Google isn’t wasting any time getting to work on one of its two planned data center sites in Dorchester County.
The Silicon Valley internet search and marketing company has filed for a permit this month that would allow it to clear timber and installing erosion controls on property in rural area near St. George.
The subsidiary of technology giant Alphabet Inc., using the alias Project Pecan, has asked the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control for approval that would also allow the mass grading of 325 acres and construction of access roads to the site.
The permit application, which the agency is reviewing, would also allow construction of four stormwater detention ponds. Nearly nine acres of wetlands would be filled by the work if approved, according to the request.
A Google spokesman said March 28 that the company had no update on potential construction of the data center at the intersection of U.S Highway 78 and Pecan Tree Road. In February, Google said it planned to hold on to the property near the county-operated Winding Woods Commerce Park for future needs, depending on business conditions.
Google, which uses numerous aliases in its economic development pursuits, bought the property through Gannett Enterprises LLC. It’s part of a pair of land deals near rural St. George that netted the company roughly 567 acres for about $25.5 million.
The data center would join another that Google has planned for the county’s Pine Hill Business Campus, located on U.S. Highway 17-A west of Summerville. That $510 million project is also in the permitting stages and appears to be further along with both water and electric deals lined up.
Data centers like the ones Google operates use large amounts of power and water to run and cool their banks of computer servers, although the company and the utilities providing those resources say the totals are a secret.
Google has not said how many jobs the Pine Hill project will create, but data centers typically aren’t big employers.
Dorchester County Council approved some of the biggest financial incentives in county history to lure the private-sector tech employer. They would cut the data center operator’s property taxes to a fixed rate of 4 percent of the assessed value of any land and buildings it owns and occupies for up to 53 years. The data center operator will also receive a 100 percent refund of taxes it pays on personal property, such as vehicles, and the county sold land it owned — both at Pine Hill and near St. George — to Google for discounted prices.
Google is among a handful of big tech companies, including Amazon and Microsoft, that are building the infrastructure for an enormous amount of computer power that will be needed as the adoption of artificial intelligence grows. The data centers also help direct internet traffic and support other online services.
The Dorchester County sites will join another data center that Google completed in 2007 at the Mount Holly Commerce Park off U.S. Highway 52 near Moncks Corner in neighboring Berkeley County.
