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.

The idea of eliminating or reducing property taxes on homesteads via a constitutional amendment is still being kicked around in Tallahassee.
Local officials are watching the proposal and heard a presentation of what some the effects could be at this year’s Polk County Commission annual retreat this week.
Although this affects only part of the tax base involving owner-occupied homes that are claimed as a primary residence. the numbers are significant.
Based on the assumption that one of the proposals will be on the 2026 ballot, here’s what the figures look like.
If it is the proposal to provide an additional $50,000 homestead exemption, the amount of revenue for the voter-approved Environmental Lands Program would be reduced by $569.863 from the $14.4 million without the cut
However. the effect of the proposal to eliminate. all property taxes on homesteads would cause a projected loss of $3.7 million in new revenue.
So far neither of these measures has been placed on the ballot and even if some version reaches the ballot, the measure would have to be approved by at least 60 percent of voters.
This one is worth following as legislators convene a special session later this year,
Stay tuned.

In addition to the hundreds of millions of dollars the Polk Regional Water Cooperative is spending to plumb the depths of the Floridan aquifer, it is poised to spend $225,000 to further explore tapping the Peace River.
Wednesday the PRWC’s board voted to approve a memorandum of understanding with Mosaic to investigate the feasibility of someday using one of its clay-settling areas as a reservoir.
The reservoir, which was first proposed last year, would be located on mined land south of Fort Meade and east of the Peace River.
PRWC Executive Director Eric DeHaven said the study, which will not begin until the next fiscal year. will look at the feasibility of building a pipeline along a Mosaic railroad spur between a section of the river near the Hardee County line and a treatment plant and ultimately the reservoir.
He said there is no estimate of what the cost will be for the construction of the facilities and the use of Mosaic’s property.
How much water will be available will depend on an updated study of how much water can be withdrawn from the river during high-flow periods that is being conducted by the Southwest Florida Water Management District.
PRWC officials are monitoring the study.
Meanwhile, a settlement has been proposed in the dispute involving PRWC, Tampa Bay Water and Swiftmud over how much water the cooperative could potentially withdraw from the Alafia River. Any withdrawals would not occur for several years if they occur at all.
The river’s headwaters lie in Polk County in two streams that merge to form the river proper in eastern Hillsborough County.
The settlement agreement is scheduled for discussion at next week’s Swiftmud Governing Board meeting in Tampa.

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.