The neighbors who sued asked a court to freeze the city’s new data center rules while the case was decided. Court records show that never happened. The rules have been in force for 80 days.
Columbus elected a mayor, four councilors and a school board in 2026. Most of the city sat it out. The numbers say the usual explanations are wrong.
Project Ruby · Analysis The city of Columbus issued a statement Tuesday responding to the lawsuit filed by eight Upatoi residents challenging the Technology Overlay Ordinance. The statement runs four sentences. Three of them describe the process. One of them…
Project Ruby · Lawsuit The legal challenge Columbus residents threatened came Monday. Four days after Mayor Skip Henderson signed the technology overlay ordinance into law, eight Upatoi landowners and Keep It Rural LLC filed suit in Muscogee County Superior Court.…
Project Ruby: The Explainer SeriesPart 4 of 4 Author’s note: The author submitted an alternative ordinance — The People’s Overlay — to all Columbus City Council members, the city attorney, and the mayor before the June 9, 2026 public hearing,…
Project Ruby: The Explainer SeriesPart 3 of 4 Author’s note: The author submitted an alternative ordinance — The People’s Overlay — to all Columbus City Council members, the city attorney, and the mayor before the June 9, 2026 public hearing,…
Project Ruby: The Explainer SeriesPart 2 of 4 Author’s note: The author submitted an alternative ordinance — The People’s Overlay — to all Columbus City Council members, the city attorney, and the mayor before the June 9, 2026 public hearing,…
Project Ruby: The Explainer SeriesPart 1 of 4 The Mother of All Zoning Overlays that no one bothered to explain. Columbus City Council passed it and most coverage moved on. But the document that will actually determine what gets built…
In November 2025, WSB-TV filed open records requests for the water use agreements between data center developers and Georgia counties. The Google-Douglas County agreement came back with every reference to water use specifics blacked out. The question for Columbus is whether that pattern has already arrived here — and whether officials are working from verified information, or representations made by a developer whose interests and the public's diverge at every point where money and water meet.
Columbus Water Works says the city has 90 million gallons of daily treatment capacity. Project Ruby’s 330,000-gallon figure barely touches it. But the Chattahoochee is a shared resource — and what is happening upstream right now, from Newton County to Coweta County to the Ocmulgee basin, should concern anyone who assumes today’s water availability is a reliable guide to tomorrow’s.
