An Alberta tribunal is considering the questions of who gets a say against data centre development and whether there’s evidence officials failed to follow proper procedures in approving a $13-billion artificial intelligence data centre for Meta in Sturgeon County, which borders Edmonton. 

More than 125 people applied to challenge the permit. At an Oct. 13 tribunal hearing, their representatives argued that county officials didn’t adequately assess the project before approving it.

The group first met with the provincial Land and Property Rights Tribunal (LPRT) in August and the second hearing was scheduled to determine who had standing to appeal the permit, and whether the county had “relaxed, varied or misinterpreted” their land use bylaw in approving it.

Sturgeon County resident Samantha Dobler says the substantial investment shouldn’t be a free pass to ignore residents’ rights and planning rules.

“Large investments may bring economic benefits, but those benefits do not remove the rights of constituents or excuse compliance with applicable planning requirements,” Dobler wrote in a statement on Facebook. “The County’s responsibility is not merely to facilitate investment, it is to administer its planning framework lawfully and to serve the community it represents.”

LPRT panel chair David Thomas said they decided to bump up the number of panel members from three to five due to the size of the development, and the fact there were more than 100 appellants. The quasi-judicial panel will decide whether the hearing goes ahead and who will be given standing.

The lawyer for Sturgeon County, Janis Agrios, argued in the virtual hearing that only those people within three kilometres of the project should have standing to appeal, saying that the distance was greater than notification distances used by other regulators. But Jasona Rondeau, a community advocate speaking on behalf of the residents, called the 3-km distance arbitrary, arguing that notification distance is not the same as standing.

Rondeau’s written submission cited [pdf] a recent decision by the Alberta Utilities Commission (AUC) which gave standing to all 9,000+ Olds residents as all could be “adversely affected” by the Synapse Data Centre project that was eventually denied approval.

“The county’s proposed 3-km distance is not a rule grounded in the [Municipal Government Act] or the Land Use Bylaw,” she wrote. “Standing must be evaluated using actual impact evidence and a realistic spatial scope.”

Agrios further argued the appellants had not provided evidence that the county had met the Municipal Government Act standard for an appeal. Therefore, she said, there were no grounds for a hearing and the development department had simply used the discretionary authority it was given when deciding whether to approve the permit.

Rondeau told the hearing panellists that although her group agreed that the county was allowed to use its discretion, there was sufficient evidence that a number of reports required under the bylaw’s overarching Industrial Heartland Area Structure Plan, had either not been requested or had not met the level of detail needed to satisfy that higher authority plan.

Agrios countered that the Master Site Development Permit (MSDP) didn’t give the company approval to do anything yet, so the reports weren’t required at this early stage, adding that further permits will be needed as the project progresses.

Sturgeon County told The Energy Mix that any future permits would also be evaluated without public input, adding that an MSDP is also not mandatory for every development. The county said it is for larger or more complex projects, where the developer and the county can identify issues or requirements to be addressed in later permits.

The county imposed [pdf] 41 conditions on the permit. A separate permit for grading the land was granted first on May 29.

Meta’s July 8 announcement of the approval for its first Canadian data centre in Sturgeon County, home to about 20,000 people on the northern border of the cities of Edmonton, St. Albert, and Fort Saskatchewan, came as a surprise to many residents.

The development permit indicates the data centre requires 1.8 gigawatts of electricity, or the equivalent power for 1.3 million households, more than double the number of homes in all three cities combined.

As the data centre project was a “permitted use” within that zone, a public hearing or notifications are not allowed according to the county’s bylaw. To protect Meta’s business interests, the data centre plans were referred to as “Project Frost” in documents and a county official told the Mix non-disclosure agreements are “standard practice” during the planning and development process.

The hyperscale data centre will cover about seven square kilometres, and although zoned for industrial use, much of the project area was agricultural land before it was purchased for the data centre, according to [pdf] a LPRT document. 

Meta has an agreement for power to be supplied by the Greenlight Electricity Centre, which is already approved [pdf] for construction at the same location. The two projects are linked, qualifying Meta for a “bring your own power” tax of just 1% on the value of its computer equipment, fully deductible from corporate taxes. 

In the meantime, Meta successfully bid on another company’s power allotment from Alberta’s electricity grid to carry it through until the power plant is ready in late 2030, Alberta’s Technology and Innovation Minister Nate Glubish told a town hall in nearby Lacombe County in August.

Sturgeon County is part of the Industrial Heartland initiative, the largest land area zoned for industrial development in Western Canada. Glubish called data centres “digital refineries” and said it is “a region that all Albertans agreed makes sense to designate for industrial activity and it’s been designated as such for decades.”

“This is where our refineries are being built, this is where our petrochemical plants are being built, this is where Dow Chemicals is building their ethylene cracker, the first net-zero ethylene cracker in the world,” he told a skeptical audience, one of whom pointed out that data centres were not even imagined at this scale at the time.

A map of residences provided by Sturgeon County and viewed during the LPRT hearing showed three, five, and 10 kilometre rings around the data centre site. If a 5-km boundary is used, people in parts of Fort Saskatchewan and Strathcona County would be included in standing. At 10 km, the impacts would reach further into homes in Fort Saskatchewan, and fully encompass the town of Gibbons, which has about 3,000 residents. 

The appellants said they did not advocate for a set distance but wanted to look at individual impacts on a case-by-case basis in order to determine standing. A number of the studies needed to decide impacts may not yet be available, which they argued supported their assertion that the approval was given without adequate information.

“The people who live here are not obstacles to development,” Dobler said. “They are the people who must live with the consequences of the decisions being made.”

When The Mix asked whether the county had notified or coordinated with the three other  municipalities before Meta’s permit approval, a spokesperson said that “a separate referral to the municipalities was not required.”

The LPRT said it doesn’t expect to reach a decision on how or whether to proceed with the appeal for  two to three weeks.