LAKELAND, Fla. — The City of Lakeland is now one step closer to approving a 12-month moratorium on the development of large-scale data centers.
“Just for the record, this is the first reading of the data center moratorium,” said Lakeland Mayor Sara Roberts McCarley at Monday’s City Commission meeting.
WATCH Lakeland takes next step to 1-year moratorium on data center developments
The prospect of data centers is something leaders have been talking about for a while.
“This is a very hot topic,” said commissioner Mike Musick.
This conversation stems largely from a data center proposal, referred to as Project Swan, that calls for a 600,000-square-foot data center near Old Tampa Highway and Wilkinson Road—which is a few miles west of downtown Lakeland.
At Monday’s City Commission meeting, leaders took the first step in moving forward with a 1-year pause on any such development, to have time to create reasonable regulations about potential adverse impacts facilities like this could create.
They’re namely looking at how this could affect the city’s water supply, infrastructure, and electric grid.
“There’s a lot that we don’t know that we have to get done in a year to even make it worthwhile,” said Musick.
Commissioner Ashley Troutman brought up the idea of expanding language in the ordinance beyond data centers, to include large utility demand facilities.
“In many ways, I believe we’re being shortsighted if we only define the conversation based on the term data center,” said Troutman.
A main concern is whether the city could handle the electricity load that comes with large data centers. The moratorium ordinance highlights large load customers as having a monthly peak load of 50 megawatts of electricity or more a month.
Since the City of Lakeland owns its electricity service—Lakeland Electric—it gives the city control over usage.
Scott Bishop, from Lakeland Electric, shared at Monday’s meeting that he’s in favor of a temporary pause.
“I like the moratorium. I appreciate it. My heart is around reliability and affordability for our customers. Anything large doesn’t feel that way,” said Bishop.
As city commissioners look ahead to next steps, many people in the community participated in public comment at Monday’s meeting, sharing their concerns as well as support for the 1-year moratorium.
Monday’s meeting was just the first reading of the moratorium ordinance, so no action was taken.
The final reading will be at the City Commission meeting in August, where a vote is expected.
Share Your Story with Larissa
Larissa Scott stays on top of everything related to education and public health for Tampa Bay 28. If you have a story you want to share, send Larissa a message below.
.
'It's either eat or pay bills': Florida families desperate for answers after losing SNAP benefits to fraud
Florida families are losing hundreds of dollars in SNAP benefits to fraud, with multiple victims in the Tampa Bay area saying unauthorized charges on their accounts are being traced to the same California address — and the state is offering no way to get that money back.
