Data center site utilities, off your critical path.
Fire water loops, makeup water, sanitary and lift stations, storm and detention — self-performed for data center projects across coastal Georgia and the Lowcountry. We recently completed the full underground utility package on a data center in the Savannah market.
The wet package is first on site and last off it.
Coastal Georgia is being asked to build data center infrastructure it hasn't built before. In July 2026 OpenAI announced a $20 billion, 1,400-acre campus at the Savannah Gateway Industrial Hub outside Rincon, with 3.2 gigawatts contracted from Georgia Power and power delivered in phases between 2028 and 2032. That project still has to clear Georgia's Developments of Regional Impact review, and it has drawn genuine local opposition. But the underlying shift is already on the ground: the Hyundai Metaplant corridor in Bryan County triggered roughly $360 million in county water and sewer construction, and the supplier plants following it each need their own fire loop, sanitary system, and detention.
On a data center site the utility sub is there first and last. First for erosion control, offsite main extensions, and the fire loop that has to be in the ground before steel goes up. Last for tie-ins, flushing, disinfection, and the test certificates that stand between the building and its certificate of occupancy. When the critical path is utility energization and long-lead equipment, neither end of that has any float in it.
What gets a site utility sub taken off a data center bid list is rarely the pipe itself. It's a hydrostatic test that fails two weeks before commissioning. A fire main that clashes with a duct bank nobody modeled. A bacteriological sample that comes back positive and has to be reflushed and resampled. An as-built package the owner's GIS team won't accept. This page is our account of how each of those is handled.
Why the underground package on a data center is different.
Speed to power sets the schedule
The critical path is utility energization and long-lead equipment, not the building. Transformer and switchgear dates don't move, so everything upstream compresses. We plan crews and shifts for that up front instead of discovering it in month four.
You're trenching beside a live building
Campuses are built in phases. By the time DC2 breaks ground, DC1 is energized and generating revenue. Excavation, dewatering, and tie-in work happen next to an operating facility with no tolerance for an outage.
Redundancy applies to water too
N+1 thinking carries underground: looped rather than dead-end distribution, dual feeds off separate mains, and multiple identical lift stations instead of one large one.
Fire water is the least forgiving scope
Private fire service mains run to NFPA 24, and on most large campuses the insurer's data sheet is the controlling document. Large-diameter restrained-joint ductile iron, thrust blocks, PIVs, FDCs, and a test certificate someone else signs off on.
Impervious cover at a scale most sites never reach
Hundreds of acres of roof, generator yard, and transformer pad. On flat coastal sites with a high water table and little hydraulic head, detention volumes and outlet structures leave almost no construction tolerance.
Access is controlled
Background checks, badging, escorted access, and no-photo policies. Crews have to be badge-eligible, and that filter applies before anyone looks at your number.
What we self-perform on a data center campus
Water, sewer, storm, and lift stations are installed by our own crews. Specialty scopes — electrical for lift station controls, paving for surface restoration — are contracted through us so you have one accountable party for everything underground.
Fire water
- Private fire service mains installed to NFPA 24
- Large-diameter ductile iron, restrained joint systems, and poured thrust blocks at bends, tees, and dead ends
- Post indicator valves, gate and butterfly valves, and valve box settings
- Fire department connections with all-weather signage
- Double check detector assemblies and reduced pressure detector assemblies
- Private hydrants at code-driven spacing
- Yard piping at the fire pump house — suction, discharge, fill, overflow, and drain
- Hydrostatic testing and the Contractor's Material and Test Certificate for underground piping
Domestic and process water
- Domestic service, meter, and vault, including compound and turbine meters with bypass
- Reduced pressure zone backflow assemblies in heated enclosures or vaults
- Makeup water mains to cooling towers and adiabatic units
- Cooling tower blowdown and condensate discharge lines
- Yard piping at water treatment buildings — chemical feed, sample ports, and reject lines
- Wet taps, line stops, and shutdown coordination on municipal tie-ins
- Jack and bore with steel casing under highways and rail crossings
Sanitary sewer and lift stations
- Gravity mains, manholes, cleanouts, and building laterals
- Force mains and duplex or triplex submersible lift stations
- H-20 and heavier rated hatches where equipment traffic crosses the station
- Control panels, backup power provisions, and SCADA tie-in to the building management system
- Odor control, and separate stations for process waste where the design calls for it
- Air testing, deflection testing, manhole vacuum testing, and NASSCO PACP CCTV
Storm drainage and detention
- Storm mains in reinforced concrete and dual-wall HDPE, including box culverts
- Curb inlets, area drains, yard drains, junction boxes, headwalls, and riprap aprons
- Detention and retention ponds with outlet control structures, weirs, orifice plates, and emergency spillways
- Underground detention chamber systems where land is at a premium
- Hydrodynamic separators and oil-water separators at generator and fuel areas
- Outfalls to jurisdictional waters
- Construction dewatering, well points, and turbidity control
Testing, QA/QC, and turnover
This is where data center packages actually get held up. Every item below sits inside our scope — not subcontracted, and not left for the general contractor to chase.
- Hydrostatic testing of pressure piping at 200 psi, or 50 psi above static, held for two hours
- NFPA 24 Contractor's Material and Test Certificate for Underground Piping, signed for the authority having jurisdiction and the insurer
- Flushing at required velocity before the certificate is issued
- Bacteriological sampling and clearance on potable lines, including reflush and resample if a sample fails
- Mandrel and deflection testing on gravity sewer
- Manhole vacuum testing
- NASSCO PACP-certified CCTV inspection with a deliverable report
- Force main pressure testing, plus pump drawdown and startup with the utility present
- Compaction testing records tied to the specified Proctor standard
- GPS-located as-builts of every pipe, fitting, and valve, delivered as point files for the owner's GIS
- Closeout binder assembled as work completes, rather than after the punch list opens
Working inside coastal Georgia's water and stormwater rules
Coastal Georgia is not a generic permitting environment, and a data center is exactly the kind of load that runs into its limits. Twenty-four counties in southeast Georgia fall under the state's coastal permitting plan for managing salt water intrusion, which restricts withdrawals from the Upper Floridan aquifer. Chatham County and the southern half of Effingham sit in the most restricted tier. The practical consequence for a large campus is that new water demand generally cannot be met by drilling wells — it has to arrive through surface water treatment and long transmission mains. That is our work, and it is why Effingham County is building a Savannah River surface water plant and Bryan County is running one of the largest water and sewer programs in the region's history.
On the construction side, a campus with offsite utility extensions usually triggers more than one permit. The site itself typically falls under Georgia EPD's stand-alone construction stormwater general permit, while an offsite main extension falls under the infrastructure permit — a distinction that gets missed more often than it should. Our field work follows the GSWCC erosion and sediment control manual, and post-construction design follows the Georgia Stormwater Management Manual as modified by the Coastal Stormwater Supplement, which applies across our entire service area and sets the coastal aquatic buffer. Georgia's Erosion and Sedimentation Act separately establishes an undisturbed buffer along state waters; encroaching on it requires a variance from EPD, and that variance is a schedule item, not a formality.
In South Carolina — Beaufort and Jasper counties — construction stormwater runs through the state environmental agency, with an additional coastal zone consistency review in the eight coastal counties that contractors coming from out of state routinely miss.
Prequalification facts
What a preconstruction team asks for first. Bonding capacity, insurance limits, and current certification rosters are provided with every bid response.
Underground utility experience across our leadership
Licensed utility contractor in both states — #UC302763, #UM102640
Workers' compensation claims since inception
Recordable incidents
PACP-certified pipeline assessment — #P0052121-012025
Water, sewer, storm, and lift stations with our own crews
Emergency response on active projects, 1–2 hours in greater Savannah
Single-project and aggregate figures shared at prequalification
How we work a data center site
Early works and enabling
Erosion and sediment control, construction water, and offsite utility extension usually start before the building contract is finalized. We bid and mobilize that package on its own rather than waiting for the full site award.
Model coordination before we dig
We take our utility layout into the federated model and resolve clashes against electrical duct banks, gas, and fiber before anyone opens ground. In a congested corridor the wet lines are usually the ones asked to go deeper — better to know that in preconstruction than at the trench.
Phased installation
We sequence pipe against fill placement and pad construction, and we hold the sequence. Schedule changes come from us in writing, with the reason, before they affect a tie-in date.
Testing and acceptance
Hydrostatic, bacteriological, deflection, vacuum, CCTV, and pump drawdown. We coordinate the authority having jurisdiction, the water authority, and the fire marshal directly instead of routing it through your superintendent.
Turnover
GPS-located as-builts in a format the owner's GIS can actually ingest, compaction and test records, NFPA 24 material and test certificates, and a closeout package assembled as the work completes.
Why a GC puts us on the data center bid list
We self-perform the whole underground scope
Water, sewer, storm, and lift stations with our own crews. No brokered pipe crew turning up on your critical path under a name you've never heard.
We know these jurisdictions
Chatham, Bryan, Effingham, Liberty, Beaufort, and Jasper. We know which inspector expects what, how each water authority handles a shutdown, and what the coastal buffer rules actually require.
The test package is our problem
Hydrostatic, bacteriological, deflection, CCTV, and the NFPA 24 certificate come back complete. Your superintendent shouldn't be chasing a resample two weeks before commissioning.
30+ years of underground utility experience · Licensed in Georgia and South Carolina · NASSCO-certified for pipeline assessment · Zero workers' compensation claims · Bonded · 24/7 emergency response on active projects
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View Project DetailsFrequently Asked Questions
What utilities does a data center need underground?
Four packages. Fire water — a private fire service main looping the campus, hydrants, post indicator valves, and the yard piping at the fire pump house. Domestic water for offices, restrooms, and locker rooms. Process water, which on an evaporative-cooled site means a dedicated makeup water main to the cooling towers plus a blowdown discharge line. And sanitary sewer plus storm drainage, which on a site this impervious becomes a substantial detention scope.
Who installs the water lines at a data center?
The site utilities contractor, not the plumbing or fire protection trades. The split is usually at a defined point outside the building, commonly five feet from the foundation. Everything from the municipal tie-in to that point — including the fire loop, hydrants, valves, and backflow assemblies — is the underground utility subcontractor's scope. Inside that line it becomes mechanical and fire protection.
Have you built a data center before?
Yes. We recently completed the full underground utility package on a data center project in the Savannah market, covering sanitary sewer, domestic water, storm drainage, and underground detention. We aren't naming the client on a public page — the project reference, scope detail, and contacts go out with a prequalification package. Alongside that, our heavy industrial work in the Hyundai Metaplant corridor and storm drainage for an intermodal container yard is the same scope at comparable scale.
Do data centers need lift stations?
Often, yes. Campuses are frequently built on greenfield sites that can't gravity-flow to the municipal system, so a duplex or triplex submersible station and a force main are common. The pattern on data center work is multiple smaller identical stations rather than one large one — the same redundancy philosophy applied to power, carried into sanitary. Stations also tend to need heavier-rated hatches because equipment traffic crosses them, plus a SCADA tie-in to the building management system.
What's included in a data center site utilities package?
Erosion and sediment control and SWPPP administration through construction. Offsite water and sewer main extension. The fire service main and all its appurtenances. Domestic and process water including meters, vaults, and backflow assemblies. Sanitary gravity, force main, and lift stations. Storm drainage, detention or retention, and water quality units. Construction dewatering. Then the full test and turnover package — hydrostatic, bacteriological, deflection, CCTV, and GPS as-builts.
How much water does a data center use?
It depends entirely on the cooling design, and the range is enormous. A facility on evaporative cooling towers can consume on the order of one to three million gallons a day per 100 MW of IT load. The same 100 MW on a closed-loop design may use only a few thousand gallons a day — essentially domestic and sanitary demand. That distinction drives the wet package: a closed-loop site doesn't need a large makeup water main, but the fire water, domestic, and stormwater scope doesn't shrink. The campus announced near Rincon in 2026 is planned as closed-loop.
Which stormwater permit applies to offsite utility extensions in Georgia?
Usually two apply at once. The campus itself typically falls under Georgia EPD's stand-alone construction stormwater general permit (GAR100001), while an offsite water or sewer main extension falls under the infrastructure permit (GAR100002). A common development can trigger GAR100003. Filing the wrong one is a schedule problem, not a paperwork problem.
Can you work under our badging and security requirements?
Yes. Our crews are badge-eligible, and we've worked under controlled-access and escorted conditions. Background checks, drug testing, no-photo policies, and site-specific orientation get handled before mobilization rather than on day one.
How early should we bring you in?
At the enabling works stage, before the building contract is finalized. Offsite utility extension and the fire loop are the long-lead items — large-diameter ductile iron and detector check assemblies aren't stock, and anything over 16 inches carries real procurement time. If we're in during design development we can flag constructability and get material on order before it becomes the reason the schedule slips.
Do you self-perform, or subcontract the pipe work?
We self-perform water, sewer, storm, and lift station work with our own crews. Electrical for lift station controls and paving for surface restoration are coordinated subs contracted through us, so you have one accountable party for everything underground.
Last updated: July 30, 2026
Send us the civil set.
We'll review the utility plans for constructability, flag what's going to cause a field problem, and come back with a scoped budget number priced against the actual drawings. If you're still in design development, that's the right time — the fire loop and any offsite extension are the long-lead items on the wet package.