A Southland community group is challenging the non-notified resource consent granted for a proposed hyperscale data centre at Makarewa, arguing the project should have been open to public scrutiny.
A packed public meeting in Invercargill last night, with standing room only, highlighted the level of community interest.
The proposed 49-hectare facility is expected to require 280 megawatts of electricity, making it New Zealand’s second-largest single electricity user after Tiwai Point. It also has consent to take up to seven litres of groundwater per second for cooling and to operate 84 emergency diesel generators.
Speaking with RCR’s Paul Brennan, Kelly Blomfield, spokesperson for Aotearoa Future Action and organiser of the Invercargill meeting, said concerns about electricity use, groundwater, noise, infrastructure and environmental effects were precisely why the application should have been publicly notified. The group is supporting legal action over the consenting process and has launched a petition calling for greater transparency around major industrial developments. More than 26,000 people have signed it.
Listen or watch RCR’s interview with Kelly Blomfield on the Southland data centre and Paul Brennan’s interview with Hakeem Anwar and learn more on RCR’s Rural Report.
This story has been republished with permission from RCR Bites. For news like this direct and free to your Inbox every day, go to biteme.news to sign up for RCR Bites.
Image credit: Scott Rodgerson
All listed here
https://www.datacenters.com/locations/new-zealand
Higher power costs for sure in the future. Will they pay for water? Don’t think so.
So where’s the net zero climate fog horn, when something genuinely concerning like this comes up? Guess climate change and all the “restrictions” they no doubt have planned, are exclusively for the plebs, right?
Silly local people. It wasn’t notified because they know we will oppose it.
It’s meant for us anyway – to keep electronic data and surveillance for your digital twin; for the great reset.
All emails, text messages, voice to data calls, purchase history, where you go and when. You know, to calculate how bad you have been for climate change… forget how bad data centers are for the environment.
Stop all data centres! Whos data is it collecting? ours! Why? So they can CONTROL US.
It should be part of the deal that any data centres should have to build TWICE the electricity generation it uses at THEIR cost.
Wake-up people they brought the land about 3yrs ago it was well known not a surprise that’s what was happening
How would anyone know if its a private land sale? Why would people know a data center was to be built? Did they advertise the fact? Indeed if it was so open why wasn’t the consent non notified? Don’t try telling me either this wasn’t of public interest either.
The bigger the construction, the fewer are notified.