A proposal to construct a $3 billion data center called “Project Spero” in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, has attracted considerable controversy and backlash.

Although a proposal to grant tax incentives for the project passed its first reading at a council meeting last November, a second reading that was supposed to take place in December was delayed at the request of the developer.

But WSPA has reported that the County Council is set to delay the meeting further, and it is unclear whether the proposal will be considered by the council at its next meeting on January 26.

Residents in the area have rallied against Project Spero. Details of the project are unclear - there is little information about the facility other than its cost - and a petition, titled ‘Stop Data Centers Coming to Upstate, SC’ has gathered more than 1,200 signatures at time of writing.

The petition is concerned with “three [data] centers currently in progress or pending vote for Spartanburg and Cherokee County residents,” and cites concerns about energy use, water use, air pollution, and procedural problems.

It also calls for a temporary moratorium on data centers in progress or pending vote “until adequate regulations can be enacted to fully protect our communities, our environment, and our health.”

Spartanburg County is located to the east of Greenville, itself situated in the northwest of South Carolina.

A few data center projects have come to Spartanburg in recent years, and chief among them is a $2.8bn facility proposed by investment firm NorthMark Strategies last year.

Although South Carolina is not a traditional data center hotspot, the demand for computing power has brought several data center-related projects to the state.

Last October, the US Department of Energy advertised an opportunity for data center companies to build and manage a campus at the Savannah River Site, which was previously used to produce materials for nuclear weapons.

That same month, Google made a $9 billion investment commitment in the state, with the money funding the expansion of an existing campus in Berkeley County and the continued construction of two new campuses in Dorchester County.