NEW PORT RICHEY — Residents came out for another fight over data centers, similar to ones they have had in the past in battles against apartments, developments and roads.
Turns out this time around, there’s really no one to fight.
With county commissioners already in agreement with most residents that the county needs to investigate the rising issue of data centers, the only debate seemed to be whether a proposed moratorium should be for one year, or forever.
“I genuinely feel by vibes alone that you guys will possibly really put this moratorium into place, and I do fully appreciate why it would be for 12 months,” said Trinity’s Amanda Swanson. “I hope that in 12 months we’ll be here again to set up another 12-month moratorium.”
The opposition primarily centered, as it did last week at the Planning Commission meeting, on concern over data centers’ effects on water and energy use — and how much the cost of that is passed on to consumers — and any damage they cause to the environment.
The Board of County Commissioners did not vote; this was the first of two required public hearings on a proposed ordinance for a pause on applications for data centers and other “large load customers.”
The adoption hearing is set for July 14 in Dade City.
While the county continues to work on the proper language, defining data centers and closing any potential loopholes that can be exploited before the final vote, a moratorium appears to be all but a done deal at this point.
Planning staffer Amanda Hill said the moratorium is meant to be a “temporary pause to preserve the status quo” while the county studies where, if anywhere, data centers belong. Hill added that Florida lawmakers have now formally recognized large data centers as a distinct land-use issue requiring local attention.
Already, more than a dozen Florida counties have adopted moratoria or considering them to slow the spread of data centers.
“Other things can come in and buy your property and generate revenue for you that is not going to end up being the end of us all,” said Port Richey’s Kimberly Cox. “I mean, by the end of all of this, we’re going to have two computers that are talking to each other as they drink the last of the water, because we’re all dead.”
Residents in attendance joined Cox in unanimously showing their disdain for the centers.
Speaker after speaker referenced not just water and power costs, but other concerns like brown well water, diesel generator exhaust, sleep-disrupting hum from cooling towers and even reports of stillborn calves in farms near Texas facilities.
“Please, please, please do not do this,” said New Port Richey’s Emerson Martin. “Please do not allow data centers to be here. Please do not do this to us.”
Paxton Gray, whose family relies on well water, argued that data centers will rob the Floridan aquifer of its most precious resource. “I’ve seen the videos of other residents from other places around the country that have had data centers put next to their houses, and how that then changes their water quality, so they’ll be getting brown water out of their faucets, if they have any water at all,” she said.
Registered nurse Doris Carroll urged commissioners to require a formal health impact assessment before approving any data centers, while Trinity’s Anne Fauber summed up many of the speakers: “They will suck on our resources like leeches and parasites, neither of which is good.”
Others criticized AI directly.
“I have friends who don’t even know how to write an essay anymore, because all they can do it ask a chatbot,” said college student Gabrielle Clemans. “It’s making people dumber. I’m probably going to be here another 50 years. I’m the one who has to live through this.”
Cody Czekiel of Spring Hill, who said she was a longtime data analyst in big tech, claimed that the data centers aren’t just for things like Meta or your phone company.
“They’re for mass surveillance,” she said. “Every text message we send everything we do on social media. The government wants to store that, and they need a lot to be able to do that.”
Like at last week’s Planning Commission meeting, residents got a front-row seat of what the debate between developers of data centers and the County Commission might look like in the future.
David Miltenberger of Stellaris Data Centers argued again for commissioners to carve out an exception in any moratorium for a 19.9-megawatt facility he wants to build in the Double Branch development off I-75.
Last week, Miltenberger told the Planning Commission his facility might require hundreds of thousands of gallons of potable water annually. But at the recent meeting, he said his contractor confirmed that his 200,000-square-foot facility would actually run on a “closed-loop” system, which he claims would require no local water for cooling and uses 200,000 gallons a year for restrooms. “About equal to what a coffee shop uses,” he said.
He pitched an exemption for small, low-water data centers under the current state limit of 50 megawatts that use less than 1 million gallons of water a year, or he suggested his facility serve as a lone pilot program partnering with the county, which would tightly control it.
Residents talked over Miltenberger, shooting down the idea, with unanswered questions about where the cooling chemicals would go, how often the closed-loop systems would be flushed and whether a small facility was just a way to get through the door en route to expanding down the road.
Development Director David Engel, as he did last week, again confirmed the county does not currently permit data centers of any size, and any ordinance written would not exempt Miltenberger’s proposed facility.
While many in attendance asked for a permanent moratorium, County Attorney Jeffrey Stensnyder reminded the board that while moratoria of reasonable durations are generally permitted, permanent bans may lead the county into more precarious legal waters.
At the end of the meeting, those remaining applauded the decision to keep moving toward a one-year moratorium.