A huge AI datacenter is planned near Mar-a-Lago. The Everglades could pay the price

Hi, this is Nikki from the Guardian US. We wanted to share more about a proposed datacenter planned for Palm Beach, and the implications it presents being close to the northern edge of the Florida Everglades.

*From the Guardian:*

About 16 miles (26km) west of the Mar-a-Lago estate on President Donald J Trump Highway, near the northern edge of the Florida Everglades, developers have proposed a hyperscale datacenter on a 202-acre (82-hectare) parcel of land surrounded by water. Local environmentalists warn that the proposed 600MW datacenter in western Palm Beach county could damage the wetlands, which the federal government and the state of Florida have spent a combined [$6bn ](https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF11336)to restore after decades of drainage and development.

One concern is that the datacenter could exacerbate an existing issue of toxic bacterial blooms in a water system which has already been stressed by drought, fertilizer runoff and warm water temperatures. In recent summers, the bright blooms of blue-green algae have covered nearly half of Lake Okeechobee, which feeds into the Everglades.

The cyanobacteria blooms produce a toxin known as microcystin, which can make people and animals sick and contaminate drinking water. [On July 30](https://palmbeach.floridahealth.gov/2026/07/30/doh-palm-beach-cautions-about-blue-green-algae-at-lake-okeechobee-54/) the Florida department of health in Palm Beach county issued a health alert about cyanobacteria presence in the lake.

Reinaldo Diaz grew up in Palm Beach county and founded [Lake Worth Waterkeeper](https://lakeworthwaterkeeper.org/about/), a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the watershed. He said waste heat from the proposed datacenter, called Project Tango, could increase the water temperatures in the surrounding watershed, putting the Florida Everglades further at risk of toxic bacterial blooms.

“Our watershed is really complex,” Diaz said. “Ours is more like a spiderweb that’s why the impacts would be far reaching.”

[You can read the full story for free at this link.](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/12/datacenter-everglades-risk?referring_host=Reddit&utm_campaign=guardianacct)