Project dossier · Berkeley County, South Carolina

Google Berkeley County Under construction

$9B multi-site data center investment in Berkeley County, South Carolina. Under construction.

Key facts

Operator: Google
Owner: Google
Location: Berkeley County, South Carolina
Stage today: Under construction

What to do next

Next step: Under construction — pull the approved conditions and permits and hold the builder to them; an expansion or a new building reopens the record.

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What has happened so far (18 events)

2007-01-01announcement
Google announces plans to construct a data center complex in Berkeley County, SC (Mount Holly Commerce Park, Moncks Corner) — its first South Carolina site, initial investment around $600 million. · source
2010-11-01announcement
Google announces plans to build a second building at the Berkeley County site. · source
2010-12-01incentive
Fee-in-Lieu of Tax (FILOT) agreement formalized, cutting Google property-tax assessment rate from 10.5% to 4% and locking it in for up to 50 years with an 80% rebate on the fee. · source
2013-01-01announcement
Google announces a further $600 million expansion, bringing cumulative Berkeley County investment to about $1.2 billion. · source
2015-11-01permit
Google receives a state permit to withdraw up to 183 million gallons per year of groundwater from the Charleston/Middendorf aquifer. · source
2016-06-01filing
Google reapplies to DHEC seeking to roughly triple its groundwater withdrawal permit to about 549 million gallons per year. · source
2018-08-28incentive
Berkeley County approves a tax-incentive package for a $600 million expansion (entity Maguro Enterprises), maintaining the 4% assessment/80% rebate FILOT structure; investment total reaches $2.4 billion. · source
2019-02-01filing
Google reapplies to DHEC for the 549-million-gallon-per-year groundwater withdrawal permit from the Middendorf aquifer. · source
2019-08-22permit
DHEC issues a draft permit allowing withdrawal of 549 million gallons of groundwater per year, drawing formal objections from the Coastal Conservation League and local water utilities. · source
2019-12-12ruling
Google, DHEC, the Coastal Conservation League and SELC reach a final agreement imposing tougher conditions: Google must treat groundwater as a last resort, develop alternative sources, and report usage quarterly. · source
2023-01-01coverage
A Google affiliate (Arum Composites LLC) purchases roughly 143 acres across five parcels in Berkeley County for about $28.5 million. · source
2024-03-01permit
Google seeks a land-disturbance permit for its second data center site in rural Dorchester County (Pine Hill Business Campus). · source
2024-09-26announcement
Google announces a combined $3.3 billion investment in SC: $2 billion for two new Dorchester County campuses and $1.3 billion to expand Berkeley County; includes $2.2 million for environmental initiatives. · source
2024-09-26construction
Groundbreaking ceremony held in Dorchester County with Governor McMaster; each new site expected to employ about 100 workers, existing Berkeley County site employs roughly 900. · source
2024-10-15public-comment
Public input meeting on emergency generators for the Pine Hill campus; about eight residents raised concerns over air quality, traffic, wetland impacts, and transparency. · source
2025-10-13announcement
Google announces a new $9 billion investment through 2027 to expand Berkeley County and continue Dorchester County construction — the largest single investment in South Carolina history. · source
2025-12-01coverage
Analysis examines whether Google $9 billion SC buildout is a net boon or burden for host communities, covering tax-incentive costs versus benefits. · source
2026-04-24report
SC Daily Gazette reports South Carolina data centers received a combined $828 million in state tax breaks on electricity and computer-equipment purchases in the prior year. · source

Find the paper trail

Find the paper trail (3 filed · 11 places to look)

Permits already on file (3)

Filings we have a source for — the record, not a place to look for one.

2024-03-01
Google seeks a land-disturbance permit for its second data center site in rural Dorchester County (Pine Hill Business Campus). · source
2019-08-22
DHEC issues a draft permit allowing withdrawal of 549 million gallons of groundwater per year, drawing formal objections from the Coastal Conservation League and local water utilities. · source
2015-11-01
Google receives a state permit to withdraw up to 183 million gallons per year of groundwater from the Charleston/Middendorf aquifer. · source

State environmental permits

Backup generators, water withdrawal and stormwater are permitted by the state, usually earlier and in more detail than anything filed locally.

South Carolina DES — Bureau of Air QualityThe program page: which permits this state requires, and the office that issues them.
Search South Carolina DES — Bureau of Air Quality for this projectsearchThis state publishes no searchable permit database, so a written records request to the agency is the reliable route. Use this search only to find the right office.

County & town filings

The rezoning application, site plan, traffic and noise studies, staff report and every revision.

Search Berkeley 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 Berkeley 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.

No organised market covers this statenoteThere is no public queue to read. The record is the utility's integrated resource plan and its filings at the PUC — plus FERC eLibrary for anything federally docketed.
Public Service Commission of South Carolina — 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.
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

South Carolina briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts.

Other tracked projects in South Carolina

Meta Aiken — Trenton (Aiken County) Under construction
Project Spero — Spartanburg County In review

Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “Google Berkeley County”, aigridwatch.com/projects/google-berkeley-county-sc, 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).