Manatee County moves toward data center moratorium

Commissioners in Manatee County — which has received at least one proposal for a data center — have directed staff to draft an ordinance establishing a temporary moratorium on the acceptance, processing and approval of development applications associated with data centers and other customers or facilities with substantial electrical, water, wastewater or other utility demands. The motion passed unanimously at the board’s July 28 meeting, where three members, Commissioners Bob McCann and Amanda Ballard as well as Chair Tal Siddique, proposed putting a pause on data centers on the board's agenda.

While officials are not aware of any active applications proposing a data center, a spokesperson for Manatee County says that an October 2025 submission for the Bradenton Crossings project included a data center component — a component that was withdrawn July 16. The proposed development is on a 35.28-acre site at 202 13th Ave. E. in Bradenton.

Typically, data centers house servers, networking equipment, storage systems, cooling systems and power infrastructure. 

Ballard, McCann and Siddique expressed concerns about the facilities’ potential impact on utilities and the county’s lack of land development code adequate to address this type of use in memos they wrote in support of the moratorium prior to the vote.

In her memo, Ballard said data centers could occupy hundreds of acres and strain the water supply and electrical grid.

“Data centers, large-scale data centers and other large load customers are known to require substantial water resources for cooling systems and substantial electrical power to support continuous computing operations, which in some cases require infrastructure demands comparable to small municipalities,” Ballard wrote. “Allowing such facilities to proceed without appropriate regulatory standards would create risks to the county’s and the region’s water resources, electrical infrastructure capacity and land use planning objectives [and] will undermine economic development initiatives and long-term community development strategy.”

The word “risk” also came up in Siddique’s memo.

“Manatee County does not contemplate data centers and large-load customers within its comprehensive plan and land development code,”  Siddique wrote. “This creates significant risk of customer-submitted comprehensive plan or code updates that unfairly benefit the applicant at the cost of the county and its residents.” 

McCann honed in on water as his major concern regarding data centers, in his memo on the issue, noting the county was currently in a drought.

“Modern hyperscale data centers can require millions of gallons of water daily for cooling,” McCann wrote. “Drawing this volume of water could permanently degrade the aquifer, alter water salinity and trigger catastrophic localized droughts.”

In addition to electrical and water supply constraints, Siddique mentioned noise and land use restrictions as potential areas that could be addressed in the county’s regulations.

“Whether local governments wish to approve data centers in their communities or not, it is important to set appropriate local standards to ensure protection against future preemptions and applicant-driven standards,” Siddique wrote in his memo.

And while the motion in Manatee County said the pause on data centers would be “temporary” with the duration determined by staff, Siddique suggested at the July 28 board meeting that the moratorium include a time frame. 

“We should specify the moratorium period,” Siddique said. “Most of our ordinances say 12 months.”

The draft ordinance regarding the moratorium is tentatively scheduled to be presented to the Manatee County Planning Commission in September, then return to commissioners Sept. 22 and Oct. 6, according to a Manatee County spokesperson, who notes ordinances require two board hearings before adoption.

The move to direct staff to draft an ordinance placing a moratorium on data center applications in Manatee County comes after Sarasota County imposed a 12-month ban on accepting or reviewing data center applications, as did Pasco County, in recent weeks.