Walton County, Georgia

County ranked by announced AI data-center load

Undisclosed Announced AI load

Campuses

Lead operator

Key takeaways

Walton County's seat is Monroe with a 2020 population of 96,673, and the Meta site is in Social Circle, a town of 4,974 residents 45 miles east of Atlanta. Total county population is 100,361.Source: sources[0] (Wikipedia: Social Circle, Georgia) + sources[1] (Wikipedia: Walton County, Georgia) + Census ACS 2023 B01003
Home prices fell 4.4% on a 3-year baseline against a $300,500 median home value, the only AI county outside Douglas where Redfin shows a clear negative trend. Property taxes still rose 14.2% over the same window.Source: data/cache/realestate_yoy.csv + data/cache/property_tax_yoy.csv (FIPS 13297) + Census ACS 2023 B25077
Median household income is $82,381 and 24.9% of adults hold a bachelor's degree. The 39.7 median age is the oldest in this batch by more than a year, reflecting a settled exurban demographic rather than a college or boomtown population.Source: Census ACS 2023 B19013, B15003, B01002 (Walton County, GA)
The Meta campus sits on the Georgia Power 8.0% rate move, the same statewide pool that runs through Fulton and Douglas counties in this batch. There is no separate Walton-specific tariff.Source: data/cache/utility_rate_yoy.csv (Georgia Power Co, GA)

79.2% of Walton County housing units are owner-occupied, the highest owner share in this batch. The Meta campus drops on a county where the utility-rate pass-through hits homeowners through the bill, not renters through their lease, slowing the political feedback loop.Source: Census ACS 2023 B25003_001E, B25003_002E (Walton County, GA)
72.1% of Walton residents are white alone and 19.7% are Black, a demographic profile closer to rural-North-Georgia than to either Atlanta or Augusta. The county is the racially least-diverse Meta site in the eastern US.Source: Census ACS 2023 B02001_001E, B02001_002E, B02001_003E (Walton County, GA)
Manufacturing still accounts for 12.1% of Walton jobs, double the Fulton rate next door. Social Circle's Meta site lands in a county where one in eight workers still clocks into a factory shift.Source: Census ACS 2023 C24050_001E, C24050_004E (Walton County, GA)
7.7% of Walton adults are veterans and only 2.3% of residents moved in from outside Georgia in the last year. The Meta build will pull labor from a settled, locally-rooted base rather than from the kind of in-migration churn seen in Ada Idaho or Maricopa.Source: Census ACS 2023 B21001_001E, B21001_002E, B07001_001E, B07001_065E, B07001_081E (Walton County, GA)