Protect Lowndes County

Take action

Three things,
in this order.

Each one makes the next one stronger. None of them requires you to be an expert, and none of them takes an afternoon.

Two yard signs outside a brick building: one reading LOWNDES COUNTY SAYS "NO" over a quoted statement from a Cloverleaf representative, the other a green Project Red Clay sign directing visitors to a community open house.

The three actions

  1. 1

    Add your name

    Membership is a public count of neighbors who want the whole truth before any vote. It costs nothing, commits you to nothing but staying informed, and it grows the count that the other two actions stand on.

    Become a Member
  2. 2

    Be in the room

    Commission meetings are where the county’s part of this project is decided in public, and where commissioners answer questions on the record. Rooms that are full change what happens in them: residents filled the Charles Smith Building to standing room only in April 2026, and the project has been publicly contested ever since.1

    See meeting dates
  3. 3

    Tell the Public Service Commission

    On July 7, 2026 the Alabama PSC opened Docket 33709, a proceeding reviewing Alabama Power’s large-load data-center contracts. It is open for public comment. A letter from a Lowndes County resident goes on the state’s record, not ours.2

    Comment on Docket 33709

Action three, in detail

How to write the PSC.

Docket 33709 is a generic proceeding the Alabama Public Service Commission opened on July 7, 2026 to review Alabama Power's large-load data-center contracts2. It is open for public comment, which means a letter from a resident becomes part of the state's record rather than a petition on ours.

You do not need legal training. A useful comment says four things:

  1. Who you are and where you live. County residency is the whole reason your comment carries weight.
  2. What is proposed near you. A data center reported to have requested roughly 1,500 megawatts, about ten times the 150-megawatt threshold at which state review is triggered.
  3. What you are asking for. That the cost allocation be made public, and that the Commission confirm the incremental cost of service is recovered from the data-center customer rather than from residential ratepayers.
  4. Why it matters to you. One or two plain sentences in your own words. This part is not decoration; it is the part a regulator remembers.
Open Docket 33709

What we are asking for

Five asks you can read aloud.

  1. Name the tenant before any vote.

    The operator determines the real load, the real water draw, the noise, the job count, and the tax posture. A vote without a named operator is a vote on an unknown.34

  2. Publish the executed water-service contract, not a summary.

    Peak and makeup demand, blowdown, fire flow, and wastewater volume and disposal are all absent from the public record. Elsewhere the executed contract and the public figure have differed by a wide margin.56

  3. Publish the electric-service agreement and the cost-allocation study.

    Residents have been assured that current ratepayers will not be affected. The document that would demonstrate it has not been released, and the Public Service Commission has opened a docket to examine exactly this question.72

  4. State the dollar value of the abatement.

    The county is being asked to decide on a thirty-year commitment whose value to the applicant, and cost to the county, has never been put in public numbers.89

  5. Make the community benefit enforceable, and say who enforces it.

    Nine of the ten million dollars is contingent on milestones. If the project is assigned or sold, it is not established that the promise survives or that the county could enforce it.1011

Not a ban. Disclosure, before the vote instead of after it. A good project survives all five.

If you have more time

Three more that matter.

Ask for the paper, in writing

Alabama’s Open Records Act lets any citizen request public records. The documents that would answer the biggest questions are the executed water-service contract, the electric-service agreement, the site plan on file, any option or deed instrument, and any executed community-benefit gift agreement. Asking creates a record of having asked.

What to request →

Bring the questions that are still open

You do not need to be an engineer to ask a good question. Who is the tenant. What is the peak water draw, not the average. How many generators, burning what, for how many permitted hours. What is the abatement worth in dollars. Who can enforce the community benefit if the project is sold.358

Read the open questions →

Tell your neighbors what you actually know

The most useful thing you can share is a sourced fact, not a rumor. Every number on this site carries its source so you can hand someone the citation, not just the claim. If we get something wrong, tell us and we will correct it in public.

Send a correction →

Sources on this page

  1. ↑

    Residents pack Lowndes County meeting over proposed data center, WSFA 12 (2026-04-29). Meeting coverage — view source

    Accessed 2026-07-27
  2. ↑

    Docket 33709 public comment and reply information, Alabama Public Service Commission (2026-07-07). Generic proceeding — view source

    Accessed 2026-07-12
  3. ↑

    Vault open-question register, Master Evidence Dossier (2026-07-12). Open questions

    Not disclosed by the projectAccessed 2026-07-12
  4. ↑

    Project Red Clay / company description, Cloverleaf Infrastructure (2026-07-10). Developer website, corroborated by Yellowhammer News — view source

    ReportedAccessed 2026-07-27
  5. ↑

    Vault open-question register, Master Evidence Dossier (2026-07-12). Open questions

    Not disclosed by the projectAccessed 2026-07-12
  6. ↑

    Water-service contract obtained by open-records request, Montgomery-area water system (2026-05-01). Open-records production

    ReportedAccessed 2026-07-27
  7. ↑

    Stakeholders consider potential data center project, The Lowndes Signal (2026-05-26). Utility statement — view source

    ReportedAccessed 2026-07-27
  8. ↑

    Vault open-question register, Master Evidence Dossier (2026-07-12). Open questions

    Not disclosed by the projectAccessed 2026-07-12
  9. ↑

    Stakeholders consider potential data center project, The Lowndes Signal (2026-05-26). Commission meeting — view source

    ReportedAccessed 2026-07-12
  10. ↑

    Cloverleaf emphasizes data center benefits amid community concerns, The Lowndes Signal (2026-06-01). Developer statements — view source

    ReportedAccessed 2026-07-12
  11. ↑

    Central Alabama Community Foundation, IRS Form 990 (EIN 63-0842355), ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer (2026-01-01). Nonprofit Explorer — view source

    Accessed 2026-07-27

Last updated

Start with action one.

Adding your name is the fastest of the three, and it is the one the other two stand on. A bigger public count means a fuller room on August 24 and a louder docket.

Become a Member