By: Fred Groves, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Tilbury Times Reporter
Essex County Council has directed its administration to review and report on whether a full study should be undertaken regarding land use policies for Artificial Intelligence (AI) Data Centres.
Harrow’s Tyler Reh spoke about data centres, providing multiple facts, including cumulative environmental, safety and zoning risks.
“The negative impacts to the region outweigh the perceived financial benefits,” said Reh, an engineer and programmer.
He said that a 200-megawatt facility would cost up to $8 billion to build and take up as much as 6,000 acres of farmland. Reh said that the seven local municipalities all have specific issues that would prevent a data centre. For instance, he explained that Amherstburg has a noise by-law that would address the low-frequency hum from massive cooling fans.
“We cannot manage a 21st century technological boom with outdated and disjointed municipal by-laws. I urge the county council to mandate and synchronized region-wide regulatory framework that will protect our water, our power grid and safety of the Essex County residents first,” said Rey.
At the August 5 regular meeting, Kingsville deputy-mayor Kim DeYoung’s Notice of Motion to have the study done was accepted. Planner Rebecca Belanger is expected to bring that forward at the next meeting on September 2.
“I recognize this is the first step and that we know each municipality is going to have to implement its own policies,” said DeYoung.
Although the county has not received any applications to build an AI Data Centre and there is currently none in Canada, county council members agreed that being proactive in the event that an applicant comes to the region is the best way to proceed at this time.
“Ever since I put out the Notice of Motion, I’ve been getting messages from residents and some of them are informed and they’ve done a lot of research. I forwarded these messages to administration, and I hope this work will begin,” said DeYoung.
While there was mention of the county placing a moratorium on data centres, Belanger explained that although individual municipalities can do so through a one-year control by-law, the county cannot.
“This reminds me of the moratorium many of us put on the wind turbines and we affectively kept them out of our municipality. It can be done. The province didn’t make us do that,” said county Warden Hilda MacDonald.