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<\/p>\nResidents voiced concerns with data centers and their impacts on the environment during a meeting held Tuesday by City Council member Mone Holder<\/p>\n
Dozens of residents filled a meeting room at Jacksonville City Hall on Wednesday as City Council member Mone Holder held a discussion on data centers, bringing together council members, Planning and Zoning Board representatives, JEA officials and community stakeholders.<\/p>\n
Holder said the purpose of the meeting was to better understand the data centers that currently operate in Jacksonville, how they function and what impacts future facilities could have on the community. The meeting also gave residents an opportunity to voice concerns and ask questions as interest in data center development continues to grow.<\/p>\n
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Many speakers raised concerns about potential environmental impacts, including noise pollution, water usage and the effect new facilities could have on utility infrastructure.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat will the impact be on our JEA bills?\u201d asked one resident.<\/p>\n
Several residents also called on city leaders to enact a moratorium on future data center development, similar to one currently in place in neighboring Nassau County.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would absolutely like to see an immediate moratorium on any further data center build out, specifically because everyone involved in today’s meeting from city council to planning to JEA, all admitted out loud that they did not have enough information and that they were very much operating in the dark,” said resident Hillary Leverone. “I think until we gather more information and can make more informed decisions we need to stop because the impacts environmentally into the community are far too dangerous.<\/p>\n
Other residents echoed those concerns and voiced support for temporarily halting new projects until more information is available.<\/p>\n
According to the city\u2019s assistant general counsel, implementing a moratorium would require approval from the full Jacksonville City Council.<\/p>\n
While no moratorium proposal is currently before the council, Council member Jimmy Peluso said during the meeting that he is drafting legislation that could establish one.<\/p>\n
For now, city leaders are focusing on gathering more information. One proposal discussed during the meeting was the creation of a dedicated working group or workshop that would bring together council members, administration officials and community stakeholders to study the potential impacts of future data center development.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m hoping either our council president or the administration will get something going that includes, of course members of the council and it could potentially be something that includes stakeholders from the community,” said council member Holder. “But either way it goes, we need to have a dedicated body that takes this issue seriously, brings all the information to the table and figure out what’s next for Jacksonville.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Residents voiced concerns with data centers and their impacts on the environment during a meeting held Tuesday by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425020,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-425019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425019","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=425019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}