A 202-acre parcel off President Donald J. Trump Highway in western Palm Beach County has become the newest flashpoint in America’s data center buildout. Developers want to erect a 600-megawatt hyperscale facility, known as Project Tango, roughly 16 miles from the Mar-a-Lago estate and on the doorstep of the northern Everglades. The site sits surrounded by water, a detail that has thrust the project into a far bigger conversation about compute infrastructure, energy demand, and the fragile hydrology that federal and state agencies have spent a combined $6 billion trying to restore.

Environmentalists, attorneys, and residents now describe the proposal as a test case for how aggressively Florida will let AI infrastructure expand into ecologically sensitive terrain. County commissioners have already pushed back once, and two more administrative applications from the developer remain active. The outcome will shape not just one watershed but the broader template for siting hyperscale compute near protected land nationwide.

A Watershed Already Under Strain

Lake Okeechobee, the beating heart of the Everglades system, has spent recent summers coated in toxic blue-green algae, with blooms covering nearly half the lake’s surface during peak conditions. The Florida Department of Health in Palm Beach County issued a cyanobacteria health alert for the lake on July 30, warning residents about the potential health risks associated with blue-green algae, which can produce toxins such as microcystin that can harm people and animals and pose challenges for drinking-water supplies. Reinaldo Diaz, who grew up in Palm Beach County and founded the nonprofit Lake Worth Waterkeeper, says the watershed’s interconnected design means a single disruption can ripple outward in unpredictable directions. “

Our watershed is really complex,” Diaz said. “Ours is more like a spiderweb. That’s why the impacts would be far reaching.” His organization has tracked drought stress, agricultural fertilizer runoff, and rising water temperatures as compounding threats to the lake long before Project Tango entered the picture. Consequently, any new heat load entering this system arrives at a moment when the Everglades has little margin left to absorb additional stress.

The Power Math Behind a 600-Megawatt Facility

Data centers of this scale carry electricity appetites that rival small cities, and Project Tango is no exception. Based on U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates of residential electricity use, a 600-megawatt facility running at peak capacity could draw as much power as roughly half a million American homes. That volume of demand does not stay contained within a server room; virtually all of the electricity consumed by the facility ultimately becomes waste heat, while the infrastructure needed to serve large new loads can require costly grid upgrades whose costs may be allocated among the data center, utilities, and other customers depending on regulatory arrangements.

Diaz’s core concern ties directly to this thermal output, arguing that heat discharged from the facility could nudge water temperatures upward in the surrounding canals and marshes. Even modest temperature increases can accelerate algal bloom formation in water bodies already primed for it by nutrient loading and drought. Emerging research on the so-called “data heat island effect” suggests that even much smaller facilities can raise downwind air temperatures by as much as 2 degrees Celsius, a finding that has amplified concern among scientists studying Florida’s uniquely sensitive wetland chemistry.

Legal Pushback From Neighbors and Advocacy Groups

Earthjustice attorney Christina Reichert is representing residents through the Western Palm Beach Community Alliance, and her team has challenged the developer’s attempt to convert a 2016-approved warehouse and server-farm plan into a full hyperscale data center under the same light-industrial zoning. Reichert argues that the scale of Project Tango introduces offsite water, air, and sound impacts that the original zoning never anticipated or evaluated. “One of the concerns we had about this location is the risk of increasing the heat in this area because it could lead to algal blooms in that canal that could compromise drinking water and Everglades restoration,” Reichert said.

Her filing with Palm Beach County zoning officials frames the dispute as a mismatch between a permit written for warehouses and a project built for AI-scale compute. The Project Tango site also sits directly across the street from a pump station that serves as the first mechanical step in delivering freshwater to the southern Everglades, a proximity that has heightened scrutiny of every environmental variable at play. Reichert’s legal strategy reflects a broader debate taking shape across the country, where zoning language drafted years before the AI boom is now being tested against facilities several times larger than anything originally contemplated.

Residents Weigh Bills, Noise, and Property Values

Sue Ellen Loyzelle lives in the planned community of Arden, directly adjacent to the Project Tango site, and helped found the Western Palm Beach Community Alliance. She frames her opposition as layered, extending well beyond utility costs into questions about long-term community impact. “We don’t want our bills to go up, but it’s more than that,” she said. “What is all of this going to do?” Loyzelle points to the Ratepayer Protection Pledge, a mechanism meant to shield households from data center-driven rate increases, as a starting point rather than a solution.

“Yeah, that’s a guardrail and we’re happy for that guardrail,” she said. “But there’s got to be a lot more guardrails.” At a Palm Beach County zoning hearing last month, residents spent more than 12 hours testifying about the facility’s proximity to a local elementary school, situated roughly 1,200 feet from the proposed site, along with worries over traffic, heat pollution, noise, and declining property values. Commissioners ultimately voted 5-1 to deny an expansion request, though the underlying project and its remaining applications survive that vote.

The White House Weighs In on Data Center Costs

That framing has not settled the debate locally, where residents like Loyzelle continue pressing for enforceable regulation rather than voluntary commitments. Consequently, President Trump addressed data center friction directly at a press conference last month, doubling down on his non-binding pledge asking developers to shoulder their own electricity costs rather than pass them to local ratepayers. His message to affected communities was blunt and left little room for negotiation. “You have to convince your community how great these things are, can’t fight it. You have to go with it,” he said.

Meanwhile, Palm Beach County’s Zoning Commission has recommended a one-year moratorium on new large-scale data centers, with the County Commission scheduled to consider the measure on August 27, following similar restrictions adopted by other Florida jurisdictions. Loyzelle, a former elected official in Cutler Bay before relocating to Arden nearly five years ago, argues that a moratorium is a necessary bridge until firmer rules exist. She describes the current regulatory gap as the real risk, more than any single project moving through the pipeline today.

Closed-Loop Cooling and the Heat That Still Escapes

PBA Holdings, Inc., the applicant behind Project Tango, insists this facility differs from the water-hungry data centers that have drawn criticism elsewhere. At the July zoning hearing, project manager Ernie Cox told commissioners that the facility would rely on a closed-loop cooling system that recirculates water internally, a design intended to significantly reduce net water consumption compared to conventional cooling approaches. Cox’s presentation positioned this as the project’s central environmental safeguard, distinguishing Project Tango from data centers built on open-loop or evaporative cooling systems that draw continuously from local aquifers.

However, Diaz counters that closed-loop cooling does not eliminate the thermal problem; it reduces water consumption while the heat generated by the facility still ultimately has to be rejected, primarily into the surrounding air. Waste heat generated inside the facility still has to be released somewhere, and Project Tango’s proposed dry-cooler system would primarily reject that heat into the surrounding air; Diaz maintains that even a marginal temperature increase could be enough to worsen bloom conditions in fragile canal ecosystems. The disagreement between the developer’s water-conservation framing and the advocate’s heat-dispersal framing sits at the exact center of the current regulatory standoff, and it is unlikely to resolve before commissioners take up the broader moratorium question.

What Comes Next for Palm Beach County

Two additional administrative applications from the Project Tango developers remain listed in county records, although one is explicitly contingent on the county’s decision on the main expansion request while the other concerns modifications within the existing approved master plan. Diaz frames the site itself, not just the technology, as the fundamental problem facing county officials. “There’s nowhere in Palm Beach County where it would be acceptable to put one of these,” Diaz said. “But the place they are choosing is egregious.”

His comment reflects a broader argument among Florida environmentalists that hyperscale compute infrastructure could conflict with Everglades restoration and water-management goals when placed this close to sensitive environmental infrastructure, regardless of cooling technology or zoning classification. Palm Beach County’s upcoming moratorium vote will test whether that argument gains traction with elected officials, or whether economic and political pressure around AI infrastructure growth outweighs it. The northern Everglades, still threaded together through canals, sugarcane fields, and grassy marshes despite decades of development, now sits at the center of a decision that extends well beyond one parcel of land near a presidential highway.