Augusta Township data center (Thor Equities) Denied
The township board rezoned 500+ acres of farmland near Milan from agricultural to general industrial for a hyperscale data center by NY-based Thor Equities. Residents petitioned the decision onto the ballot and voters overturned the rezoning 89.5%-10.4% on Aug 4, 2026 — a rare referendum defeat of an already-approved data-center rezoning.
Key facts
- Operator
- Thor Equities
- Size
- 500 ac
- Location
- Augusta Township (Washtenaw County), Michigan
- Decided
- 2026-08-04
- Stage today
- Denied
Source
read 2026-08-08
What to do next
Next step: Denied — watch for a re-filing or a scaled-down resubmission; ask the clerk to add you to the notification list.
What has happened so far (7 events)
- 2025-05-28hearing
Augusta Township Planning Commission voted 5-1 to recommend denial of the rezoning request by Thor affiliate JDS Equities II LLC for 522 acres, after dozens of residents voiced opposition citing noise, power consumption, and environmental concerns. · source - 2025-06-24hearing
Board of Trustees held a public hearing on the Thor Equities data center rezoning proposal; county officials noted Augusta's well-water system would need a major overhaul to accommodate the facility's water demands. · source - 2025-07-22rezoning
Township board unanimously approved conditional rezoning of 522 acres from agricultural residential to general industrial (Ordinance No. 2025-02) for the Thor Equities data center, overriding the planning commission's 5-1 denial recommendation. · source - 2025-08-25filing
Protect Augusta Charter Township (PACT) submitted 957 petition signatures to the township clerk to force a voter referendum on the rezoning; 561 valid signatures were required. · source - 2025-10-15coverage
Great Lakes Now and Grist reported nationally on the ballot initiative, describing how nearly 1,000 residents in the farming community of about 8,000 signed petitions to challenge the proposed $1 billion data center on 822 acres of farmland and wetlands. · source - 2026-06-23moratorium
Township board debated and approved the first reading of a moratorium ordinance empowering the planning commission to recommend temporary 4-to-6-month moratoriums on data center development. · source - 2026-08-04vote
Voters overturned the industrial rezoning 89.5% to 10.4%, blocking the Thor Equities data center. · source
Find the paper trail
Find the paper trail (0 filed · 12 places to look)
State environmental permits
Backup generators, water withdrawal and stormwater are permitted by the state, usually earlier and in more detail than anything filed locally.
- Michigan EGLE — Air Quality DivisionThe program page: which permits this state requires, and the office that issues them.
- MiEnviro PortalSearchable public filings — search the operator, the shell LLC on the deed, and the address.
County & town filings
The rezoning application, site plan, traffic and noise studies, staff report and every revision.
- Search Augusta Township (Washtenaw County) planning filingssearchPlanning departments post application files under many different names. Find the department, then ask the clerk for the application number — that number unlocks everything else.
- Search Augusta Township (Washtenaw County) property records / GISsearchThe parcel record names the buying LLC and the sale date, which is what ties an anonymous filing to an operator.
Utility & grid records
The electricity request is filed with the grid operator and the utility long before the town hears about it — and states the real load.
- MISO (Midwest & Gulf) — interconnection queueRequested megawatts, queue position and target in-service date. The MW here is the real number; the one at the town meeting is often phase one.
- PJM Interconnection (Mid-Atlantic, Ohio Valley) — interconnection queueRequested megawatts, queue position and target in-service date. The MW here is the real number; the one at the town meeting is often phase one.
- Michigan Public Service Commission — docket searchSpecial contracts, large-load tariffs and rate cases are docketed here. Testimony and exhibits are public, and are usually more candid than the press release.
- FERC eLibraryFederal filings: transmission agreements, interconnection service agreements, and co-location disputes.
- Search the serving utility for a will-serve lettersearchThe will-serve or load-service letter is the utility's own written commitment. Ask the utility and the PUC for it by name — it is frequently the first document to exist.
Federal databases
Works anywhere, and covers the operator's record at its other sites.
- EPA ECHO facility searchEvery federally-reported air, water and waste permit at a facility, plus its inspection and violation history. Search by address or draw a radius around the site. This project's locality centres on 42.130, -83.640 — search that point with a 5-mile radius.
- EPA EnvirofactsThe same underlying records, queryable by county — useful for 'what else is permitted near this site' rather than one facility.
- EPA Facility Registry ServiceResolves the shell LLC on a permit to the facility it belongs to. Worth a look when the filing name means nothing locally.
These are places to look, not evidence that anything has been filed. Links were checked on 2026-08-21; search links are queries, not records. What to ask for.
Around here
- Michigan briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts.
Other tracked projects in Michigan
- OpenAI Stargate Michigan — Saline, 8 mi Under construction
- Project Flex — Lyon Township (Oakland County), 26 mi Awaiting decision
- Deep Green downtown data center — Lansing (Ingham County), 62 mi Withdrawn
Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “Augusta Township data center (Thor Equities)”, aigridwatch.com/projects/augusta-township-thor-mi, retrieved 2026-10-11.
As of August 2026 (2m ago) · changes weekly — re-check before citing
A working set of identified proposals a community can track, not a census — most of the country's activity is not in here yet. Pennsylvania is the exception: its rows are synced from PA DEP's own data-center permit tracker, so the state's coverage is close to complete and carries the permit trail with it. **Each row carries its own provenance.** Rows showing a verification date link to reporting or the governing body's own record and were read on that date; rows marked *unverified* have no source on record — a lead to check, not a fact to cite. **Stage is derived, not asserted.** *Hearing scheduled*, *Awaiting decision*, *Approved* and *Withdrawn* are computed from each row's milestone dates on every rebuild, so a hearing date that has passed stops reading 'scheduled'. Hearings get moved and projects re-file under new names — treat a scheduled date as the earliest to act by, and confirm with the clerk before relying on it. Leads are mined into data/project_candidates.json and promoted here only after a human reads a primary source.
Part of the data center project tracker — open data, CC BY 4.0 (JSON · CSV).