{"id":893411,"date":"2026-09-15T23:30:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T23:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/893411\/"},"modified":"2026-09-15T23:30:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T23:30:13","slug":"ettamogah-land-sale-to-ai-company-raises-health-and-environmental-protection-concerns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/893411\/","title":{"rendered":"Ettamogah land sale to AI company raises health and environmental protection concerns"},"content":{"rendered":"

Albury residents have raised concerns about a major industrial site being sold to a company specialising in artificial intelligence (AI).<\/p>\n

Sharon AI, based in Sydney and New York, has confirmed it has bought the former Visy paper mill site at Ettamogah, north of Albury.<\/p>\n

The Australian-owned company describes itself as a high-operating computing company “neo-cloud” that rents out its infrastructure and equipment for AI use.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The site was sold by Visy to Sharon AI. (ABC News: Philippe Perez)<\/p>\n

“Sharon AI has purchased a paper mill in Ettamogah, with plans to return the underutilised brownfield site into a running operation that benefits the local community,” a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

“We will say more at a later date.”<\/p>\n

The company would not disclose what it intends to develop at the site, but said it would undertake appropriate community consultation.<\/p>\n

“Sharon AI is committed to building real-world infrastructure throughout Australia, which creates jobs and a positive impact to local communities,” the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

Locals sceptical<\/p>\n

Katie Lucantonio lives near the Ettamogah site and said she was concerned about the uncertainty of a potential data centre in the area.<\/p>\n

“The way I look at it \u2026 it’s like if Coca-Cola were to purchase it, I would expect there to be some sort of [soft-drink] manufacturing there,” Ms Lucantonio said.<\/p>\n

“Health is the number one [concern].<\/p>\n

“Second to that is the environment, and the health of the flora [and] fauna.<\/p>\n

“It’s surrounded by native bushland \u2026 and further on, you’ve got farms nearby.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Local resident Katie Lucantonio says her top concern about the paper mill site sale is the community’s health. (Supplied: Katie Lucantonio)<\/p>\n

“What I’ve seen \u2026 is if you don’t get on the front foot of these issues, particularly in pre-planning stages, there’s no, or very little, community consultation.”<\/p>\n

NSW Liberal Albury MP Justin Clancy said the local community had a right to ask questions if a large-scale data centre development was planned.<\/p>\n

“There are two aspects to this that we need to look at,” Mr Clancy said.<\/p>\n

“Obviously one is we know that our use of data and AI is increasing significantly at a rapid rate in this nation and right across the globe, and there’s certainly a call there to make sure that we as a nation have sovereign capability.<\/p>\n

“We need to balance that with, on the other hand, legitimate questions around energy usage, water usage and also local amenity.”<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, the NSW government announced measures to encourage data centre builders to follow new guidelines to fast-track projects.<\/p>\n

If builders met environmental and efficiency standards and avoided net costs to consumers, the government promised to evaluate applications within 75 days.<\/p>\n

Proposed legislation for the program is set to be debated in parliament later this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Justin Clancy says it is right for the community to ask questions about data centre development in regional towns. (ABC Goulburn Murray: Sarah Krieg)<\/p>\n

Albury Mayor Kevin Mack said he could not comment on private land ownership, but any development would be assessed through normal planning processes.<\/p>\n

“Albury is open for business, and we welcome investment that creates jobs and supports our growing regional economy,” Cr Mack said.<\/p>\n

“Our role is to ensure the right planning and infrastructure are in place so opportunities can be realised when they arise.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Data centres are ‘nothing new’<\/p>\n

The Australian Energy Market Operator said about 3 per cent of Australia’s electricity was consumed by data centres this past financial year, a figure set to increase to 13 per cent by 2035.<\/p>\n

Johanna Lim from the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre said the substantial resources needed to operate data centres were cause for community concern.<\/p>\n

“While the services that these data centres are providing are usually at a national or even global level, many of these impacts tend to be felt more locally, and I think that’s a key driver of this debate,” she said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Albury is already home to the Leading Edge Data Centre, near the airport. (ABC News: Philippe Perez)<\/p>\n

“Regional areas that have lots of land can provide for these larger sites, and that can be easier to accommodate compared to more land-constrained areas like Sydney and Melbourne.”<\/p>\n

She said more community pushback will change how data centre companies conduct themselves through the planning process.<\/p>\n

“I think the important thing here is that for these data centres, community engagement starts early, before decisions have effectively already been made, and there’s a level of transparency that needs to be done, or that needs to be presented to communities,” she said.<\/p>\n

Albury is already home to one data centre, located near Albury Airport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Albury residents have raised concerns about a major industrial site being sold to a company specialising in artificial…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":893412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[133798,254,64,63,2458,10166,75,462919,137,406421,13558,128,328164,135470],"class_list":["post-893411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-albury","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-data","tag-data-centre","tag-environment","tag-ettamogah","tag-health","tag-paper-mill","tag-planning","tag-science","tag-sharon-ai","tag-visy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=893411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/893412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=893411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=893411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=893411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}