A proposal for one data center in Indiantown has been withdrawn, but the door is open for two others.
Nelson Ferreira on April 29 withdrew his proposal, but Florida Power & Light could allow a center on thousands of acres Indiantown recently annexed, and another developer has held preliminary discussions with village officials about a center — dubbed Project Growler — at 18300 Southwest Warfield Blvd.
Manager Rory Greenberg of Warfield 18 LLC, which is behind Project Growler, would not say why the proposal is called such. He declined to comment at all.
The potential for data centers in Indiantown drew dozens of people to Village Council meetings in April, when council members agreed to rezone 5,700 acres of FPL property from agricultural use to planned unit development, That opened the door for construction of a data center there because data centers are prohibited on agricultural land.
Members of the community at those meetings were about equally divided, with about half in favor of the proposed rezoning and half opposed to data centers, which they feared would be built there.
Mayor Camine Dipaolo spent his own money in March to visit a data center in Tennessee, he said, to experience it first-hand. He called it the “latest and greatest.” The “oldest and worst” he is planning to visit, too.
“I would never do anything to jeopardize Indiantown,” Dipaolo said. “I’ve heard more noise at the (Florida Power & Light) power plant than I did on that campus,” though.
The loudest noise he heard at the data center in Tennessee was a grass trimmer and lawn mower, he added.
The proposal and site history
Greenberg’s proposal calls for 600,000 square feet of space among four buildings: two industrial and two administrative, according to village documents. The two industrial buildings would be 340,000 and 180,000 square feet. Construction on the 146-acre site would be done in one phase, village documents say.
Project Growler would be at the former Florida Steel Corp. site, which is a federal Superfund — or toxic waste cleanup — site. Florida Steel Corp. operated a steel mill there from 1970-1982, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which says operations contaminated soil, sediment and groundwater.
The site now poses no threat to people working or living nearby, according to the EPA.
Dipaolo said he hadn’t decided how he would vote on either Project Growler or the other data center proposal.
“I have to see what the proposal is,” he said, such as whether it’s an air-cooled or water-cooled operation. “I’d like to know what the engineering is on it.”
Keith Burbank is a watchdog reporter for TCPalm, usually covering Martin County. He can be reached at keith.burbank@tcpalm.com.
This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Florida village considering yet another data center proposal
Reporting by Keith Burbank, Treasure Coast Newspapers / Treasure Coast Newspapers
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Keith Burbank, Treasure Coast Newspapers | USA TODAY Network
