(TNS) \u2014 The potential spread of massive water and electricity-consuming data centers into\u00a0Florida\u00a0has sparked fierce opposition from thousands of residents and drawn dividing lines between its most powerful politicians.<\/p>\n
But, experts say, the projects popping up in\u00a0Miami-Dade\u00a0are unlike those that grab headlines for fouling drinking water and driving up power bills \u2014 for now.<\/p>\n
The best example yet of Florida\u2019s pushback against the spread of data centers may have been Thursday\u2019s\u00a0Palm Beach County Commission\u00a0meeting, where officials gave a firm no to a proposed project called \u201cProject Tango\u201d that would have placed a data center using as much electricity as the city of\u00a0Tallahassee\u00a0right next to the Everglades.<\/p>\n
Project Tango is now the fifth large data center project stopped by Floridians, including\u00a0Sentinel Grove\u00a0in\u00a0St. Lucie,\u00a0Silver Fox\u00a0in\u00a0Martin County,\u00a0Deltona\u00a0in\u00a0Citrus County\u00a0and Okee-One in\u00a0Okeechobee.<\/p>\n
Several counties have also issued moratoriums for data centers \u2014\u00a0Leon County<\/a>,\u00a0Nassau County<\/a>,\u00a0Pasco County<\/a>,\u00a0Sarasota County<\/a>,\u00a0Citrus County<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Jackson County<\/a>. In\u00a0Citrus County, where a small town was slated to play host to Florida\u2019s first hyperscale data center, opponents of the project packed the commission and exceeded its overflow room,\u00a0the\u00a0Tampa Bay Times\u00a0reported<\/a>. The project was canceled.<\/p>\n The difference between those projects and\u00a0the 27 data centers that already exist or are being built<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0Miami-Dade\u00a0(including three newcomers that have drawn controversy) is the size.<\/p>\n \u2018Hyperscale\u2019<\/p>\n Data centers have been around the years with little controversy. They are where companies bunch computers together for tasks like hosting data on the cloud. But with the rise of Artificial Intelligence and the immense computing load it needs to run have come \u201chyperscale\u201d data centers.<\/p>\n These much larger centers have begun sprouting up across the nation and making headlines for sucking up communities\u2019 water, spiking power bills and causing other environmental issues.<\/p>\n By contrast, the three data centers coming to\u00a0Miami-Dade\u00a0are much smaller, requiring less energy to keep the computers humming all day and less water to circulate and keep the computers cool.<\/p>\n The newest data centers under construction in\u00a0Miami-Dade\u00a0are a project by firm Metroblocks on the edge of the Everglades, ReadySetFundGrow\u2019s \u201cFishbowl,\u201d a one story micro-datacenter in\u00a0Homestead, and a project by\u00a0Iron Mountain\u00a0in\u00a0Northeast Miami-Dade.<\/p>\n That gives the three imminent data centers in\u00a0Miami-Dade\u00a0a tinier footprint than the headline makers elsewhere in the state, said\u00a0Margaret Cook, vice president of water and community resilience at the\u00a0Houston Advanced Research Center.<\/p>\n On the high end, she estimated that the three data centers combined would use less than 0.2% of Miami\u2019s total drinkable water. On the lowest end, the centers would use 0.05% of the water.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you weren\u2019t going to be worried about three new apartment buildings or, let\u2019s say, 30 new office buildings, then small data centers probably wouldn\u2019t be a worry,\u201d Cook said.<\/p>\n Large data centers also use a lot of electricity, which can destabilize the power grid and lead to outages, said Rachel Mural, a senior research associate at the\u00a0Harvard Kennedy School. Across the nation, some communities have had more blackouts after large data centers move in, and higher power bills as utilities have to build more infrastructure to support them.<\/p>\n \u201cFor the average consumer\u2026 you want to know that, when you turn on your light, you\u2019re going to get electricity,\u201d Mural said. But she doesn\u2019t think that will be a big issue in the neighborhoods near the planned\u00a0Miami-Dade\u00a0projects. Similarly to water use concerns, these smaller projects would likely use less electricity and cause fewer impacts on neighbors, she said.<\/p>\n However, Mural warned, individual small data centers might not interrupt the flow of electricity much, but a cluster of them could.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause of how data centers use power, they might be increasing or decreasing their usage over really, really short time frames, like milliseconds,\u201d said Mural. \u201cThat really does introduce challenges for grid operators when you have all these data centers doing this at the same time, and these can actually lead to power interruptions. It can degrade the actual grid hardware\u2026 so on a local level, those are very real concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n A lack of transparency<\/p>\n But finding out the specific details of how one of these centers will affect a neighborhood is not easy.<\/p>\n Iron Mountain, a new data center under construction in the predominantly Black neighborhood of Westview, took residents by surprise. Many of their questions about the potential local impacts of the project remain unanswered.<\/p>\n Christine Reichert, a senior attorney for environmental nonprofit Earthjustice, has been aiding residents across the state in their campaigns against hyperscale data centers in their backyard. Time and time again, she said, she sees developers that fail to release important information about the projects.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re not saying clearly what they\u2019re going to use for their cooling systems. Sometimes they\u2019re not even disclosing how much power their facility is going to require,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd without that information, the community is not able to assess how that particular data center is going to impact them.\u201d<\/p>\n In the case of Project Tango, she said, developers originally asked permission to build a server farm there instead and then changed to an AI-ready data center. She worries that locals could lose the opportunity to weigh in on a potential data center without broader transparency.<\/p>\n In the case of\u00a0Iron Mountain, no residential properties were informed of the imminent data center because the property was already zoned for industrial use, and in\u00a0Miami-Dade\u00a0data centers are considered \u201ctelecommunications hubs\u201d that require no new permissions to build.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really essential that the local governments have the information they need before they approve any of these projects,\u201d Reichert said.<\/p>\n State flashpoint<\/p>\n AI data centers have been a political flashpoint in\u00a0Florida, pitting AI-cautionary Gov.\u00a0Ron DeSantis\u00a0against leading Republican contender for the Governor\u2019s race\u00a0Byron Donalds\u00a0\u2014 and the\u00a0White House. Donalds has said that\u00a0Florida\u00a0should vie for data center investment<\/a>, albeit with guardrails to protect the environment.<\/p>\n Another Republican gubernatorial candidate, former House Speaker\u00a0Paul Renner, vowed to call\u00a0a special session to halt approval<\/a>\u00a0of hyperscale data centers.<\/p>\n DeSantis pushed for a strict law this year that would have reined in data centers and made their operations much more transparent, but he ended up signing into law a version that was watered down by legislators.\u00a0Florida Politics reported<\/a>\u00a0that the\u00a0White House\u00a0approved of the amendment to weaken the bill.<\/p>\n What remained in the bill was a provision that data centers pick up the tab for their own electricity bill, not ratepayers. The move was publicly supported by politically influential utility\u00a0Florida Power and Light, whose president,\u00a0Scott Bores,\u00a0called it<\/a>\u00a0\u201canother great example of\u00a0Florida\u00a0getting things right.\u201d<\/p>\n