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.
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.
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,

Flow from Lake Hancock to the Peace River will end this week, Southwest Florida Water Management District officials announced Thursday.
The decision was made the maintain the minimum level in the lake, whose levels were set in 2015 to form a reservoir to help the river meet its minimum flows and levels except during droughts.
Unless more rain occurs, Swiftmud officials predicted some sections of the Upper Peace River will become dry, which was a regular occurrence dating back to at least 1981 before the agency rebuilt the P11 structure on Saddle Creek south of the lake to allow the lake to supplement river flow.
Closing the structure will also allow the lake to retain enough water for now to prevent it from also drying out, which occurred during the drought in 2000.
Swiftmud officials predicted the dropping water flow in the river could eventually result in fish kills because of low oxygen levels in the remaining pools of water.
They also predicted fish kills in the lake as its level drops because of evaporation.
Flow in the Peace River in Polk County has already dropped dramatically in the past week.
At the gauge at State Road 60 in Bartow, flow has dropped from 48.9 cubic feet per second to 20.1 cfs. At Fort Meade flow dropped from 34 cfs to 14.3 cfs.
Farther downstream, flow at Zolfo Springs has dropped from 67.2 cfs early last month to 43.3 cfs Thursday. Flow at Arcadia has dropped from 116 cfs to 74.6 cfs.
The entire Peace River system has been entirely rainfall dependent since artesian flow ceased after Kissengen Spring near the river south of Bartow quit flowing in 1951 because of overpumping of the aquifer by the phosphate industry and sewer discharges into the river and its tributaries from Fort Meade, Bartow, Lakeland and Auburndale were diverted to supply colling water to power plants.

Polk County Commissioners agreed Tuesday to spend $551,227 to set up a pilot program to collect waste from residents that might otherwise end up along roadsides or in the woods in northeast Polk County.
This is a one-year pilot program will involve asking residents to bring non-commercial waste to the former Northeast landfill on Bannon Island Road near Haines City for set fees that will be based on volume.
Up until now, the only legal publicly operated disposal site was in around the North Central Landfill located between Winter Haven and Lakeland.
The thinking is that if this works, it will reduce the amount of time Polk County Sheriff’s Office and Polk County Code Enforcement staff have to devote to investigating and dealing with illegal dump sites in response to citizen complaints.
The dump sites have included relatively undeveloped sections of Poinciana, the edges of some conservation lands and roadsides throughout the region.
No date was set for the opening of facility pending permitting and other details.
Watch for more news, including in this space, once the project begins operation.
The site will be staffed to make sure waste is disposed of properly in roll-off containers that will be transported to the North Central Landfill daily and that the site is not used to dispose of hazardous wastes.

We hate to say we told you so regarding the proposed Fort Meade data center’s potential issues, but a pair of letters city officials received this week back us up and then some.
First came a letter from the Southwest Florida Water Management District on the day the Fort Meade City Commission voted unanimously to approve a 20-year development agreement.
The letter said any water permits for data centers need Governing Board approval per an amendment in the agency’s permitting rules approved at its Dec, 16 board meeting (not Dec 17),
Don’t feel badly If you had not heard about the change. It was tucked into the General Counsel’s report that was part of the consent agenda that is typically approved without discussion.
However, it was clear the issue was on some board members’ radar.
During a discussion of the updated regional water supply plan, board member Nancy Watkins asked staff how data center water consumption will fit into their project water demand projections.
“We need to be paying attention,” she said. “They’re a huge water suck.”
Although Fort Meade officials say they have water capacity to supply extra 50,000 gallons a day the data center’s developer said it will require, word on the street it that it is working out a deal with Davenport through the Polk Regional Water Cooperative to get the extra water. If that requires a permit, we’ll see them in Brooksville.
Then came a four-page April 15 letter from Florida Secretary of Commerce J. Alex Kelly raising issues about water use, electricity capacity, access across the CSX right of way and impacts on the Florida Wildlife Corridor that were previously raised in this space but not really discussed at length by city officials, at least not in public.
Kelly also raised questions about traffic impacts, questioned whether the employment projections are realistic since a lot of data center functions are handled remotely. He added that the planned vertiport needs a lot of permitting work.
The letter was significant because since the state’s growth-management oversight was turned over to the Florida Department of Commerce several years ago, comments criticizing local development decisions have been rare.
That’s partly because state officials are no longer allowed to impose sanctions of local officials who make bad development decisions and partly because the emphasis in Tallahassee has been on boosting development of all kinds, not reining it in.
Kelly called the city’s plan “fundamentally flawed,” and predicted it will invite challenges in which more public input is likely.
There were, in fact calls at Tuesday’s public hearing to restart the process for reviewing this data center, though that may raise legal issues.
Nevertheless, despite the commissioners’ claims Tuesday night that they had conducted due diligence regarding the project, it seems there is room for reconsideration in there somewhere.

What residents thought was a key vote on whether a data center can be built in an industrial park in northwest Fort Meade turned out to be a near formality, they were told Tuesday night.
Mayor Jaret Williams made that clear before a public hearing to consider an agreement with Stonebridge, the Maryland corporation that will build the data center for a still undisclosed client.
” The vote is not a vote on whether a data center can come to Fort Meade; that vote already occurred last year.” he said.
That was news to many residents, some of whom told commissioners they should repeal the previously approved ordinances and start over.
They also criticized the $10 million Stonebridge will pay the city as part of the development agreement since it is a loan and not a grant and will be repaid with property tax breaks on top of the tax breaks already granted by the County Commission.
That was in addition to the ongoing criticisms of the project over its water use, power use. air and noise pollution and potential health impacts.
In addition, some speakers asked if the data centers are so great, why are cities and states all over the country voting to ban them
Tom Palmer, chair of the Ancient Islands Group of Sierra Club urged commissioners to consider the impacts on air quality and water consumption that will come with the 4.4 million-square-foot facility’s need for 1.2 gigawatts of electricity at buildout and its impact on the nearby section of the Florida Wildlife Corridor.
But commissioners disagreed with the critics and voted unanimously to approve the agreement.
The most outspoken was Commissioner Matthew Taylor, who criticized what he claimed were personal threats he received over his support of the project . He accused opponents of simply being uninformed NIMBYs who did not understand how much better for the city to have control of a data center located inside the city than to deal with the impacts of data centers that would locate just outside the city.
Vice Mayor Petrina McCutchen and others said they had heard from many residents who support the data center but were reluctant to say so publicly for fear of receiving threats online.
Meanwhile, the commission’s vote is not the last word on this project. It will still have to meet conditions laid out in last year’s planned unit development approval and will need permits from a variety of state and federal agencies.

Friday’s rally at Peace River Park in Fort Meade attracted more than 100 people from all over the community, demonstrating the breadth of opposition to the proposal that is scheduled to come before the City Commission Tuesday night.

The meeting will begin at 6 p.n. and will be held at the Community Center to accommodate the expected crowd.
On the agenda is the decision on whether to approve a development agreement between the city and the project’s developer for a project in northwest Fort Meade on former mined land.
The agreement will involve paying the city millions of dollars in incentives as well a substantial increase in the tax base if commissioners agree to advance the project.
Raul Alfonso, one of the leaders of the opposition on Friday asked opponents to urge commissioners to pause the process util they take more time to learn about the project’s impact to the community.
Key impacts include noise and water pollution he said, explaining the data center will need its own power plant as well as a large number of backup generators and forever chemicals in the sewage that the city sewer plant is unable to treat.
He likened the developer payments to the city to a payday loan, arguing city officials are trading short-term financial gain for the long-term change in the community’s quality of life. Other opponents raised concerns about other issues ranging from the impact on the Florida Wildlife Corridor to how it will affect dark sky conditions.

There is an updated development agreement concerning the development of a proposed 4.4million-square foot data center complex, but the version posted online is missing some key data.
That updated development agreement on the proposed Fort Meade data center is going before the city’s Planning and Zoning Board Tuesday on its way to a hearing before the City Commission on April 14..
One issue is the road network that will serve the data center, which is contained in a so-far empty Attachment. B.
This is relevant for a couple of reasons.
One is that the revised development agreement map area now extends southward to County Road 630 through an area that was not part of the earlier approved Industrial Planned-unit Development.
Another is that the land at the moment does not lie within the city limits, according to the Polk County Property Appraiser’s website.
Neither of these issues are mentioned specifically in the development agreement.
If there are in fact plans to access the site from CR630, that would probably eliminate the need for the expense and delay involved in constructing an overpass across the CSX rail right of way. as mentioned in a previous post.
Th PUD conditions for the multistory data center site did specify the need for geotechnical testing to make sure the buildings would not sink or flood, both of which are mentioned as potential problems in the analysis of the soils on the site in the Polk County Soil Survey.
It is likely the developer’s engineers are aware of this, but the conditions are a safeguard.
This would also apply to any roadbuilding, too, since the development agreement does specify all roads should be constructed to city standards.
If some of the additional land does need to be annexed, that would be something that could be done easily if the City Commission is disposed to advance the project.
The April 14 hearing will tell the tale.
But once again it is important to point out that the development agreement simply lays out each party’s obligations if the project moves forward;. It is not a development approval.