Orange County commissioners will discuss the idea of temporarily banning the construction of hyperscale data centers Tuesday, following the lead of dozens of municipalities in Florida that have already proposed or enacted moratoriums.
Commissioner Kelly Semrad, an environmental advocate, requested the discussion in a June memo sent to her colleagues on the Orange County board of county commissioners.
She told Orlando Weekly that the idea came from an advisory council within her district, which covers parts of Orlando north of Colonial Drive and a large swath of the more rural East Orange County.
“This is coming from the people for the people, because they don’t want to live next to an AI [artificial intelligence] data center,” she said.
According to recent Gallup polling published in May, seven in 10 Americans oppose the construction of data centers in their local communities, and nearly half of respondents said they strongly oppose it.
Orange County hasn’t received any applications from data center developers yet, as far as Semrad knows.
“We don’t have any in the pipeline, and we have not yet had any that were submitted, which makes this very timely for us to be able to address before we actually get an application,” she said, adding, “It’s inevitable that it will come eventually, so we need to be prepared.”
One reason she’s supportive of being proactive on the issue? The county doesn’t currently have any explicit reference to data centers in its zoning or land use plan. In practice, that makes the regulation of these facilities in Orange County something of a legal grey area.
“Right now they’re only being recognized as data processing centers, and a data processing center is not an AI data center. It does not have the same impact on communities, so we don’t even have the ability to evaluate these and review these when we get applications right now,” she explained.
Large-scale data centers are defined under Florida law as those with a peak electrical load of 50 megawatts or more. They’ve become a political flashpoint nationwide and in Florida’s gubernatorial race, as opponents express concerns over nonstop noise, soaring energy and water demands, higher utility bills, and the potential impact on property values.
Semrad is bringing forward a temporary pause on data center development in Orange County — specifically larger-scale facilities intended to support the use of AI. She’d like the county to temporarily pause permission for construction for at least one year, or longer, so that county staff can study the potential impacts and report back.
However, she admitted to Orlando Weekly that, personally, she’s supportive of banning them completely. The county is already facing a looming water shortage that she worries could be exacerbated by the demands of a data center.
“I can’t then support a type of facility that’s going to consume 5 million gallons of water a day when we’re talking about how do we find [an] alternative water supply in 2035.”
Data centers are not novel, by any means — some have been around for decades — but the size, scale, and rapid development of these larger-scale facilities has accelerated with the advancement of AI and the sheer demand for its infrastructure.
A number of counties in Florida, including Volusia, Sarasota, and DeSoto, have already issued temporary pauses on data center development, are in the process of doing so, or are in the process of banning them permanently.
“Why the hell would any sane person want these in your community?” asked Volusia County council member Troy Kent, during a discussion of data centers last month.
A new state law (SB 484) approved by the Florida Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis adds additional requirements for data center development and offers some guardrails. For instance, the law prevents utility companies from passing along the cost of data center energy demands onto customers, at least theoretically.
It also, importantly, allows municipal governments, like Orange County, to locally regulate and reject data center development, should they choose to do so. At least, that’s the interpretation some local government leaders have taken up, although there have been some mixed takes.
Some legal analysis has interpreted this provision as creating an exemption for what kinds of development counties are allowed to reject under a controversial state law (SB 180) passed in 2025 that Orange County and other Florida municipalities have filed suit over.
“Orange County would benefit from a more in-depth legal analysis to reinforce the legality of this moratorium,” the memo from Semrad’s office states.
Semrad told Orlando Weekly she’s not sure if her proposed moratorium will be embraced or potentially face opposition from any of her colleagues on the county board. But she has some tentative support for the former.
“I think that we have the board’s support, I would be surprised if we didn’t,” she said. “We’re expecting that on Tuesday we walk away with a moratorium on AI data centers in Orange County.”
The local chapter of the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led climate justice activist organization, for its part is planning to rally members to speak in support of the moratorium Tuesday. The organization also created an online petition for individuals to sign, if they can’t attend Tuesday’s 9 a.m. meeting in person. More than 1,600 digital letters of support have been sent through the Action Network petition campaign, as of Friday afternoon.
