Board members unanimously concur that facilities unwanted in county
On a recent unanimous vote, the Sarasota County commissioners agreed to a 12-month freeze on any county acceptance, review or approval of applications for large-scale data centers.
The decision followed a presentation by Michele Norton, assistant director of the county’s Planning and Development Services Department, on research she had undertaken into the facilities and the new state law — 2026 Senate Bill 484 — regarding them.
Staff has not received any applications, Norton reported, but staff had logged one inquiry.
Commissioner Joe Neunder was the first member of the board to offer a comment after Norton completed her remarks during the board’s regular meeting on July 8. “Ultimately, at the end of the day for me, it’s ‘No; not now; never,’ ” he stressed. “I don’t see this being something … that we would ever want in our community.”
An internal review of Sarasota County’s zoning code indicated that data centers would not be a permitted use, Norton said during her presentation. However, staff needs to take what she characterized as “a deeper dive” into the Comprehensive Plan, which guides growth in the community, and the Unified Development Code (UDC), which includes all of the land-use and zoning regulations, “just to make sure that this position holds.”
Staff will continue that review and its analysis of the implications of the new state law that governs data centers in Florida, Norton added.
Neunder also was the first to suggest that he and his colleagues should consider a moratorium on allowing staff to accept any applications for such centers as staff continues that review and analysis.
Commissioner Teresa Mast expressed concern that parts of the Unified Development Code “might be a bit ambiguous.” She wanted to be certain, she told Norton, that the commissioners “clearly define” what could and could not be allowed in Sarasota County.
“I think there’s room for improvement” in the county’s policies and regulations, Mast added.
County Attorney Joshua Moye concurred with Norton that “staff needs time to look at our [Comprehensive] Plan, look at our zoning [and] Special Exception process.” Therefore, he suggested, “I think the straightforward legal way to go would be to do a temporary freeze … on the acceptance, review or approval of data center applications for 12 months.”
If the board members agreed to such a motion, Moye continued, his office would work with staff on its provisions and likely provide the commissioners an update in August or September. “We’ll do whatever it takes to implement this vote,” he added.
Referencing aspects of Norton’s presentation, Neunder said the facilities’ water consumption “is a huge red flag”; likewise, the electricity consumption; and “the possibility of negative impacts to our very delicate ecosystem and environment.”
The smaller data centers — those in the range of 100,000 square feet on 20 to 50 acres — “can use about 52,000 gallons of water per day,” Norton told the commissioners. “The larger facilities consume 500,000 to 2 million gallons per day.” She classified those as standing on 100 to 300 acres.
The centers that she referred to as “AI campuses” are located on sites with 500 or more acres, and they “could use up to 5 million gallons per day.”
She had shown the commissioners a slide with a view of the Meta data center in Mesa, Ariz., which stands on 400 acres “and is about 2 million square feet.”
Even using what she characterized as a “state-of-the-art evaporation cooling system,” Norton said analyses had determined that the facilities require between 500,000 and 1.5 million gallons of water per day.
“This is a hard, hard ‘No’ for me,” Commissioner Teresa Mast said.
“To me,” Mast continued, “there needs to be no applications accepted at all.”
Commissioner Tom Knight called that “a great statement.”
Commissioner Mark Smith noted that he has had the opportunity to attend seminars on the topic, at both the state and national levels. He pointed to the water and electricity usage of the facilities, as Norton had discussed. “They don’t belong in Sarasota County,” he said.
In regard to power demand, Norton explained that, through her research, she also learned that “the large-scale data centers have an extreme, continuous electrical load demand on our grid.”
She showed the board members another side with a variety of data on that topic:
Commissioner Smith pointed out, “They’re lit up like prisons.”
Since about 34% of Sarasota County has been preserved from development through conservation easements and the county’s decades-long effort to purchase environmentally sensitive lands and property suitable for neighborhood parks, Knight said, it would be more difficult for a company to find a location for a data center.
Smith further noted that, in Florida, companies “are targeting more rural counties that don’t have [a strong] tax base.”
Chair Ron Cutsinger agreed with his colleagues’ view of the facilities, he told them.
What they are and what they do
Early during of her presentation, Norton explained that a large-scale data center is a “highly specialized facility containing servers, networking equipment, cooling systems and power infrastructure that consume extraordinary amounts of land, electricity, and water.”
She called large-scale — or, as some people characterize them, she noted, “hyperscale data centers” — “one of the fastest emerging, impactful industries in the country.”
The growth in the facilities, Norton noted, has been driven by cloud computing, streaming, advanced computing systems and artificial intelligence, or AI.
“As everybody knows,” she noted, “most of that growth has come from AI …”
A written report about data centers that was part of the agenda packet for the commission’s July 8 meeting further points out, “The number of large-scale data center facilities worldwide has doubled in the past five years, with 54% within the United States.”
In discussing the Meta facility in Arizona, Norton told the commissioners that at the peak of its construction period, 2,000 workers were on the site. Since its completion, she continued, “It employs about 200 people to operate [it].”
Loudon County, Virginia, has become known as “Data Center Alley,” Norton continued, because of the number of facilities located there.
In 2019, Norton said, the centers were using approximately 1.5 gigawatts of electricity; in 2024, that climbed to more than 4 gigawatts, and the projection is that the facilities will exceed 11 gigawatts of demand in coming years.
The written report in the agenda packet said, “[A]ccording to S&P Global U.S., data center power demand reached approximately 64 GW [gigawatts] in 2025, nearly tripling since 2020. For context, 64 GW is comparable to the electricity demand of multiple major metropolitan regions combined. Some forecasts now project AI-related data center demand alone could reach 123 GW by 2035.”
Florida Senate Bill 484 and other local governments’ actions
As part of her presentation, Norton also provided the commissioners details about Senate Bill 484, which the Florida Legislature approved this year and Gov. Ron DeSantis signed. It went into effect on July 1.
She talked about the following facets of that law:
Norton acknowledged, “Over the past few years, we’ve been seeing a lot of pre-emptive legislation from the state.” However, she continued, Senate Bill 484 affirms local government authority “to establish reasonable regulations intended to mitigate the adverse effects and impacts of [data centers].”
She showed the board members a second slide providing details about definitions in the law:
Then Norton reported that communities across the United States are re-evaluating their zoning classifications in light of the interest in constructing data centers. Moreover, she said, some local government bodies have implemented year-long moratoria on accepting applications for them. In Florida, another slide said, Citrus County, Palm Beach County, Nassau County, Pasco County and Hernando County have taken the latter action.
These counties, Norton continued, are using that time “to draft stricter regulations or to study their [zoning] codes …”
Commissioner Mast did seek confirmation from Norton that one of the guidelines of the new state law would require the Southwest Florida Water Management District (SWFWMD) to determine whether sufficient water would be available for a data center in its territory — which includes Sarasota County — without compromising the existing demand for water.
“That is correct,” Norton replied.
Section 5 of the new law says, “It is the intent of the Legislature that the development and operation of large-scale data centers in this state be managed under a permitting framework that ensures this state’s water resources are used in the public interest in manner that is not harmful to the water resources of this state, and consistent with local government zoning regulations and comprehensive plans.”
That section adds, “Consistent with other provisions of this part, the governing board of a water management district or the department may not issue a permit to a large-scale data center applicant for an allocation of water if the proposed use of the water is harmful to the water resources of the area or is prohibited by the applicable local government zoning regulations and comprehensive plan.”
In spite of that safeguard, Mast pointed out, “We all have recently experienced when some authority a bit overstepped from what I would call our home rule abilities.”