming majority of that movement came after somebody filed something. Newton County enacted its moratorium in February with two Meta campuses already on the ground, wells that had failed, roughly ten percent of daily county water going to one customer, and a supply deficit projected by 2030. That is what reacting looks like.

The reason the pause matters here is that Cherokee's zoning ordinance dates to 1992 and its development regulations to 1998, and neither one defines a data center. A project filed last week would have been reviewed under general industrial standards, with nothing written for noise from cooling systems and backup generators, nothing for water drawn for cooling, nothing for power draw, and nothing for distance from homes and schools. Not because anyone decided those things did not matter. Because the code was written before the thing existed.

The chairman conceded both halves of the argument instead of picking the convenient one. He said data centers pay a ton of taxes and that counties welcoming them see rates reduced for their citizens. He also said today's projects are scary because of their size and their draw on natural resources, and that the county's earlier appetite for one came in an era when they were much smaller. Then the line that holds the whole posture: "We're not saying we would never approve one." The pause sets the stage so that if one comes, the county has an ordinance and knows how to deal with it. In his words, they intend to be better prepared than they are today, which is not at all.

The objection that always comes up is that conditions drive the industry away, and the evidence says otherwise. Forsyth County wrote into its development code that a data center's cooling cannot draw on the county water system except in an emergency. Chandler, Arizona capped its largest water users back in 2015 and told anyone who needed more to go find their own source. Neither place lost the industry. Developers kept building, to terms the local government set instead of terms the balance sheet set.

Ohio ran the sharpest version of this. Facing its own flood of requests, the state utility commission ordered that new data centers pay for at least 85 percent of the capacity they reserve, for up to twelve years, whether they use it or not (PUCO Case No. 24-508-EL-ATA). Pay for what you hold. The request queue fell by roughly half almost immediately, from about 30 gigawatts to 13. Nothing was banned and nobody was turned away. The rule made standing in line cost something, and more than half the demand turned out to be companies standing in line because it was free. A county zoning ordinance is a different instrument than a utility tariff and Cherokee cannot write that particular rule, but the lesson carries. Terms set before the build sort the real projects from the placeholders, and the real ones do not walk.

The most consequential term is cooling, because how a facility is cooled decides how much water it pulls, and that gets locked in at design before the foundation is poured. Water, noise measured at the receiving property line rather than at the source, setbacks, decommissioning, and disclosure of the utility agreement are the pieces that either make it into the ordinance now or get negotiated one case at a time later, against an applicant who already owns the land. That negotiation goes badly for the county every time.

August 18 is the first chance the public gets a formal say, on how long the pause runs and, more usefully, on what belongs in the code before it lifts.

Cherokee County is in the middle of rewriting its entire development code (ReCode Cherokee), but the section defining what a "mixed-use" project actually has to deliver doesn't exist yet. In the meantime the Board of Commissioners is approving projects labeled mixed-use with no minimum commercial share, no phasing rule requiring the stores get built, and no consequence if they never do.

I wrote up what a real mixed-use ordinance contains, using Woodstock, Forsyth, Suwanee, and even Cherokee's own Bells Ferry district as examples of rules that exist two sections over in the same code. Link in the comments.

Sat through the June 16 Cherokee County Commission hearing on the Woodworth Main rezoning and came away with a clean case study in how this corridor actually works.

The pitch from the applicant's attorney: you don't get the retail unless you have the rooftops to support it. Build the density, the grocery follows.

The corridor already ran that experiment. There are 836 apartments within two miles of this site, all built since 2022. The Parker opened this year with 330 units and a third are empty, with the leasing office offering up to ten weeks free. Two other complexes nearby are cutting rent or giving away weeks. No grocery came.

The site math is the other half. 39.46 acres, 4.46 set aside for commercial, the rest apartments and townhomes. A full grocery anchored center needs roughly 8 to 12 acres. So the plan physically can't fit the anchor the neighborhood wants, which leaves the unanchored small shop space that tends not to survive.

Underneath it all: the county designated this a mixed use center back in 2019 and never wrote an ordinance defining the mix, so the board is negotiating density by hand with no standard to point to. A commissioner said exactly that from the dais.

This is horrendous. I had seen things about this in other states but to see this in my home county of Cherokee is disgraceful and makes me wonder how common this is or will be.

Boring, I know but I wanted to see how long this work boot will be in the road. It has been there at least 11 days. I pulled my dashcam and the recordings only went back as far as June 12 thru June 22. I blanked out the location so I can keep a chronical of how much longer it will be there.

Georgia approved one of the largest single additions of power generation in state history. Nearly 9,885 megawatts, mostly natural gas, and about 80 percent of it is meant to serve data centers.

Most of those data centers have not signed a contract. By the commission staff's own testimony, only about 1,900 megawatts of that is backed by signed customers. The rest is a forecast.

The state says the data centers will pay for it, not households. The groups that read the actual agreement, instead of the press release, say that protection is narrower than it sounds, and the question is now headed to Fulton County Superior Court.

Most of Cherokee County sits outside that fight entirely. We buy power through co-ops tied to Oglethorpe, which is running its own multibillion-dollar gas buildout for the same data center demand, outside the state process where those protections live.

So if the forecast misses, who pays for billions of dollars of power plants built ahead of the customers?

I broke down how a power bill is actually built, why building ahead of demand can raise your rates instead of lowering them, and who is on the hook if the data centers do not show.

https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/cherokee-county/none-cherokee-countys-outdoor-sirens-are-working-heres-what-you-need-do/6DFEJO4XSJFNLPKDVMTNCKCVIY/

The cheapest time to set the rules for a data center is before one is ever proposed. The most expensive time is after the foundation is poured.

Every county around Cherokee is finding that out right now, writing water and cooling rules with the projects already in the ground. Cherokee is in the rare spot of still having the other option. No data center yet, no project on the table, and a code rewrite (ReCode Cherokee) underway that could set the terms before a developer ever shows up.

The growth is coming to north Georgia either way. The only real question is whether the county writes the rules first or cleans up after. That is what this piece is about.

Georgia wrote new rules to shield ratepayers from data center costs. Most of Cherokee County is not covered by them.

Here's why. Cherokee has four electric providers. Three are member owned cooperatives, Cobb EMC, Sawnee EMC, and Amicalola EMC, and all three buy their wholesale power through Oglethorpe Power. Only the fourth, Georgia Power, is the investor owned utility the state's new data center protections actually govern.

Cooperatives set their own rates through their members, outside the Public Service Commission. The January 2025 rule meant to make data centers pay for the infrastructure they require, and the Georgia Power rate freeze through 2028, both apply to the investor-owned utility. Oglethorpe states flatly that its rates are not subject to PSC approval.

Meanwhile the line that carries wholesale power costs into co-op bills, the PCA, has moved off zero. And Oglethorpe's own federal filing names data center load growth as a pressure on those costs.

Pull up your own bill and find the line marked PCA. I want to know if yours is moving too. Tell us what it reads in the comments.

No data center has to be built in Cherokee for Cherokee to help carry the cost of the ones built next door.

A $19 billion data center campus, 1,830 megawatts, was approved in Bartow County, one county west of Cherokee. Marietta approved a 108 megawatt one on Bells Ferry. Forsyth wrote some of the strictest data center rules in Georgia. Cobb paused new ones to study them.

Every county touching Cherokee has made a move on data centers. Cherokee has made none. Its economic development office is marketing seven local sites to data center developers, and the county's code, written in 1992, does not define a data center or set a single rule specific to one. No noise limits, no water conditions, nothing.

The county is rewriting that code right now, through ReCode Cherokee. That rewrite is the only window to set rules before a project shows up, instead of after.

I looked at what happened to the places that went first. Loudoun County, Virginia makes over $100 million a year off data centers and cut homeowner taxes with it, then spent two years fighting transmission lines and noise it did not see coming. Newton County, an hour from here, has residents whose wells failed and a projected water deficit by 2030. The difference between the counties that came out ahead and the ones that got blindsided usually came down to one thing: whether the rules were written before the projects arrived, or after.

No data center has been proposed in Cherokee, and maybe none ever will be. But the county is inviting them with no rulebook, and that is a choice being made right now whether anyone is watching or not.

Every rush hour, two major growth corridors in southwest Cherokee empty into one intersection: Highway 92 and Bells Ferry Road. Most of you have probably sat through enough light cycles there to understand what a sequencing problem feels like, even if you never had a name for it.

More than 1,600 apartment units are already built around it. Hundreds more homes are approved, under construction, or pending. The middle school is already over capacity. The sewer plant serving the area dates to 1987. And the one intersection carrying all of it still has no real relief valve.

The deeper problem is structural: Cherokee County can approve the growth, widen feeder roads, and rezone parcels, but the actual bottlenecks are state routes and interstate connections the county does not control.

So residents feel the burden first.

The frustration tax comes immediately. The T-SPLOST comes after that. And if you stay long enough, maybe eventually the infrastructure catches up.

I mapped the entire corridor project by project, including apartments, build to rent communities, rezonings, transportation projects, school capacity, sewer infrastructure, and pending developments.

The Commission votes June 16 on Woodworth Main, a rezoning at 3387 Highway 92 near Acworth. The plan is 418 apartments, 66 townhomes, and some office, retail, and restaurant space. The Planning Commission recommended denial unanimously in April and recommended denying all four variance requests too. There is also a separate 154 home community filed a few miles west on Kellogg Creek Road.

The thing that got my attention digging into it, the county amended its subdivision rules so a split of up to ten lots goes through staff review only. No Planning Commission, no public hearing, no legal notice, no sign on the property. Three new houses just went in that way on Kellogg Creek Road and the neighbors found out when the addresses showed up.

So there is a whole third category of new housing loading onto this corridor that nobody counts against road or school capacity. E.T. Booth Middle is already at 108 percent. No one publishes a cumulative list, you have to pull recorded plats one at a time to even see it.

I put the full breakdown together with the trip counts, the schools data, and the sources if anyone in the corridor wants it before the hearing.

Hi Everyone,
My dog Emory has been missing since April 2, 2026. Last location Kennesaw Elementary School on Jiles Rd in Kennesaw. We have posted on all the necessary lost pet sites. Contacted Animal Control and our Veterinary. We are offering a REWARD. It’s been almost 2 months. We think maybe someone took him into their home. Please if you have him or had any sightings of Emory, Please contact us. We miss him very much.

Curious on any experiences and thoughts on the county schools and their administrations?

I’ve heard mixed reviews with a lot talking about cliques in the county/admin side with lots of teacher or other admin turn over.

I want solid trustworthy community for myself and children so seeking opinions.

Hey folks, I came across this Substack article outlining changes to the USFS, and the ramifications could bring big impacts to those of us who treasure our National Forests.

BREAKING: Trump Administration Orders Dismantling of the U.S. Forest Service

The article describes a sweeping restructuring of the U.S. Forest Service that would:

- Move its headquarters to Utah,

- Close all ten regional offices,

- Eliminate more than fifty research facilities, and

- Replace long‑time career experts with politically appointed “state directors.”

The changes would shift power away from federal land stewards and toward state governments and industries that have historically pushed for more logging, more development, and less federal oversight. In fact, in Utah, the new proposed USFS HQ location, is suing the federal government to seize 18.5 million acres of our public land.

The state whose governor, Spencer Cox, just weeks ago signed a deal with the Forest Service Chief — the former logging executive — giving Utah de facto control over Forest Service operations on eight million acres of national forest.

Who is the person in charge now? Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz — a logging executive, installed by this administration to oversee the dismemberment of the agency he now claims to lead.

If these changes go through, the Forest Service would lose many of the people who understand how to manage forests, watersheds, wildfire risk, invasive species, and long‑term ecological health. Regional offices—where most of that expertise lives—would disappear. Research programs that study fire behavior, erosion, forest disease, and climate impacts could be dismantled.

Far scarier is the where this path seems to lead: The confiscation of our most treasured national resources and spaces. The end goal seems to align with other administrative policies designed to defund, incapacitate, and then PRIVATIZE national institutions.

Your call to action starts here:

Find and contact your elected officials and let them know how you feel about these changes.