As data center backlash grows in Florida, here’s why Miami projects are different

The potential spread of massive water and electricity-consuming data centers into Florida has sparked fierce opposition from thousands of residents and drawn dividing lines between its most powerful politicians.

But, experts say, the projects popping up in Miami-Dade are unlike those that grab headlines for fouling drinking water and driving up power bills — for now. The best example yet of Florida’s pushback against the spread of data centers may have been Thursday’s Palm Beach County Commission meeting, where officials gave a firm no to a proposed project called “Project Tango” that would have placed a data center using as much electricity as the city of Tallahassee right next to the Everglades.

Project Tango is now the fifth large data center project stopped by Floridians, including Sentinel Grove in St. Lucie, Silver Fox in Martin County, Deltona in Citrus County and Okee-One in Okeechobee.

Several counties have also issued moratoriums for data centers — Leon County, Nassau County, Pasco County, Sarasota County, Citrus County and Jackson County. In Citrus County, where a small town was slated to play host to Florida’s first hyperscale data center, opponents of the project packed the commission and exceeded its overflow room, the Tampa Bay Times reported. The project was canceled.

“However, some of the things his administration is doing or building, could be a framework that will be co-opted by the Son of Perdition after Trump is gone, and used to build his One World Empire.”

The Garden of Eden was perfect; and then Satan got in and messed things up; he does it every time.

Some religions discourage owning a radio, much less a computer. And that's fine. I own both on a small scale.

In my opinion, parents are doing a disservice if they keep their children ignorant on how to use a computer. A young person will be at a tremendous disadvantage entering the U.S. workforce without an ability to use computers.

(Of course, parents need strong guidelines to protect children from dangerous computer misuse.)

If a parent is absolutely certain the world will end in the next five years then computer knowledge is less important for their children.

Would it be morally ok if I use the internet to order a vacuum tube for my CB radio?

You are drawing a distinction that does not exist. The military does not build all its own isolated server farms; the government leases secure, dedicated sections inside standard commercial data centers, like AWS GovCloud.

But those stable federal contracts are a drop in the bucket. The current explosion of construction is being driven by private corporations building massive infrastructure to run real-time advertising auctions, harvest consumer data, and fuel an AI speculation bubble.

Nobody is opposing hospitals, schools, or the existing infrastructure for healthcare and e-commerce, which runs perfectly fine on a fraction of the grid.

Your smug ‘vacuum tube’ routine attempting to paint me as a dinosaur is more of a comedy routine than valid criticism. If you actually knew anything about electronic hardware as I do, you would know that CB radios have been completely solid-state and transistor-based for the last fifty years.

Objecting to private corporations consuming an entire county's worth of water and electricity for corporate data harvesting does not mean someone is living in the past. It means they actually understand the physical and economic costs of this infrastructure, while you are still trying to defend it with science-fiction missile scenarios.

Unlike you, I actually understand this technology because I am a regular user of AI services. I use commercial products, run local Large Language Models myself, and use powerful virtual machines provided by cloud services. The specific tasks I run are not power-hungry mass surveillance applications, but they do give me a direct, hands-on reference point for how this computing power actually works. It is unfortunate that your beliefs have been entirely formed by corporate propaganda, but you simply do not have the technical background to realize how badly you have been bamboozled.

Studies by groups like the Electric Power Research Institute noted that historical baseline growth and heavy industrial contributions put downward pressure on average unit prices by expanding the customer base paying into the system.

That argument completely misunderstands how utility economics work in a supply crisis. Spreading fixed costs across a larger customer base only reduces rates if the utility already has excess capacity sitting idle. That is not the world we live in today.

Data centers represent a massive, sudden demand shock to the grid. Because they consume so much power, utilities are being forced to build brand new substations, high-voltage transmission lines, and expensive new generation plants just to keep the lights on.

Under standard utility regulations, the billions of dollars spent on these massive grid upgrades get passed directly down to captive residential ratepayers. We are seeing the real-world consequences of this right now. Look at Virginia, where residential consumers are being forced to foot the bill for 55 percent of an 8-billion-dollar utility expansion driven entirely by data center demand. Look at Oregon, where the legislature just had to pass an emergency law to hike data center power rates by nearly 30 percent just to shield regular homeowners from skyrocketing bills.

Trying to claim that overloading a strained electrical grid puts downward pressure on prices completely flies in the face of basic supply and demand. Regular consumers are actively subsidizing the infrastructure upgrades required by private tech monopolies, and my wife and my soaring utility bills right here in Western Washington are living proof of it.

fireman15 wrote: “Data centers represent a massive, sudden demand shock to the grid. Because they consume so much power, utilities are being forced to build brand new substations, high-voltage transmission lines, and expensive new generation plants just to keep the lights on.”

Those costs are ultimately paid by the data centers and once paid result in lowered costs for all. Besides those are necessary improvements if we want a robust grid. This is no different than the expansion of any public utility to service real growth. I do not see anyone opposing new homes because they will ultimately require construction of additional sewer systems, roads, and an expanded grid. The opposition to data centers is exactly like the Luddites opposing new factories.

The opposition to data centers is exactly like the Luddites opposing new factories.

You are operating with complete ignorance of basic economics and how public utility regulation actually works. Data centers do not pay for all those upgrades. Under standard utility laws, massive capital expenditures like new high-voltage transmission lines and new power plants are added to the utility's ‘rate base,’ meaning the cost is socialized across every single customer on the grid. Captive residential ratepayers are actively paying for the infrastructure that these tech companies require.

Furthermore, comparing a commercial data center to a residential housing development is a ridiculous false equivalence. A single modern AI data center can consume as much electricity as hundreds of thousands of homes combined. When a new housing development goes in, the developers pay connection fees and the new families pay standard rates that naturally fit into steady municipal growth. Data centers represent an unprecedented, overnight demand shock that swallows up entire regional power supplies.

Your ‘Luddite’ label is insulting along with being rooted in the idiocy that you have demonstrated here on multiple occasions. Objecting to families having their monthly utility bills driven up to subsidize the profit margins of multi-trillion-dollar tech corporations is not an opposition to technology. It is an opposition to corporate welfare.”

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