Questions people ask about Willow Lakes

The building holds racks of servers, data-storage and network equipment, the electrical systems that power them and the cooling that keeps them at a safe temperature. Florida law defines a data center as a facility that primarily contains electronic equipment used to process, store and transmit digital information (Fla. Stat. §373.203).

Use at one site depends on its equipment. The Willow Lakes employment brief assumes a 450 MW campus, and FPL determines the actual load through its large-load process. Source: LBNL, 2024 U.S. Data Center Energy Usage Report.

Sources: Brookings; Loudoun County.

The City’s Planning Director told the Planning Board that the zoning code has no data-center use, that staff considers a data center closest to light industrial, and that he recommended the Board not assign a district yet and seek City Commission input instead. The Board asked staff to research the question and recommended a Commission discussion. The applicant’s attorney asked to table the application to a date uncertain, and the Board agreed. If it returns, the City gives new public hearing notice. Some press coverage called this “withdrawn”; the City’s record says tabled. The full dated record is on Status & Documents.

The request is for about 174 acres of Light Industrial (I‑1) and about 26 acres of General Commercial (C‑3) on a site that is now a Planned Development approved in 2020 for a mixed-use village. A draft covenant would limit the industrial acreage to data-center use for 50 years. Rezoning decides whether a data center can be considered, and it is the first opportunity for the City to set enforceable conditions. Sources: City staff report.

The draft conditions would fix a maximum “development envelope” at conditional use: building area, height, electric load, on-site generation, cooling capacity, water demand and equipment areas. Phases could proceed inside it. Source: City packet.

Conditions attached to a rezoning or conditional-use approval run with the land, so they bind whoever operates the campus.

Sources: SFWMD water-use permits; SFWMD environmental resource permits.

Fla. Stat. §366.043 (effective July 1, 2026) requires utility tariffs that reasonably ensure each large-load customer, 50 megawatts or more at one location, “bears its own full cost of service,” including connection, new transmission, new generation and other infrastructure. The risk of nonpayment may not fall on other ratepayers. The statute applies to investor-owned utilities such as FPL.

Research on past prices: a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Brattle analysis of 2019 to 2024 found that state load growth tended to lower retail prices by spreading fixed costs over more load, and that new infrastructure costs can push prices up where supply is constrained. In the PJM grid of the mid-Atlantic, the market monitor attributed a large rise in capacity-auction revenue to data-center load. Virginia’s state review projected unconstrained demand could add $14 to $37 a month to typical residential bills by 2040. The LBNL deck is a scoping-level study and does not forecast prices. Sources: LBNL / Brattle; Virginia JLARC.

• Charges: a base demand charge of $14.61 per kW and an incremental generation charge of $11.67 per kW of contract demand (LLCS-1).
• Minimum bill: demand charges on the greater of 70 percent of contract demand or the highest billing demand in the prior 11 months, plus the generation charge on contract demand.
• Term: at least 20 years, with two years’ notice to end afterward and exit charges equal to the remaining generation charge.
• Security and construction: credit-based security, a contribution toward construction costs, and payment for system-impact studies. The customer builds and owns its substation.
• Where: LLCS-1 is offered near existing 500 kV facilities in the vicinity of Sunbreak in St. Lucie County, Tesoro in Martin County and Sugar in Palm Beach County, up to 3 GW. LLCS-2 covers other areas.

The PSC approved the rate in Order PSC-2026-0022-S-EI (January 22, 2026). Appeals of the rate settlement are pending at the Florida Supreme Court. FPL filed on October 1, 2026 to show its structure complies with §366.043, and the PSC reviews that filing. Sources: FPL tariff, Section 8; PSC order; FPL newsroom.

The 50 MW threshold in state law decides which protections apply. It is not a cap. The draft conditions would require the application to state a maximum load, and conditional use would fix it as part of the development envelope.

A water balance, the amount withdrawn, evaporated, replaced and returned, sizes the system. For scale in national totals, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimates direct water use by all U.S. data centers at about 66 billion liters (17.4 billion gallons) in 2023, plus nearly 800 billion liters (about 211 billion gallons) used at power plants to generate their electricity. The Atlantic reports that U.S. golf courses used almost 2 trillion liters that year. Virginia’s state review found that most data centers use about as much water as an average large office building, and a few use substantially more. Sources: LBNL; The Atlantic; Virginia JLARC; City packet.

Closed-loop systems still release heat, so engineering sizes the heat-rejection equipment and the make-up water. Source: Loudoun County water page.

The City’s staff report repeats the applicant’s statement that the reservoir was excavated for aggregate mining; the environmental assessment describes it as man-made. Source: City packet.

The conservation plan includes recycling cooling water before discharge, a leak-detection and repair program, water-efficient fixtures and an employee education program. The district must require reclaimed water instead of groundwater or surface water when a suitable source is available at the boundary with enough capacity, is accessible, is feasible and does not conflict with a discharge permit. Changes to a permit get the same review as the original. The statute governs permits to withdraw water. Water bought from a utility that already holds a permit is a separate question the statute does not address, and implementing rules had not been published as of October 5, 2026. Sources: §373.262; §373.239; Chapter 2026-65.

The draft conditions add periodic water testing and reporting, including sealed water-balance testing.

Whether a reclaimed source reaches this site is part of the water-use permit review. Sources: Loudoun Water; §373.262.

Data centers make sound from cooling equipment, transformers and generator testing. Loudoun County reports that complaints often concern tonal and low-frequency sound that dBA limits do not capture. The City’s general noise table does not apply to uses in industrial districts (Sec. 26-41(a)(12)), so the draft conditions set project-specific limits in dBA and dBC at the property line and at residential boundaries, with separate night limits, baseline measurements before operation and periodic testing. The limit values are still to be set. Sources: Loudoun County; draft conditions.

How these were measured. From St. Lucie County Property Appraiser parcel data (queried October 5, 2026), the shortest distance between the Willow Lakes parcel boundary and each neighboring lot boundary, counting a lot as a home when County records show finished area. They are the project team’s own measurements, not City measurements. Distances from future buildings are measured once a site plan exists. Farmland and vacant commercial parcels adjoin the property to the north and west.

Routine testing would be limited to weekdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with enclosures, state air permits and operating records kept five years. Loudoun reports more than 4,000 permitted generators across 200-plus data centers, about 2 MW each and usually tested about an hour a week. The count, fuel and capacity for Willow Lakes are set in final engineering. Source: Loudoun County.

Stormwater is permitted separately. The water district’s environmental resource permit evaluates flooding to neighbors, water quality and wetland impacts, and the conditional-use application shows stormwater areas on the development plan.

The draft conditions carry emergency-response design into the final site plan and apply fire, building and hazardous-material requirements to battery storage. Source: Loudoun County.

These figures come from the applicant’s June 2026 traffic memo. The St. Lucie Transportation Planning Organization has asked for a current analysis that includes nearby approved projects, and County Public Works has asked for a third-party review. The draft conditions require a construction management plan covering hours, haul routes, parking, dust, noise, road protection and public communication. Source: City packet.

Wetland, stormwater and species permitting continues through the water management district and state agencies as the design advances.

Virginia’s state review found that industrial-scale data centers are largely incompatible with residential uses when sited beside them, which is why distance and conditions matter. Sources: Brookings; Loudoun County; Virginia JLARC.

The team’s position is that any local incentive, subsidy or extraordinary public expenditure should be disclosed, quantified and evaluated publicly before approval. Brookings reports incentives averaged about 2 percent of construction investment in hyperscale counties and 62 percent in colocation counties, and says siting follows power, land and fiber rather than tax breaks. Sources: §212.08(5)(r); §196.1995; Brookings.

Proprietary business information stays protected. Source: Fla. Stat. §288.075.

Illustrative annual property-tax revenue at an assumed taxable assessed value of $2 billion. The assessed value is an assumption. The St. Lucie County Property Appraiser sets the actual value of buildings and equipment, and it is not the amount invested. No exemptions or abatements are assumed. Rates are the 2025 millage rates for the City of Fort Pierce and change each year. St. Lucie County Property Appraiser

Brookings (updated August 10, 2026) also finds data-processing employment up 56 percent and telecommunications up 43 percent over the first decade, with telecommunications gains in hyperscale counties only. Those are percentages of small sectors, and wages were unchanged. Brookings revised its earlier findings after expanding its sample, and the current version is the one used here. A separate August 2026 working paper by one of the same authors, which Brookings does not link as the source of its brief, finds little evidence of local spillovers such as higher wages.

The developer’s employment brief estimates 225 to 300 permanent on-site jobs, 1,500 to 2,200 regional jobs supported once indirect and induced jobs are counted, and 3,500 to 5,000 construction job-years over a two- to three-year build. It assumes a 450 MW, 1.32-million-square-foot campus and typical multipliers of 3.5 to 5.0. Open the employment brief (PDF). Sources: Brookings; Wright working paper; Virginia JLARC.

These are developer estimates for a 450 MW, 1.32-million-square-foot campus. The median household income is from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 to 2024 American Community Survey, in 2024 dollars. Sources: Employment brief (PDF); U.S. Census Bureau.

Outcomes the county reports. About 233 buildings and 56.5 million square feet as of March 1, 2026. The real-property tax rate fell from $1.145 per $100 in 2016 to $0.805 in 2026, and the county eliminated a $25 vehicle license fee and cut its vehicle tax rate. It credits the revenue with school budget increases of tens of millions of dollars a year and with the Sheriff, fire and rescue, libraries, parks and community centers. The FY2027 budget fully funds a $105 million increase for the school division. Individual homeowner tax bills varied with property values.

Lessons the county reports. From 2000 the county treated data centers like offices, so they were allowed by right wherever offices were, and some were built near homes. In March 2025 the Board ended by-right approval and made data centers a conditional use needing a special exception. The county’s ordinance requires noise studies before and after construction, and it is drafting standards for siting, noise, substations, battery storage and on-site generation. Noise complaints, often about tonal sound, are among the most persistent issues it hears. The county also says growth in data-center revenue will plateau in five to ten years and that it must not depend on a single source, and its adopted budget creates a revenue stabilization fund. On September 15, 2026 the Board voted to consider pausing action on new applications.

The FY2027 figure of $1.3 billion (40 percent) is a budget projection. Loudoun is far larger than a single campus, so it shows what a mature market produces and the siting lessons that apply to any site. Sources: The Loudoun Story; Tax revenues; Land use; Noise; FY2027 school funding release; Lessons-learned fact sheet; Data center standards project.

• Henrico: planning staff concluded that concentrating data centers on suitable large sites kept direct effects on residents low, and recommended noise studies and a 200-foot setback from residential property. Planning staff analysis
• New Albany: the city, host to data centers since 2010, publishes the noise complaints it received in 2025 and 2026 and the mitigation under way. City of New Albany
• Other states’ cost rules do not govern Florida, and they show how regulators handle the same question: Virginia created a large-load class with a 14-year commitment and at least 85 percent payment of transmission and distribution costs, Georgia allows special terms above 100 MW, and Ohio’s AEP tariff requires payment for at least 85 percent of subscribed capacity for up to 12 years. Virginia SCC; Georgia PSC; PUCO
• Water reporting: Utah requires qualifying data centers to report expected and actual water use. Utah Division of Water Rights

The 2020 traffic analysis was sealed by Susan E. O’Rourke, P.E., on July 22, 2020, using ITE 10th Edition methods.

One question the City is resolving. City staff told the Planning Board that SB 180, a hurricane-recovery law, may temporarily limit adopting new, stricter standards until about October 2027, and asked for a City Attorney opinion on how it interacts with the 2026 data-center law. The answer will determine which of the draft conditions the City adopts as written and which come through a covenant or other approval terms. Source: City packet, staff notes.

Planning Department, 100 North U.S. 1, planning@cityoffortpierce.com, 772-467-3737, referencing PZZAM2026-00002. Agendas and packets: AgendaQuick, Planning Board. Meeting video: City video archive. The Status & Documents page has the full list.