SB 484 is good law, but who decides what’s ‘feasible?’

Here is a word that does not appear in Florida Statutes with a definition: feasible.

The Florida Legislature just sent SB 484 to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ desk. The Senate passed it 31-6, and the bill requires Florida’s Public Service Commission to ensure data centers pay for their own utilities, not the general body of ratepayers. That is a genuine win. Floridians should be proud of the Legislature acting while most states are still debating.

But buried in the water provisions is a phrase that could quietly swallow the bill’s consumer protections whole.

Under the enrolled language of Section 373.262, large-scale data centers that consume at least 100,000 gallons of water per day must use reclaimed water rather than groundwater or surface water when it is “environmentally, economically, and technically feasible.” That word, feasible, does all the heavy lifting. It also does none of the defining.

Who makes the feasibility call? The governing Board of the relevant water management district. Under what standards? The bill does not say. Using what methodology? The bill does not say. With what right of public appeal? The bill does not say. Against what cost baseline for “economically feasible”? The bill does not say, either.

This isn’t a technicality. It is an invitation.

A data center developer arriving before a Water Management District Board can present an internal financial analysis arguing that connecting to a reclaimed water supply line is economically infeasible for its project. The Board has no statutory methodology to contradict that analysis. If the developer’s lawyers are good, and they will be, the reclaimed water requirement evaporates. Literally.

Florida has five water management districts. A large data center company can test each shopping location, find the most accommodating interpretation, and set precedents that cascade statewide. We have seen this playbook before in Florida utility regulation. The result is always the same. The public absorbs costs that the private sector was supposed to carry.

The economic stakes are not small. Large data centers consume 5 million gallons of water daily, equivalent to the water use of a town of 50,000 people. In northern Virginia, data center water consumption increased 63% between 2019 and 2023. Florida’s aquifer system is not the same as that of northern Virginia. This state’s water scarcity concerns are existential, not marginal.

The ratepayer electricity provisions face a parallel problem. The enrolled bill requires utilities to file tariffs that ensure large-load customers bear the full cost of service. That is right and overdue. But the standards governing how utilities demonstrate compliance with that requirement are still to be developed by the PSC through a rulemaking process that need not be completed until March 2027. Until that rule is final, the protection exists on paper, not on your bill.

The bill’s final form also emerged following conversations between the Florida House and the pro-AI White House, which opposed what it characterized as over-regulation of AI, and the House stripped the NDA prohibitions the Senate originally passed. State agencies can now sign non-disclosure agreements keeping data center plans secret from the public for up to a year, which is the opposite of the transparent public process Floridians deserve when companies the size of small cities set up shop next to their aquifer.

None of this means SB 484 should have failed. It should have passed. The Legislature deserves credit for acting. Senator Avila fought the right fight. The principle at the center of this bill, that businesses should not externalize costs while internalizing profits, is correct policy and correct economics.

But a principle without a standard is not a protection. It is a conversation starter.

The fix is not complicated. The Legislature can return next Session and add three things: a defined methodology for determining water feasibility that is independent of the applicant’s analysis, a clear definition of “economically feasible” that references public costs rather than developer costs, and a public hearing requirement before any feasibility exemption is granted.

Florida got the architecture right. The walls just need doors that actually lock.

Floridians pay some of the highest electricity rates in the Southeast and draw from one of the most fragile aquifer systems in North America. The companies building AI infrastructure here will generate billions in revenue. They can afford to pay their own bills. The law should make sure they do, with language clear enough that there is no room to argue otherwise.

Right now, there is room.

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Dr. Mark McNees is Director of Social and Sustainable Enterprises at Florida State University’s Jim Moran College of Entrepreneurship and Managing Consultant at The McNees Group. His energy policy analysis has appeared in USA Today, The Hill, and the Miami Herald.