{"id":3247,"date":"2026-06-29T18:04:31","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T22:04:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/?p=3247"},"modified":"2026-06-29T18:04:32","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T22:04:32","slug":"data-center-moratorium-idea-spreading-but-not-in-unincorporated-polk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/?p=3247","title":{"rendered":"Data Center Moratorium Idea Spreading, But Not In Unincorporated Polk"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Many central Florida counties and cities have enacted or are considering temporary moratoriums on accepting applications for water and energy hungry hyperscale data centers to give their staff time to review local development regulations to recommend where and how these facilities should be sited.
The Polk County Commission is not among them.
Ancient Islands Chair Tom Palmer has broached the subject twice during the public comments portion of commission meetings and in a conservation with one commissioner, but so far has not been given any indication commissioners are even considering a pause.
These projects were initially promoted as property tax windfalls, though Polk commissioners’ only action so far was to approve a 10-year tax break worth an estimated $140 million for the first proposed hyperscale data center to pop up in an industrial park in Fort Meade.
Now local officials in other parts of Florida are rethinking the idea and instead of having dollar signs in their eyes. they are listening to residents concerned about how the demands of these data centers will affect the aquifer and the power grid and how the low-volume thrum they emit will affect residents’ quality of life.
In addition, there’s the question of how the emissions from generators on site or power plants off site will affect air quality and wildlife.
The latest county to weigh in on this issue is DeSoto County, which is dealing with a proposal in a rural area east of Arcadia, WGCU reports. Commissioners there have asked their attorney to draft an ordinance to establish a one-year moratorium.
Officials in Citrus, Hernando, Lake and Pasco counties and the city of Zephyrhills have already enacted one-year moratoriums and Lakeland in Polk County is considering one. according to The Ledger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last December the Southwest Florida Water Management District’s Governing Board approved a new policy that requires water use permits for data centers to come before the board, though it is unclear whether board members would actually deny any permit application.
Keep in mind that the actions taken so far are temporary moratoriums, not outright bans, which could expose local officials to litigation.
And it is also unclear how many of these proposals are serious and how many are simply probes to see whether a project stands a chance to be considered and approved.
Proposals in Okeechobee and St. Lucie counties have been withdrawn after public criticism.

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Many central Florida counties and cities have enacted or are considering temporary moratoriums on accepting applications for water and energy hungry hyperscale data centers to give their staff time to review local development regulations to recommend where and how these facilities should be sited.The Polk County Commission is not among them. Ancient Islands Chair Tom […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gci"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3247"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3251,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3247\/revisions\/3251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}