Palm Beach County commissioners rejected a controversial plan to build a hyperscale data center near Arden in Loxahatchee following a contentious 12-hour plus public hearing that saw four residents removed by deputies for being disruptive.
The vote against the so-called Project Tango proposal was 5-1, with Maria Marino casting the lone yes vote.
Despite the Tango proponents decision to make a number of concessions, commissioners said that the data center was not compatible with the surrounding community that includes an elementary school. The large-scale data center would have been one of the most extensive in the state.
“We don’t need a hyperscale data center next to Arden,” said Commissioner Maria Sachs. “We can’t be guniea pigs.”
Commissioner Gregg Weiss said he was concerned about the possibility of a constant hum being generated from the data center buildings. That prospect was enough for him to vote against the project.
Marino, saying she will take the slings and arrows, supported the project noting that the applicant agreed to accept all of the conditions imposed by county planners to minimize negative impacts on the Arden residential development and the Saddle View Elementary School.
While the Zoning Commission recommended that the project not be approved, county planners concluded the plan complied with the county code, and that a denial could result in the applicant converting warehouses into data centers without the protective conditions it imposed or returning to the board for approval.
Vice Mayor Marci Woodward, who presided over the hearing, questioned how the project could move forward with so many conditions to make it compatible. She argued that more time was needed to evaluate the project.
What did the plan call for?
The PBA Holdings data center plan called for 2,346,564 square feet of warehouse use, 1,032,000 square feet of data information processing use, and 216,000 square feet for minor utility use for a total of 3,594,564 square feet.
It would would have housed thousands of servers and specialized hardware. It would have been the first data center of this scale in Palm Beach County. Six hundred employees would work at the data center, 200 each on three shifts.
Acoustical experts hired by PBA Holdings testified that noise from the data center would not reach levels harmful to Saddle View Elementary students or Arden residents.
Scores of Arden residents, though, testified against the project during the hearing in West Palm Beach, insisting that it would operate 24/7 and negatively impact their health by generating a constant humming sound. The Arden homeowner association questioned the validity of the noise study conducted by PBA Holdings.
Commissioner Gregg Weiss questioned PBA’s experts about their knowledge of a noise issue at a data center in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin. The experts said they were unaware of the issue.
A group of residents there have filed a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft’s Fairwater Data Center, claiming excessive noise from the facility has disrupted their lives and reduced property values.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, alleges the data center’s cooling equipment and backup generators create a constant hum that affects nearby neighborhoods.
Brian Seymour, the lawyer representing PBA Holdings, said that if the noise levels are higher than permitted by code, the operation would have had to shut down.
And when pressed by Commissioner Joel Flores, Seymour said his client would agree to reimburse the county to hire its own expert to monitor the noise levels, adding: “If we don’t meet the code, we have to shut down.” And Seymour also agreed to have noise monitoring much more than once a year.
Flores asked the $64,000 question of Seymour: Who would be operating the data center.
Seymour answered with silence.
Zoning Division Director Wendy Hernandez reiterated that the conditions imposed will safeguard Arden residents and students at the elementary school.
Noise levels would be tested once a year. Other conditions included state-of-the-art water-saving measures to limit potable water use, limiting the data center’s daily water flow to 100,000 gallons, and placing its lithium-iron phosphate batteries — a critical source of a data center’s uninterrupted power supply — in containers elevated to exceed a three-day, 100-year flood event by 3 feet.
Ernie Cox, the project manager for PBA Holdings, said that his client, PBA Holdings, had accepted all of the conditions county planners sought. Cox said the project would generate 1,700 construction jobs and provide a $2 billion boost to the county’s tax base, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in property tax revenues.
Also, according to Cox, the data center would represent an improvement over the current uses: an asphalt plant and a concrete plant, both classified as heavy industrial. Data centers are considered light industrial uses, a classification questioned by critics of the project.
Experts opposed to the data center noted that the proposed facility would be different from what was initially approved in 2016, requiring as much as 30 times more power. They also argued that the heat generated from the data center operation will increase the temperature by two to three degrees at the school and Arden.
PBA Holdings has sought approval since last December to build a million-square-foot data center at the Central Park Commerce Center off Southern Boulevard. It has been in a legal fight with WPG Logistics, which also owns a parcel at the Central Park Commerce Center. WPG Logistics failed in an 11th-hour effort on July 13 to delay the hearing on the PBA Holdings project.
WPG Logistics, which is seeking to build its own data center on nearby land, filed an emergency motion against the county and PBA Holdings to stop the July 15 from moving forward. Circuit Court Judge Darren Shull denied the motion.
WPG’s lawyer, Tara Duhy, appeared at the July 15 hearing, and again asked the commission to postpone the hearing, arguing that the Central Park Commerce Master Plan requires PBA Holdings to obtain its consent to build, and that has not occurred.
“If you approve this, we will suffer financial damages,” Duhy said. “You are denying us due process.”
WPG’s data center was not considered at the July 15 hearing. WPG wants to replace its approved warehouse buildings with four data-center ones, totaling 1.1 million square feet. If approved, the result would be 2.2 million square feet of data-center use across the two projects, a prospect that alarms area residents.
County Attorney David Ottey criticized Duhy for meeting with county commissioners on Monday just before adding the county as a defendant in the lawsuit seeking to stop the hearing. Ottey called her actions “unethical.” Commissioners also chastised Duhy for meeting with them knowing she was going to sue the county.
Several commissioners, though, questioned whether the hearing on the PBA Holdings project should go forward while the lawsuit is pending, but county lawyers said the dispute was between the two property owners and that PBA Holdings was entitled to have its application acted upon.
County Mayor Sara Baxter did not participate in the hearing. County Attorney Ottey recommended she recuse herself because she publicly stated at a meeting she held to discuss the data center that she would vote against it. Baxter asked for the opinion.
Elizabeth Accomando, president of the Indian Trail Improvement District, is looking to oust Baxter in the Republican primary slated for August. She criticized Baxter for making comments that prevented her from representing her constitutents in such an important matter.
Ben Brown, one of the leaders of the anti-Project Tango movement, said it was an embarassment that the district commissioner put herself in the position of having to recuse herself, leaving the district without representation.
Mike Diamond is a journalist at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. He covers Palm Beach County government. You can reach him at mdiamond@pbpost.com. Help support local journalism. Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: County commission says no to Project Tango after marathon hearing
Reporting by Mike Diamond, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Mike Diamond, Palm Beach Post | USA TODAY Network
