New Florida law gives local governments authority over data center development

Florida’s local governments must decide how to handle data center development. Lakeland may choose to hit the pause button.The Lakeland City Commission met Monday where they discussed a 12-month moratorium on hyperscale data centers. Currently, there’s a proposal for a 600,000 square foot data center that would sit on 60 acres in Polk County.
This year, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law Senate Bill 484, which deemed local governments had the power to decide development regulations for data centers.
Lakeland wouldn’t be the first to hit pause on data center development. Earlier this month, Nassau County approved a 12-month moratorium on the acceptance, review, or approval of applications for development permits related to data centers. They said the moratorium would give the county time to amend its Comprehensive Plan and Land Development Code.
During Monday’s meeting, Lakeland City Mayor Sara Roberts McCarley called the data center conversation “a global issue.”
“When we talk about our codes and we talk about our planning department and comprehensive planning, to date, the state of Florida has not developed any codes in and around what a data center may look like,” said McCarley She went on to say, “We don’t have the frameworks wrapped around what that looks like even from a state regulatory standpoint. And that’s something that we’re grappling with locally because the state hasn’t even said, you know, here are some guidelines of how this may or may not work.”
What the state has done with SB 484 is to install certain protections for utility customers to prevent large-scale data centers from passing on their costs to the public, require public disclosure of development deals, and set a permitting process and environmental standards. What it did not do was tell local governments how to zone, permit, or handle land use issues.
The U.S. is home to over 3,000 operational data centers with more than 1,500 in development, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. Nearly half of all the currently planned data centers are located in the South. While 38% of Americans now live within 5 miles of at least one operational data center, when taken together with the other data centers in development, 42% of Americans would live close to an operational data center.
Lakeland will hold two public hearings on the potential moratorium on July 6 and 20 with a vote expected during the second meeting, according to City Attorney Palmer Davis.

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