JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 The statewide debate over data centers has officially come to Duval County, and a statewide candidate was here in town Wednesday morning to bash Republican Gubernatorial nominee Byron Donalds\u2019 stance on the issue. <\/p>\n
In a news conference near the St. Johns River, Councilmember Jimmy Peluso (D-District 7), State House candidate Audrey Gibson and Agriculture Commissioner candidate Joey Atkins expressed their concerns as they stood behind a podium with the words \u201cData Center Donalds\u201d.<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cData centers will be the death of Florida\u2019s environment,\u201d said Gibson.<\/p>\n They took issue with the Donalds campaign receiving millions of dollars from data center developers and argued he\u2019d open the door to unchecked data center construction.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we build an AI data center anywhere near the tributaries, it could poison this beautiful river, harm the ecosystem and make life harder for the people of this city,\u201d said Peluso.<\/p>\n Early on in the race<\/a>, Donalds did indicate he wanted Florida to become a leader in the data center industry, but has since softened his enthusiasm for data center development.<\/p>\n During a campaign stop in Northeast Florida Monday, he vowed to protect ratepayers from absorbing costs from data center energy usage, and promised to protect local control.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re gonna decide if a data center comes to their community, not the State of Florida,\u201d said Donalds. \u201dWe are not going to preempt that ability from local governments. To be honest, it\u2019s county commissioners that issue building permits, not Governors.\u201d<\/p>\n In an upcoming segment of This Week in the 904 we spoke with Donalds\u2019 Democratic opponent David Jolly about this issue.<\/p>\n He vowed to institute a one-year statewide moratorium on data center development.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we need to just hit an immediate pause, make sure we get this right instead of getting it done quickly,\u201d said Jolly.<\/p>\n And Atkins argued that\u2019s a significant point of distinction between the two Gubernatorial candidates.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s [Donalds] sort of morphing and adapting his message to what the polls say and he\u2019s trying to balance these two sort of factions,\u201d said Atkins. \u201dBut you know what he\u2019s not doing? He\u2019s not calling for a ban or a moratorium on this, is he?\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s very possible data center platforms could play a big part in voters\u2019 decisions this November.<\/p>\n A UNF poll conducted in July found 68 percent of Floridians oppose data center development in their local communities.<\/p>\n Republicans, Independents and Democrats all polled at over 50 percent opposition.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>] <\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here<\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here<\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 The statewide debate over data centers has officially come to Duval County, and a statewide…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":421718,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[982,42403,166444,79279,166443,58471,44843,8131,36239,16662,639,28,8853,5052,43596,116,118,117,971,54990,970,18639,166445,634,9280,11103,4219,7296,6176,9939],"class_list":["post-421717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-action_news","tag-atkins","tag-audrey_gibson","tag-byron_donald","tag-data_center","tag-david_jolly","tag-democratic","tag-democrats","tag-donald","tag-donalds","tag-duval_county","tag-florida","tag-floridians","tag-house","tag-jack_state","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-jake","tag-jake_snowfan","tag-jake_stoan","tag-jimmy_peluso","tag-joey_adkins","tag-local","tag-northeast_florida","tag-republican","tag-republicans","tag-saint_johns_river","tag-south_bank","tag-unf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=421717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}