Spalding County, GA Data Centers & Crypto Mining: Crypto Mining Rules (2026)

Spalding County's Zoning Ordinance defines 'Bitcoin mining' at Sec. 202, item 18, as the process of creating virtual currencies and processing virtual currency transactions for other individuals or organizations, and the facilities where such activities take place, adding that it is also known as cryptocurrency mining. That definition matters because the county's substantive data-center standard, Sec. 1403A(B)(8), governing the C-1C Manufacturing Light district (Article 14A), grants a special exception for 'Data centers, but not Bitcoin Mining' and then lists the siting, screening, buffering and utility conditions a data center must meet.

By naming Bitcoin mining and excluding it in the same clause that legalizes conventional data centers, the ordinance draws a line between server farms doing cloud or telecom hosting work and facilities whose business is cryptocurrency mining; only the former can use the C-1C special exception. The same carve-out repeats where data centers appear as a listed use inside planned commercial and planned industrial development standards elsewhere in Appendix IV, which cross-reference Article 14A's Sec. 1403A(B) use list directly. Because no other article in the zoning ordinance lists Bitcoin or cryptocurrency mining as a permitted, special-exception or accessory use in any district, a mining operation has no zoning pathway in unincorporated Spalding County under the districts as written; it is not merely restricted, it is affirmatively excluded from the one use category, data centers, it would most resemble.