Project Red Clay

Opposition and litigation at this site

Yes. Organized local opposition to Project Red Clay in Lowndes County, Alabama is documented in the public record. Route Fifty (25 Aug 2026): "About 350 people signed the group's petition demanding more transparency from the commission", the group is Protect Lowndes County, which filed an open-records request on 27 July 2026 seeking project documentation and entity lists.

How the community has taken it

Reception is a sourced signal, not an editorial judgment: opposed means documented, organized local opposition is the dominant signal on record.

Route Fifty (25 Aug 2026): "About 350 people signed the group's petition demanding more transparency from the commission", the group is Protect Lowndes County, which filed an open-records request on 27 July 2026 seeking project documentation and entity lists. WSFA (4 June 2026) records a resident telling the developer "We're from Lowndes County...Go home. We don't want you," alongside concerns about water use, power bills, noise and transparency. A separate campaign site (45strong.net) titled "Cloverleaf, withdraw from Lowndes County" appeared in search results but was NOT fetched in this run and is not cited. Yellowhammer News notes the site is "half a mile from a field where Selma-to-Montgomery marchers camped in 1965" and that the access road is the Robert "Bob" Mants Jr. Memorial Highway.

Source: Route Fifty

Power and water

Route Fifty: "The facility has requested 1,500 megawatts of energy capacity from Alabama Power." WSFA reports the site sits "underneath a 500 kV electrical line" near the U.S. 80 / Alabama 21 intersection, and that the company was still finalizing power contracts as of 4 June 2026. Cloverleaf states on its project site that it will fund the necessary electric-service upgrades itself.

Developer's project site states the building "will only use as much water as an office building on a day-to-day basis" and uses "a closed-loop cooling system requiring a one-time fill", an explicitly recirculating circuit, hence closed_loop. Separately, a Cloverleaf representative told WSFA: "The most amount of water that we've asked for for consumption is 100,000 gallons of water per day." That is a requested maximum, not metered use, so it is NOT recorded as reportedMgd. The Pintlala Water System is named as the supplier in secondary coverage this run could not fetch (Inside Climate News and WBHM both returned 403), so the supplier name is deliberately omitted.

Notes on the record

SUBSIDY, CONFIRMED ABSENCE AS OF 24 JULY 2026: Yellowhammer News reports that no formal abatement request had been filed as of that date, and that the granting body would be the Lowndes County Commission. Under legislation signed by Gov. Kay Ivey in April 2026, an abatement approved before 1 January 2027 could run up to 30 years; after that date the maximum is 20 years. No dollar amount has been stated by any source, so no subsidies entry is recorded. NO NAMED TENANT: Cloverleaf is described by Yellowhammer as a Houston- and Seattle-based speculative developer assembling land for an unnamed future operator; aiClassification is therefore "likely", not confirmed. CONFLICTING FIGURES, recorded rather than reconciled: investment is "$1.5 billion" per WSFA and Route Fifty ("at least $1.5 billion in the development stage") but the developer's own site says "Over a $1 billion taxable investment in Lowndes County". Jobs: the developer's site says "Over 1,000 high-paying construction jobs" and "at least 50 full-time jobs" once operational; other coverage this run could not fetch cites 1,000-1,500 construction and over 200 permanent, the developer's own lower figures are recorded here. Footprint: "more than 800 acres in northeast Lowndes County" and "2.88 million square feet" (Yellowhammer). ZONING: reporting notes Cloverleaf could buy and develop here because Lowndes County has no planning or zoning authority. Coordinates are the OSM-confirmed U.S. 80 / AL 21 junction that WSFA names as the site vicinity, NOT a parcel boundary; the actual footprint is somewhere in northeast Lowndes County near that junction. Inside Climate News and WBHM coverage of this project returned HTTP 403 to both WebFetch and curl in this run and is therefore not cited.

Other sites within 30 miles

Distances are between recorded coordinates, many of which are a city or county centroid, so treat them as approximate. Cumulative load on one utility and one aquifer is the question a planning commission rarely asks.

• DC BLOX Montgomery Data Center · Montgomery · DC BLOX14 mi · Proposed · 40 MW
• Meta Montgomery Data Center · Montgomery · Meta15 mi · Under construction · Supported

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