A data center development company has approached Haines City officials about building the city’s first hyperscale data center.
Haines City staff immediately recognized a critical issue: There’s not enough water to go around.
Cielo Digital Infrastructure, owned by Texas-based Arroyo Investors, approached Haines City about potentially building a data center off State Road 544-East/Marion Road in November.
Cielo had announced its intention to construct a hyperscale data center requiring 300 megawatts of electrical demand spanning 74 acres in January 2025, as Data Center Dynamics reported.
Haines City Interim City Manager Loyd Stewart said the first and only meeting between Cielo executives and city staff was held on Nov. 4, as it sought a concurrency letter on whether potable water and sewer service was available for its project.
“Of course our first concern was water,” Stewart said. “We currently don’t have the capacity to have a discussion, even if we were allowed to, as they would need too much water. We are at the limits of what we could pull out of the ground.”
Cielo was requesting up to 150,000 gallons per day of potable water from Haines City to support the build out of its data center. This water would be used for cooling and domestic uses, using restrooms and handwashing, by approximately 30 onsite staff.On Nov. 17, Haines Deputy City Manager James Keene wrote a letter to Cielo saying the city’s ability to provide the water requested would be dependent on the Southwest Florida Water Management District approving a water use permit modification for the city.
“The City already has a a WUP modification in process with SWFWD, and will add your 150,000 GPD to the requested new WUP capacity,” Elensky wrote.
This was before the water management district, commonly called Swiftmud, adopted a new rule in December requiring water-use permits for data centers to be approved directly by its governing board.
If Cielo manages to get a water-use permit approved by Swiftmud, Keene said the developer could come back to the city and begin the application process for new development. To date, Haines City has not received any formal application or site plans from Cielo for the proposed data center.
Haines City’s short on drinkable water
The city, dating to at least 2024, has an application pending with Swiftmud to increase its maximum daily water use.
In 2011, Haines City was permitted by the state to pump 5.92 million gallons per day through 2030. Then the city’s population increased by about 40% from 2019 to 2024, to approximately 52,400 residents.
By 2023, Haines City was using about 7 million gallons per day — more than permitted by the state. It regularly exceeds its permitted amount.
“We are still working on our water-use permit for over three years,” Stewart said.
The city has asked to increase its water-use up to an average of 16.42 million gallons per day for the next 30 years, Keene said. This number includes 150,000 gallons per day for a potential data center.
“If they give me 150,000 gpd less than 16.42 million requested, then that much less data center is coming,” Keene said. “The data center cannot come unless I get that number.”
Even if the city’s water permit is approved, Keene said there’s a lot of factors to consider before a data center can be built that would be addressed during the planning and permitting process. Some issues raised by other cities include electrical demands, environmental pollution, noise levels and traffic congestion.
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Large data center proposed in another Polk town. But water’s a problem
Reporting by Sara-Megan Walsh, Lakeland Ledger / The Ledger
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Sara-Megan Walsh, Lakeland Ledger | USA TODAY Network
