The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Savannah District is taking public comment on a federal wetlands permit for a planned four-building data center campus about two miles southwest of Rincon in Effingham County, Georgia. The public notice, published Oct. 5, 2026, covers Permit Application SAS-2026-00872. The comment period closes Nov. 4, 2026.

The applicant named in the Corps notice is Octans GA, LLC, which lists a Wilmington, Delaware address. The notice does not mention OpenAI. The Savannah Morning News reported on Oct. 26 that the application is OpenAI's and covers its planned Effingham County campus. The Effingham Herald has reported on the same OpenAI project, which goes by the name Project Camellia, through its earlier regional and utility reviews.

Below is what the notice asks the Corps to approve, what has already been permitted on the land, and what has been said on the record about the project so far.

What the Permit Would Authorize

The application is filed under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, which requires a Corps permit before dredged or fill material can be placed in waters of the United States, wetlands included. According to the notice, the project site covers 1,336.14 acres next to Gateway and Effingham Parkways, east of Hodgeville Road and west of Georgia Highway 21.

The Corps describes the land as it stands now: 998.59 acres of forested upland, about 100 acres of cleared upland, and 237.55 acres of forested freshwater wetland. The notice says the property was previously used by International Paper for fiber production and was previously permitted as an industrial business park.

The application proposes four data center buildings. Each would have its own cooling infrastructure, battery energy storage system (BESS) and power substation. The notice gives these approximate component sizes for each building:

  • Building pad: about 1,125,000 square feet
  • Cooling area: about 416,250 square feet
  • BESS: 900,000 square feet
  • Substation: 1,040,000 square feet
  • Total footprint per large data center: about 7,984,325 square feet (183.30 acres)

The Savannah Morning News gives similar numbers: four facilities of 183 acres each on a project site it puts at 1,400 acres, inside the 2,600-acre Savannah Gateway Industrial Hub.

The notice says the project's purpose is to build a data center campus capable of supporting phased, high-capacity computing for artificial intelligence, cloud computing and other data-intensive services in Southeast Georgia, where the needed electricity supply is available.

Part of the Wetland Fill Is Already Permitted

The notice puts the total wetland impact at 72.17 acres, plus 1.51 acres of ditch. Not all of that would be newly approved. An earlier Corps permit, SAS-2003-20390, dated Jan. 19, 2023, authorized 22.07 acres of wetland impact and 1.51 acres of ditch impact for an industrial park on a larger 3,151-acre tract. According to the notice, the current application combines that existing authorization with 50.10 acres of new wetland impact.

Using the Corps' own figures, 72.17 acres of fill out of 237.55 acres of on-site wetland would leave about 165 acres of wetland unfilled, or roughly 70%. OpenAI gave the same share to the Savannah Morning News. The company told the paper its layout preserves 70% of the wetlands on the site, including a larger contiguous strand.

For compensatory mitigation, the applicant proposes to buy 433.04 legacy wetland mitigation credits from a mitigation bank located within the project's primary service area, according to the notice.

Buffers and Stormwater

The notice describes a 300-foot wooded buffer next to neighboring residential property and a 150-foot buffer next to commercial property along the site's western and northern boundaries. It says stormwater management is designed to match pre-development runoff rates.

Stormwater has drawn concern in the local review. The Effingham Herald reported that the final Development of Regional Impact (DRI) report, released Aug. 26, identified environmental concerns involving wetlands, floodplains, stormwater, wildlife and water quality. The Herald also reported that about 65% of the site is expected to be covered by buildings, pavement and other surfaces that prevent rainwater from soaking into the ground at full buildout, and that Savannah Riverkeeper said that could substantially increase stormwater runoff.

OpenAI told the Savannah Morning News that it employed engineers to study stormwater runoff and that its planned stormwater infrastructure will eliminate any risk of increased downstream flooding. The paper also reported that an activist with One Hundred Miles, a conservation nonprofit, said there are flooding issues off Dasher Creek, and that the group is pushing for a public hearing.

The Legal Test the Corps Applies

As the Savannah Morning News noted, a Section 404 permit can only be approved if the development site represents the Least Environmentally Damaging Practicable Alternative, or LEDPA. In other words, if a site is available that would minimize harm to wetlands, the developer is expected to use it. OpenAI told the paper that it considered various layouts that would meet the Corps' LEDPA criteria. The notice's supplemental information includes an alternatives analysis that compares the proposed site against several off-site alternatives.

Power and Local Approvals

The wetlands permit is one of several approvals the project needs. The Effingham Herald reported in late August that the Georgia Public Service Commission approved Georgia Power's contract with OpenAI, which secures delivery of 3,200 megawatts of electricity to the campus; the Herald put that at 3.2 gigawatts at full buildout. A Georgia Power spokesperson told the Herald that building substations and transmission lines takes a while.

The Herald also reported that the Effingham County manager anticipated commissioners would review the preliminary site plan on Sept. 14. A more detailed development plan review, covering wetlands regulations, stormwater requirements and land-disturbance permits, would follow. The county's local reviews are separate from the federal Section 404 decision.

What Happens Next

The Corps' public comment period on Permit Application SAS-2026-00872 closes Nov. 4, 2026, which is also the date the public notice expires. Under the notice, anyone may ask the Corps to hold a public hearing on the application, but each request must state with particularity the reasons a hearing is needed. One Hundred Miles has said it is pushing for a hearing, according to the Savannah Morning News. The notice and the sources reviewed for this article do not give a date for a Corps permit decision.

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