The controversial Fort Meade hyperscale data center seems to have a number of hurdles to overcome before any development occurs, according to city documents dating to the initial Planning and Zoning Board hearing last May.
It is also clear that some of the criticisms may be a bit off base.
Here goes.
Many people understand this, but it is worth repeating is that the only thing before the City Commission at the moment is a development agreement, which lays out the city’s and the developer’s obligations. It is not a development approval.
In fact, the development agreement lays out a bunch of steps the developer will have to satisfy before the city will consider giving the project the go-ahead.
This may take some time.
One big issue that was not discussed at the recent hearings was the developer’s ability to gain access to the property for construction and employee traffic.
That requires crossing an active CSX rail line.
As Polk County learned when it was building Ernie Caldwell Boulevard, CSX does not allow at-grade crossings anymore and its required review of any plans for a highway overpass does not take place quickly and increases the cost of the project substantially.
Then there is the suitability of the land itself.
The staff report for the Planning and Zoning Board hearing stated, “the subject site and surrounding properties are not suitable for residential development due to the condition of the soils.”
One of the conditions for zoning approval is that the developer will have to submit a geotechnical study to document that the previously mined land is stable enough for building a 4.4 million-square-foot complex and related infrastructure.
That was contained in the approval for the planned-unit development designation for the property last year.
Although there was criticism that the city has no provision for industrial PUDs in its development code, the planners got around that by calling it a public facility.
Also, it is worth pointing out that without the PUD designation, the city would have been unable to impose conditions for approval on the project.
This was smart planning.
Nevertheless, there are still some issues to be worked out.
One is the 1.2 gigawatts of power the data center will require. If that number sounds familiar it’s about the same amount of nuclear power required to make the DeLorean work in “Back to the Future.”
The question is what it will take for Duke Energy’s nearby Hines Energy Complex to supply the load and at whose expense. The developer claims to be willing to pay for it, but critics are skeptical some of the costs won’t be passed on to other customers.
Then there is the question of what kinds of hazardous chemicals will be mixed with the cooling water or other aspects of the project and what happens if there is a spill and whether some of those chemicals will end up at the city’s sewer plant and whether the plant is equipped to handle it.
The amount of water the developer claims the data center will use does not seem to be excessive, but we’ll see.
Finally, there is a question of what kind of noise–audible or subsonic–the data center will emit and how that will affect nearby homeowners and the community in general. How much different will it be from the thrum of traffic noise on US 17/98 will probably be a talking point.
Stay tuned.