Data centers seem to be popping up everywhere in Polk County and the local responses have varied.
Fort Meade officials agreed to take the money and run and let the details work themselves out later.
In Lakeland, in news that was first broken by Lakeland Now, the City Commission was reportedly gobsmacked by news that a preliminary application had been turned in for a site on the southwest side of town.
Meanwhile, the Polk County Commission, which one report had them discussing data centers at last weeks’ agenda study session, is not planning on any immediate discussion. according to Commissioner Rick Wilson. That is even though there is an application pending on some mined land at State Road 37 and County Road 674 in the southwest corner of the county and there is nothing in the county development code to deal with data centers.
There is reportedly another one proposed around Haines City, but no details were available.
Although the proposed Lakeland data center is smaller than the other projects, it is worth pointing out that it is closer to residential areas than the other two. (see image above)
There has also been some internet chatter about its proximity to the Silver Moon Drive-in, which may be an issue if the continuous thrum from the center is as audible as critics claim.
Watch for further developments.

The data center drive continues in our region.
This time one is being proposed in a rural area (see attached map) east of Arcadia in DeSoto County.
Local officials are reportedly supporting it for the expected property tax revenue it will generate.
As with the planned data center in Fort Meade and elsewhere, there is pushback from residents concerned about noise pollution and water demand.
The project is being proposed by the DCIP group on a 34-acres site owned by DeSoto Park Industrial Park LLC of Davenport
The project still faces regulatory and zoning actions, but it it is approved, it projected to require 4 gigawatts of electricity–nearly four times the Fort Meade project–at buildout.
That will require an examination of power grid capacity, cooling water sources and volumes and more.
Stay tuned.

A 215-acre parcel that can be used to treat stormwater runoff in a canal flowing into Lake Rosalie in eastern Polk County will be purchased under an agreement approved Tuesday by the County Commission.
The property located south of Camp Mack Road is being sold to the county by La Cala LLC of Destin.
It was proposed for purchase in 2024 under Polk County’s Environmental Lands Program, but the purchase will be funded by the Polk County stormwater tax and a federal program intended to reduce encroachment on the Avon Park Air Force Base rather than through the property tax approved by voters for environmental lands purchases. This is the latest example of using partnerships with other funding sources to expand environmental protection in Polk County.
The original proposal involved 306 acres, but the owner decided to retain the westernmost 80 acres, County Manager Bill Beasley said.
That area includes the access road and some agricultural buildings and some scrubby flatwoods that contain listed plant species.
That means a new access road will have to be developed, said Tabitha Biehl, director of parks and natural resources.
She described the property as a “critical piece” in a regional wildlife corridor involving existing and potential conservation lands.
She said the wetlands treatment project planned for the area will aid in reducing declining water quality in Lake Rosalie, which is one of the Everglades headwater lakes in Polk County.
She said wetland treatment will be the priority for the site. Whether there is public access will be determined in the site’s management plan.
Commissioner Bill Braswell said he thought the site was too small to have public access though other county environmental lands sites smaller than this do have public access.
Biehl said it is possible the property could be the site of a future bioblitz, which involves having volunteers spend a day documenting the plant and animal life on the site and posting the data on iNaturalist.

Creek Ranch, the 1,324-acre site on Hatchineha Road opened earlier this year, but that information requires an update.
If you drive out Hatchineha Road and see the Creek Ranch sign and entrance, you will find it closed.
When I asked Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officials about this I learned that entrance is reserved for staff and contractors.
If you want to visit the site to go hiking or explore nature, you have to use an entrance farther west.
It is donated by a white mailbox located diagonally across Hatchineha Road from the entrance of the Hatchineha Unit of the Everglades Headwaters National Wildlife Refuge.
There are walk-through gates on either side of the parking area that will allow you to visit a diversity of habitats found on the property.
Those habitats range from bay swamps to scrubby flatwoods. Admission is free.
At some point FWC officials say they will erect an entrance sign to make the access point for the trail system more obvious.

If you regularly commute near CSX rail lines in the area, expect longer delays for the next several years,
Plans are under way to send 5,000 tons a week of garbage from Miami-Dade County by rail through the area to a private landfill in Bushnell in Sumter County.
That means an extra 50 rail cars a week on northbound freight trains. through at least 2032.
The move comes after Miami-Dade officials continue looking for ways to get rid of their trash after a trash incinerator that was handling a lot of the volume residents and businesses generated burned down in 2023 and public opposition from various groups including Sierra Club has blocked plans to build a new incinerator.
Sierra’s position is that Miami-Dade officials should do more to reduce the need for more waste disposal by focusing on more recycling, and composting.
But since that’s not happening, and Miami-Dade has limited landfill space the trash trains are seen as an alternative.
That approach reportedly has caused a backlash from rural residents in Sumter County who live near the Heart of Florida landfill, which is building a rail siding to receive the shipments.
The residents are reportedly concerned about increased odors and the impact on their wells from a plan to use deep well injection to get rid of the landfill’s [leachate.
Just in case you were wondering, Polk County’s North Central Landfill has adequate capacity for the next 100 years or so after the County Commission approved a plan in 2000 to allow the landfill height to increase significantly.
Its leachate is treated in series of on-site ponds.

As residents, regulators and elected officials debate the proposed data center in Fort Meade, a second data center is being proposed in southwest Polk, just as one of Fort Meade’s commissioners predicted at a recent public hearing.
This one is in unincorporated Polk County, which does not have any specific criteria for dealing with data center applications so far, though the issue was raised by Ancient Islands Sierra Chair Tom Palmer at a recent County Commission meeting.
Here’s what has been submitted so far in pre-application materials. The project’s consultants acknowledge several questions remain unanswered.
The proposal is for a complex that the application is terming a “campus” tucked into a 1,700-acre piece of phosphate property at the southwest corner of State Road 37 and County Road 674
It is a mile or so south of the Chicora community.
The preliminary site plan shows four data center buildings totaling about 2.4 million square feet. Power demand is listed as 600 megawatts a day at buildout in 2032.
This is smaller than the proposed Fort Meade data center.
Water consumption is unknown. The application notes there are two citrus irrigation wells on the site, but the applicant–there is no information exactly who that is beyond engineering and law firms listed on the cover sheet–would have to apply to the Southwest Florida Water Management District to reactivate the permits for the wells if that is to be the source of their cooling water. This has been an issue in other parts of the country amid reports of data centers shutting down temporarily due to overheating as they struggle to operate in times of rising temperatures tied to climate change.

Swiftmud’s Governing Board approved a new policy in December that all water permits for data centers must come before the board at a public meeting for action. In addition, Polk fire officials are recommending that the site have adequate water for hydrants in case there’s a fire. It is unclear what the source of the water would be.
The paperwork also mentions the property lies within a federally designated Qualified Opportunity Zone, which could provide federal tax breaks. Whether the project’s backers will apply for or receive any county tax breaks is unknown at this point.
The property appears to be headed for a request for a land use change from Phosphate Mining to some industrial classification, which would require review by the Polk County Planning Commission and maybe the County Commission eventually. The County Commission is scheduled to discuss data center regulations at the May 29 agenda study work session.
But at this point the project’s consultants are doing their due diligence to see what they need to move forward so don’t expect to hear anything soon.

One final thought. There has been a lot of discussion about the lack of transparency around who the end users of these data centers will be.

However it seems immaterial in way whether it is Amazon, Meta or someone you’ve never heard of that will be running it. The bigger issue is the high carbon footprint that the power generation required to keep these data centers running and the greenhouse gas emissions that occur as a consequence and the water demand for not only cooling the data centers, but cooling the power plants that power the data centers,