Letter to the Editor : The Seedless Watermelon, Data Centers, and the High Cost of Speed

By Wes Ables

It took human beings roughly fifty years to reliably develop a seedless watermelon. That fact sounds simple, almost trivial, until you stop to consider what it actually represents. It is a story about the pace at which human beings have historically been able to understand the consequences of what they are creating.

The process required generations of growing seasons. Time, in that process, was a safeguard. It allowed mistakes to remain small and allowed understanding to develop alongside creation.

Today, artificial intelligence systems can perform that same multi-decade trial-and-error process in less than a week. The underlying logic is identical; the difference is speed. But when time is compressed, the buffer between action and understanding is erased. Discovery occurs faster than we can interpret its consequences.

This is not an “anti-growth” protest against progress or our local leaders. Rather, it is an invitation to look at the bigger picture before our choices become permanent. While an accelerated world unfolds on computer screens, the physical infrastructure required to support it is increasingly reshaping Fayetteville and the surrounding landscape of Fayette County.

From Separate Projects to a Binding System

Drive down New Hope Road or through our local countryside, and the story is written in the dirt. High-voltage transmission lines cut across our land in deliberate, straight corridors, clearing trees systematically. Towering, industrial power poles rise at intervals that suggest scale far beyond local, residential consumption.

These are the physical footprints of massive data center developments, like the sprawling QTS complex. While early reports suggested these facilities would easily run on our existing electrical framework, the reality of running and cooling large-scale AI servers requires immense energy—scaling up to 1.4 gigawatts of power demand. Because these facilities run continuously, their hunger for power and local resources never stops.

Right now, we see individual actions: a new tech campus permitted here, a substation approved there, a utility easement, or a temporary resource adjustment. We treat these as isolated, harmless decisions or acts of local leniency. Even a piece of historic farmland negotiated under the looming threat of eminent domain is viewed in a vacuum.

But we must be careful. This is how a system forms.

A system is a set of interconnected components that operate in a self-reinforcing loop. Power supports computation. Computation generates demand for more infrastructure. More infrastructure requires more land and water. Each step can be explained away individually, but together, they form a structure—a self-reinforcing machine that commands its own local resources and becomes impossible to reverse.

When the System Overrides Our History

We are already seeing what happens when individual, localized decisions harden into an unstoppable system. When a system takes over, local citizens lose their say. Look no further than Hopeful Primitive Baptist Church on the corner of Highway 92 and New Hope Road.

Established in 1825 on what was then the American western frontier, this historic landmark has stood for two centuries as a monument to Fayetteville’s heritage. Its cemetery is the sacred resting place of pioneers and patriots who served in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and every global conflict since, alongside Native Americans and enslaved African Americans.

Yet, to feed the unyielding power needs of the massive data infrastructure down the road, designs were drawn to snake high-voltage transmission lines directly through the yards of more than 200 local properties and right past the church’s sacred grounds. Encroachments like eminent domain now loom over private yards.

When the community asked for a reasonable compromise—to bury the high-voltage lines underground to protect the beauty, property values, and dignity of a 200-year-old landmark—the system’s response was that doing so would cause a “two-year delay” for the data center’s timeline. The church flatly refused a $144,000 buyout offer, choosing history over a payoff.

But when a system takes over, it no longer adapts to the community; the community is forced to adapt to it. Local history, family backyards, and citizen control are pushed aside to keep the grid stabilized for industrial demand. We are in the final window where we still have a choice, and every single local decision matters.

The Limit of Our Resources

Water, like power, is the ultimate reality check for our county. Our water supply relies on four primary reservoirs: Lake Kedron, Lake Peachtree, Lake Horton, and Lake McIntosh, feeding into the Crosstown and South Fayette water treatment plants. Together, they have a total permitted capacity of roughly 22.8 million gallons per day.

While Lake Horton holds a massive 3.5 billion gallons, our county’s average daily usage sits around 10.4 million gallons, with peaks already approaching 17.6 million. The math shows we have capacity, but it is not unlimited.

The true danger is variability. The Upper Flint River basin, which feeds our system via Line Creek and Whitewater Creek, has seen severe historical droughts where tributaries ran incredibly low or dry.

When an unyielding, constant industrial demand is layered on top of a naturally fluctuating water cycle, our margin for error narrows. The system becomes less forgiving.

The Window of Control

Over a twenty-year horizon, this infrastructure will become a permanent fixture of Fayette County. Life will look recognizable on the surface, but the human position will shift from active participants to mere managers of automated processes operating beyond our control.

The question before Fayette County residents and leaders right now is not whether these advanced technologies should exist. They already do.

The question is whether we can recognize the system while it is still forming—while it still looks like a series of small, separate decisions. If we treat every resource request, zoning change, and transmission line as an isolated event, we will wake up to find the system has made the choices for us.

Conditions are not easily reversed. We must pay attention to what we are locking ourselves into today, while time is still on our side.