Acting on a proposal by County Commissioner Andy Dance, the Flagler County Commission in mid-May agreed to consider adopting an ordinance that would impose a one-year moratorium on new data centers. On Tuesday evening, the Palm Coast City Council did likewise on a proposal by Council member Ty Miller, if with less emphasis on the word “moratorium” and more emphasis on very quickly redefining regulations addressing data center development.
Both approaches still amount to moratoriums that would prevent the approval of new data centers in the meantime. They would allow the local governments to update land-use regulations to ensure that future data centers are evaluated in light of zoning, infrastructure and environmental impacts.
The approach would also give elected officials political cover–and breathing room–against increasing public opposition to data centers, not only in proximity to residential areas, but due to their intensive consumption of water and electricity, causing consumers’ bills to rise and water resources to decline. Opposition also at times focuses on data centers as the machinery of Big Brother.
One data center is under construction in Palm Coast, a relatively limited facility south of Royal Palms Parkway and along Town Center Boulevard that will be a cable-landing station for up to six undersea data cables. Those cables would emerge from the water along South 6th Street in Flagler Beach, where they would go through an underground landing station, before snaking their way to the Town Center facility along–or rather beneath–public rights of way.
There are no applications in Flagler County for proposed data centers, which perhaps makes the word “moratorium” a misnomer, though it would not be so if an application was filed tomorrow–as it could be.
“I know we’re getting inquiries,” Dance said. “All of Northeast Florida is getting inquiries, and I don’t think we want to be the donut hole and a donut of moratoriums that are starting to place around us. If we review it now, it gives us an opportunity to calmly and thoughtfully evaluate our current policies and regulations. So my request is that we consider following Nassau County’s process.”
Miller and Dance, along with Council member Charles Gambaro, serve together on the Northeast Florida Regional Council, where in early May they heard a presentation on data centers and moratoriums.
Gambaro is opposed to a moratorium. “Anytime you use moratorium, it kills economic development,” he said. But he was not opposed to Miller’s “approach in taking a proactive measure of trying to codify the land development.”
“I think there’s a lot of validity to the fears in terms of water usage, power, with that industry as a whole,” Miller said at the end of Tuesday’s meeting. He would like to see a land development code that more strictly defines resource uses at data centers to create “thresholds for what we would call high impact and low impact.” The difference is between colossal data centers–the industry jargon is “hyperscale data centers”–as opposed to the smaller sort, like the one in Palm Coast.
Small is a relative term: the Palm Coast data center projects consuming up to 10 megawatts of electricity, which would place it among the largest consumers of electricity in the city and the county, and almost certainly the largest by square footage occupied (the two hospitals are also among the largest, but they are far larger operations). The consumption would yield Palm Coast no windfall: Palm Coast is among a handful of cities that don’t charge a utility tax or a utility right of way fee, in essence granting the data center a relatively large tax break. Bunnell and Flagler Beach have both taxes on their books. (The proposed constitutional amendment to eliminate most homestead property taxes may force the city to revisit the issue.)
“I would like to place the high usage, the ones we fear, the big gigantic buildings that suck power and water,” Miller said, “in a special exception category of the land development code for zoning to where it would always have to come before council and be approved as a special exception. If it is one of those large data centers that we fear as residents and as myself as well. That still leaves the opportunity for use or by-right use for those low-impact ones, defined within the zoning.”
At the mid-May meeting of the County Commission, Dance favored mirroring an initiative in Nassau County to declare a one-year development moratorium there.
“Data center infrastructure is clearly becoming part of our modern economy,” Dance said, “but these facilities raise legitimate questions related to electrical demand, substations, transmission infrastructure, cooling systems, water usage, hazardous material management, noise, environmental compatibility, and long-term land use impacts.”
County Attorney Michael Rodriguez said the proposed ordinance could go before the commission in mid-June. “The key,” the attorney said, “is frame the subject that we are going to study in such definitive terms, so that we don’t run afoul of private property rights.”
To Council member Dave Sullivan, the city should not outright close the door to large enterprises if they are willing to build their own power and utility plants.
It goes beyond that, Council member Theresa Pontieri said, seizing on another matter of growing public concern: “If you look into what these things do, we’re also talking about mass data storage and surveillance,” Pontieri said, “and I’m just, from a conceptual standpoint, not comfortable with that.”
“It’s the world we’re coming into,” Sullivan said with surprising fatalism.
“I don’t agree with it,” Pontieri said.
“Well, you may not agree to it, but you may not be the one that will decide,” Sullivan said.
Pontieri was on Miller’s page, and was going to propose issuing a letter of support to the county’s moratorium initiative. “I know I’m going to say the big bad word, but that’s because it’s what he used,” Pontieri said, referring to Dance’s mention of a moratorium. She said the industry and the fuel behind it–artificial intelligence, or AI–are growing at a very fast pace.
“It could be one of two things,” Pontieri said. “It could be a lot of fear mongering that’s going on, and these things may not come to fruition. Or it could be even worse than what’s being projected. So, why not take the opportunity to educate ourselves, make sure we’re protecting the city and the county in the meantime, and then once this very short 12-month period is up, we can make a decision based on what is good for economic development, what makes sense, and what is going to possibly protect our city and county.”
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