Three years ago, council approved a rezoning for a data storage centre, but Coun. Hilary Eastmure says there was inadequate information at the time about water use.<\/p>\n
Detailed information on water and power usage should be provided before any future data centre rezonings are approved in the city, says a Nanaimo councillor.<\/p>\n
In 2022 and 2023, council approved the rezoning of two lots on East Wellington Road for a data storage centre.<\/p>\n
But Coun. Hilary Eastmure said she felt \u201ccompletely in the dark\u201d at the time about what the project actually entailed.<\/p>\n
Eastmure was elected to council in 2022, when the project was between third and fourth readings. She said none of her questions at the time \u2014 particularly about the data centre\u2019s water use \u2014 could be answered because council was no longer allowed to receive new information. Instead, councillors had to rely on material provided to the previous council.<\/p>\n
She made the comments in an interview this past week, after council approved her motion calling for more information to be provided for future data centre rezoning applications.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt like I was being asked to have blind trust in a development that I had no real understanding around,\u201d she said of the 2022-2023 rezonings.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiven the degree of concern around the preservation of our water resources in general, let alone the amount of water used by the data centre industry more broadly, I think it\u2019s a really central question.\u201d<\/p>\n
A data storage centre would use less water and power than an AI data centre, which has been subject to calls for stricter regulations across Canada.<\/p>\n
IBM\u2019s website defines a data centre as a facility that houses IT infrastructure for building, running and delivering applications and services, and that stores and manages the data associated with those applications and services.<\/p>\n
The motion passed at the July 20 meeting directs city staff to amend the city\u2019s Official Community Plan to require that future rezoning applications for data centres include detailed information on daily and yearly water use, energy consumption and energy- and water-conservation plans.<\/p>\n
Coun. Ben Geselbracht said at the meeting that he was concerned at the time of the 2022-2023 rezonings about the lack of clear information on the data centre\u2019s water usage, prompting him to vote against it three times.<\/p>\n
The city released a statement<\/a> last November that estimated the data centre\u2019s water usage to be between 55,000 and 69,000 litres per day. That\u2019s roughly equivalent to what is used by a car wash, or a bit more than half of what a shopping mall uses in a day, according to the city.<\/p>\n That information was provided by the numbered company behind the project and came out of water modelling that occurred during the development permit stage, according to Jeremy Holm, the city\u2019s director of planning and development. Detailed plans were prepared by the applicant and reviewed by city staff.<\/p>\n