The words, without
the fog.

The words that appear in the tax agreement and the things attached to it.

The deal

Abatementtax abatement

A formal agreement in which a local government gives up some or all of the property taxes on a project for a set number of years. The taxes are not deferred; they are waived.

The abatement term at issue here is 30 years. The Commission chairman committed three times at the May 26, 2026 meeting not to vote for a 30-year abatement.¹

Education millage

The share of the property tax that funds local schools. Because an abatement waives property tax, it can waive the school share along with the rest unless that share is explicitly carved out and the carve-out is written into the resolution.

Community-benefits pledge

Money or commitments a developer offers a community alongside a project, usually outside the tax agreement itself.

Here the developer describes $10 million over the project lifecycle through the Central Alabama Community Foundation: $1 million upfront and $9 million milestone-gated, with $4 million of that depending on an electric-service contract and Public Service Commission approval. The foundation named as the vehicle reports roughly $107 million in charitable assets. The gift-agreement terms, including fee structure and disbursement schedule, are not public.²³

Special-purpose vehicleSPV

A separate legal entity, usually a limited liability company, created to hold a single project. It is an ordinary financing structure, not a sign of anything improper.

It matters for records requests. Filings may be made in the name of a project-specific company rather than the developer everyone recognizes, so a search for the parent name alone can come back empty.

Tenantend user

The company that would actually operate the data center once it is built, as distinct from the company assembling the site.

The end user of this project has not been named. That is a genuine unknown rather than a withheld fact, and we do not name a candidate.⁴

The physical inputs, and the words used to describe who pays for them.

Power and water

MegawattMW

One million watts. A unit of power, meaning the rate electricity is used at any moment, not a total amount consumed.

This project is reported to have requested roughly 1,500 megawatts from Alabama Power. Study status, ramp schedule, and contract terms are not public.⁵

GigawattGW

One thousand megawatts.

The developer states it is pursuing 10 to 15 gigawatts of peak capacity across all of its sites, which is the sense in which this county is one node in a national pipeline.⁶

Substation

The facility that steps voltage up or down between long-distance transmission lines and local distribution. A large data center needs its own on-site substation, plus upgrades to existing substations upstream.

Behind-the-meter

An arrangement where a large user connects directly to a generator instead of taking power through the utility grid the rest of us are on.

It is worth knowing the term because it determines whether the cost of new generation shows up on other customers’ bills or stays with the user causing it.

Capacity-market clearing price

The price set at regional auctions for a promise of future generating capacity. It is a cost of standing ready, separate from the cost of electricity actually used, and it flows through to residential bills.

In the PJM region, capacity prices rose sharply for the 2025 to 2026 delivery year.⁷

Large-load rate class

A separate rate category for very large electricity customers, written so that the costs they cause are billed to them rather than spread across everyone.

Virginia regulators approved one for data centers above 25 megawatts, effective January 2027. Alabama has not adopted an equivalent.⁷

Ratepayer

A customer of a regulated utility. In this context, the household whose bill absorbs costs that are not assigned to the large user causing them.

The chair of the county economic development board cited assurances from Alabama Power and PowerSouth that current ratepayers will not be impacted. The contract and cost-allocation study that would support that assurance are not public.⁸

Tariff

The schedule of rates and conditions a regulated utility files with the Public Service Commission. A tariff is enforceable. A statement at a meeting is not.

This is the practical difference between an assurance about ratepayers and a protection for them.⁸

Cooling tower

The structure that removes heat from a facility by evaporating water. Water leaves the site as vapor and has to be replaced, which is why a facility that recirculates water still consumes it.

Closed-loop cooling

A cooling system that recirculates water within one internal circuit rather than continuously drawing fresh water for it.

The developer describes closed-loop cooling drawing up to 100,000 gallons per day from the Pintlala Water System, framed as a one-time fill. The term describes one circuit inside the building, not the whole facility: makeup water, evaporation, blowdown, and wastewater are separate questions, and peak demand as opposed to average is not in the record.⁹¹⁰

Diesel backup generator

On-site engines that keep servers running through a grid outage. Large facilities keep banks of them and test them periodically.

They emit substantially more nitrogen oxides than equivalent natural-gas generation, and during an extended outage one facility can release a large share of its annual permitted emissions in days. The number proposed here, their fuel, and their permitted run hours are not disclosed.¹¹

Two Alabama instruments that are routinely confused, and the venues where this gets decided.

The law

Act 2026-610from SB270

A law taking effect October 1, 2026. It requires the Public Service Commission to find that a large-load data-center contract recovers its incremental electric-service costs from the data-center customer, and that it produces positive benefits for other retail customers.

It defines a large-load customer as one with expected peak demand of at least 150 megawatts on contiguous parcels. The request reported for this project is roughly ten times that threshold.¹²¹³

HB399

A separate bill, frequently confused with Act 2026-610. It caps data-center property-tax abatements at 20 years for any abatement granted on or after January 1, 2027, down from the 30-year ceiling under the 2012 Data Processing Center Act. A further 10 years, to a maximum of 30, is available only where the user meets the investment thresholds and enters a binding written agreement approved by the Alabama Department of Revenue, the Department of Commerce, and the affected local governing body. Qualified local investments expressly include support for public K-12 schools.

Two dates get mixed up here, so it is worth separating them. The act itself took effect June 1, 2026. January 1, 2027 is the date from which the cap applies to abatements granted. An abatement granted before that date is not subject to the 20-year cap, which is what makes the deadline matter locally.¹⁴¹⁵

Public Service CommissionPSC

The elected state body that regulates utilities in Alabama, including Alabama Power. It is where rates and large-load contracts are reviewed, and it is a separate venue from the county commission.

Docket 33709

The generic proceeding the Alabama Public Service Commission opened on July 7, 2026 to review Alabama Power large-load data-center contracts. It is open for public comment.

It is the venue that exists to test exactly the question of whether large users pay their own costs.¹⁶

Recusal

Stepping aside from a decision because of a structural or financial conflict of interest. Recusal is a normal governance practice, and asking for it is not an accusation.

The relevant overlap here is structural: the chair of the body recruiting the project also sits on the board of a water system named as a source for it. We have not been able to fully verify that overlap, and no adjudication of it exists.¹⁷

Title VICivil Rights Act of 1964

The federal statute barring discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in programs receiving federal money.

In May 2023 the U.S. Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services announced an interim resolution agreement with the Alabama Department of Public Health over the Lowndes County sanitation crisis, the first federal environmental-justice action of its kind. It was terminated on April 11, 2025. The underlying conditions and the documentary record remain.¹⁸¹⁹

Who is who, and which one actually votes.

The bodies

Site developer

A company that acquires land and secures power to create a ready-to-build site, then sells the assembled package to an operator.

This is the model in use here. In Port Washington, Wisconsin the same developer assembled and annexed 1,900 acres and then transferred the package for an $8 billion campus, which is the cycle running to completion.²⁰²¹

Hyperscalerhyperscale

A hyperscale data center is the largest class of facility, often several very large buildings drawing city-scale power and water. Hyperscalers are the small number of cloud and AI companies that operate them.

We do not list candidates, because the end user of this project is genuinely unnamed and a list invites a reader to guess.²⁰

LCEDCLowndes County Economic Development Commission

The body recruiting the project on behalf of the county. It is not the body that votes on an abatement; the County Commission is.

Its IRS Form 990 for fiscal 2024 answers four governance questions in the negative: no written conflict-of-interest policy, no whistleblower policy, no document retention and destruction policy, and no process for reviewing executive or contractor compensation. We carry that at a lower grade until we can put the primary document in front of you.²²

If a term you needed is missing, tell us and we will add it. For the full evidence inventory rather than definitions, see Sources.

Last updated2026-07-27