Orange County commissioners are set to consider hitting pause on new artificial intelligence data center applications for at least a year, as county leaders admit they have no specific rules on the books for facilities that can draw as much power as 100,000 homes and burn through millions of gallons of water a day. The proposed moratorium, requested by Vice Mayor Kelly Martinez Semrad, would give staff time to study the environmental, social and economic fallout before another one of these projects gets approved.
The county commission is scheduled to discuss the moratorium on September 15, according to a report from WKMG ClickOrlando. Semrad's report recommends the pause last at least one year and apply to prospective data center applications across Orange County, giving staff time to consult with experts and residents while reviewing existing county policies and development standards. Right now, the outlet notes, Orange County lacks any land development code language that directly regulates data centers, allowing them only implicitly under industrial zoning districts.
Why One Commissioner Wants a Timeout
Semrad, who serves as vice mayor and District 5 commissioner, has said the county needs time to determine what it is actually committing to before more of these facilities move in. Per the same ClickOrlando report, she described the moratorium as a timeout for local government to develop policy and regulation, adding that Orange County is essentially starting from ground zero on the issue. She has said officials should pause to determine whether existing resources can support these facilities at all.
Semrad's concerns center on the sheer scale of modern data centers and their appetite for water and electricity. The report cites research from WRI and 1000 Friends of Florida finding that a single modern AI data center can use as much power as 100,000 homes, while large facilities can consume up to 5 million gallons of water per day, according to figures the report attributes to EESI. The average data center site covered about 224 acres in 2024 — roughly the size of 450 football fields, per the same account.
A Groundwater Supply Already Under Strain
Water availability is not an abstract worry in Central Florida. Orange County Utilities relies on groundwater for its primary drinking water supply, and the region's aquifer is already projected to fall short. The St. Johns River Water Management District approved a regional water supply plan in November 2025 projecting a groundwater shortfall of 96 million gallons per day across Orange and four neighboring counties by 2045, as total demand grows 41% to 905.5 million gallons per day.
State lawmakers have already tried to get ahead of exactly this kind of conflict. Under Senate Bill 484, signed by Governor Ron DeSantis in May 2026 and effective July 1, facilities anticipating monthly peak loads of at least 50 megawatts are defined as large-scale data centers under Florida law. The legislation explicitly preserves local governments' zoning authority to reject or restrict such projects while barring utilities from shifting grid-expansion costs onto residential ratepayers, according to the Florida Senate. SB 484 also bars the Department of Environmental Protection and regional water districts from issuing consumptive freshwater permits to large-scale data centers whenever reclaimed water is available, per Florida TaxWatch.
Orange County Has a Nearby Cautionary Tale
Commissioners weighing the moratorium do not have to look far for an example of how these fights can play out locally. In northern Orange County, the Town of Eatonville has spent September wrestling with whether to double daily fines to $500 against developer HostDime, whose $100 million, 100,000-square-foot AI data center missed its operational deadline by more than a year and racked up nearly $100,000 in penalties, according to Central Florida Public Media. Eatonville residents and officials have voiced sharp concerns over noise, utility costs and water usage tied to that project along I-4, a controversy Hoodline covered in coverage of Semrad's growth advocacy.
Orange County would hardly be breaking new ground by hitting pause. Between 14 and 20 Florida counties and municipalities, including Volusia County, Sarasota County, Lakeland and Washington County, had enacted temporary moratoriums or permanent bans on large-scale data centers by July 2026, according to WESH. Volusia County went further, skipping a moratorium altogether and moving straight to a permanent ban, as Hoodline reported in its Volusia data center ban story. Palm Beach County commissioners went a step further still in July, voting 5-1 to reject a proposed $2 billion AI data center campus known as Project Tango after county staff's projection of 100,000 gallons of daily water consumption sharply conflicted with the developer's own estimate of just 5,000 gallons, per a Florida data center tracking report.
The Bigger Picture on Power and Tax Breaks
The moratorium debate also arrives as Florida has been recalibrating how it treats these facilities financially. HB 7031, effective August 2025, amended state tax law to raise the critical IT load threshold for data center property sales tax exemptions from 15 megawatts to 100 megawatts, alongside a minimum $150 million capital investment requirement, according to Holland & Knight. That change narrowed sales tax breaks to only the largest hyperscale facilities while extending the application window to 2037.
Meanwhile, the power demands utilities are fielding keep climbing. During an August 2026 Florida Public Service Commission hearing, Duke Energy Florida disclosed that data center developers have approached the utility seeking power capacity connections of up to 1,400 megawatts per site in its service territory, per the Tampa Bay Times. As of July 2026, Florida hosted roughly 120 active data centers statewide, historically concentrated in the Miami and Jacksonville markets before AI computing demand pushed developer interest inland toward Central Florida.
Semrad's report calls for further research into natural resources, community character, the economic landscape, zoning implications and energy capacity before Orange County moves forward. Whether commissioners agree to the yearlong pause will become clear at the September 15 meeting, where the county will have to decide whether to keep saying yes to a technology it admits it barely has rules for yet.
