JACKSON, Miss.—Dozens of Jackson residents crammed into a conference room in the Warren A. Hood Building on Wednesday, May 27, to oppose rezoning land to allow the construction of a data center in Northwest Jackson.
“No data center,” the throng chanted.
Attorney Robert Ireland, representing Saxum Investment Company, requested the hearing be rescheduled for a later date in anticipation of the City of Jackson potentially writing regulations specific to data centers. Some disgruntled Jackson residents made sure the city heard their concerns, nonetheless.
What those protestors did not know at the time was that Saxum had expanded its request to rezone 230 acres, rather than 190, almost a month beforehand. The proposed site is in the Ashley Acres neighborhood.
Although Ireland requested Saxum’s case be delayed a few days prior to the May 27 meeting, city ordinances require that postponement requests made less than five days prior to a scheduled zoning meeting must be made in person at the meeting, a city employee told the Mississippi Free Press.
Ireland’s request came in light of Jackson’s current consideration of a six-month-long moratorium on approving data centers, intended to give the city time to draft regulations on the data centers.
“Saxum encourages the city to adopt those (data center) standards and wants to pursue a project that meets the concerns of Jackson citizens and its city leaders,” Ireland said at the May 27 meeting, adding that “as the city considers adoption of data-center-specific standards, we request that the hearing be continued until after that (decision is made).”
Jackson’s proposal for a moratorium came after watching surrounding cities attempt to regulate issues with their data centers post-construction. Ridgeland passed regulations on its data center in April, although construction there began in 2024.
Rezoning Proposal Amended
Robert Ireland submitted an updated version of Saxum’s zoning change application on April 30, expanding their proposed data center site to 230 acres—about the size of Natchez Lake—following the addition of a new parcel of land to the proposed site.
The new land added to Saxum’s proposal for their data center project comes from Hinds County parcel 731-15-1, which makes up about 40 acres towards the west end of the Forest Avenue Extension. Saxum intends to build on the Forest Avenue Extension site in hopes of finding a potential data center tenant in the future, rather than constructing the facility for a client.
The east end of the Forest Avenue Extension features churches, 11 residential homes and an apartment complex. The western end of the Forest Avenue Extension is zoned as an industrial use area, which Saxum’s rezoning application is trying to expand. The area includes both equestrian boarding and trail riding, a fabrication plant, more churches, a farm and what appear to be logging sites.
Matt Casteel, one of the landowners of the newly added parcel, opposes the rezoning.
Casteel owns 1.77 acres of the newly added parcel, but his ownership is not listed on the zoning change applications. He and his wife run a worm farm, Wurmworks, on the land.
“The fact of the matter is we don’t know (the potential environmental impacts of this project), and that’s the problem…,” Casteel told the Mississippi Free Press on June 4. “We haven’t had communication. There hasn’t been a conversation.”
Because of this conflict, Ireland will have to amend the rezoning application on Saxum’s behalf, Jackson Zoning Administrator Ester Ainsworth told the Mississippi Free Press.
Casteel originally thought Saxum was rezoning the area to build a cold storage facility, which the company has a history of building, after receiving a rezoning application notice.
Casteel was supportive of the idea, believing a cold storage facility would create jobs, until he learned the rezoning application was actually intended for the construction of a data center while watching the news, he told the Mississippi Free Press.
Although Casteel’s land cannot be rezoned without his consent, he is still concerned about the potential effects of a nearby data center on his farm.
“I’m very worried about the impact to my organic, regenerative-based farm,” Casteel said. “Everything we do here is based on clean soil, clean water, as you know, and we’re here to produce a product that people put in their organic gardens, where farmers put us in their farms as a way of naturally feeding their food plants that they later sell to customers. So it’s really important to us that we know what the possible impacts are.”
“This project hasn’t told us what they’re doing to mitigate those things, if anything, or to what degree to which they’re gonna materialize,” he added.
‘You Drink the Same Water We Do’
Protest organizer Margarette Lawson saw the City of Jackson’s post announcing that the data center rezoning would not be discussed at the May 27 meeting, but she showed up on that Wednesday afternoon anyway.
Other Jackson residents opposed to data center development in the city made their presence known at the meeting as well, gathering in the humid conference room for the meeting.
Opposition to data center construction comes amid an explosion of data center construction across Mississippi.
“You drink the same water we do,” 19-year-old Jackson resident Vada Vero yelled out from the crowd, referring to concerns about potential overuse of water and water pollution related to data centers.
Conflicts between data centers and the communities surrounding them have appeared at sites across the country, with concerns about electricity, water use and pollution leading to municipalities passing regulations for data centers after operations have already begun.
With the Jackson water crisis still on residents’ minds, people like Lawson are particularly concerned about how a data center might affect the city’s water supply.
“We’ve seen already that Jackson has a drinking water crisis, a clean water crisis, and our infrastructure is in a very tenuous spot,” Lawson told the Mississippi Free Press. “None of the residents still feel quite safe with the drinking water here, so that is a high priority for citizens that are concerned about these data centers.”
Debate on the rezoning will be delayed until the next Planning Commission meeting, to be held June 24, 2026, at 1:30 p.m. in the Warren A. Hood building in downtown Jackson.
The city has not yet announced an official date for hearings on its potential six-month-long data center moratorium, intended to give the city time to establish data center-specific regulations before a permit to build one is ever issued.
A legal notice must be given at least 15 days prior to the hearing, the City’s legal representatives said at the May 19 meeting.
Follow the Mississippi Free Press’ coverage of data centers and read past stories here.
Mississippi Free Press stories are always free because we believe everyone should have access to quality journalism. Donations from readers like you make that possible. Please click here to give to help sustain and grow vital, people-over-power journalism for Mississippians.
Readers can sign up for our free newsletters here.
