CAMPAIGNERS against plans to build a hyperscale AI data centre in Larbert have taken their message directly to Falkirk councillors.
Placards and banners met members attending a meeting of Falkirk Council’s planning review committee on Thursday at Grangemouth Community Education Unit.
Hazel McQueen, one of the organisers from the Say NO to Larbert Data Centre group, said councillors attending did not engage with any of the protestors but she was satisfied that they had got their message across.
Hazel said: “I wanted to see the people who will be making a decision so enormous that its implications could be felt for generations.
“I wanted to look them in the eye – unfortunately, they didn’t take the opportunity to engage with us.
“Most of us there today have never protested before. We’re ordinary residents of Larbert and those of us living just 20 metres from the proposed site will be among the people most affected.
“One thing they certainly can’t say is that they didn’t hear us. Even with a cold, I was shouting ‘Say No!’ as loudly as I could!”
The group has previously held two demonstrations at the entrance to the proposed site and celebrity backers including singer Susan Boyle and Outlander star Sam Heughan.
This week, an Emeritus Professor at the University of Stirling says the residents campaigning against the hyperscale data centre in Larbert are “right to call for the proposal to be rejected”.
Professor Andrew Watterson, whose research has focused extensively on occupational health and safety and environmental health policies, says the proposal shows the “fundamental inequity” when local people take on large corporations’ planning proposals.
Apatura Ltd, which is seeking permission for the 55-acre site just off Bellsdyke Road, next to Glenbervie Business Park, says the development will bring investment and jobs to the local area.
The Larbert site is suitable, it says because it has “access to a high-capacity grid connection from the nearby Denny substation”, which provides the level of power essential for data centre operations.
But the site will need power 24/7 and campaigners are particularly concerned that the application says it will use 200 diesel generators as back-up.
Professor Watterson said: “Assessing the hazards and risks of any environmental project is complex.
“However, all projects should be underpinned by prioritising principles that effectively safeguard public health and ensure environmental justice, equity, sustainability and the lowest possible impacts on the climate.
“These principles and practices are not necessarily embedded globally or nationally in either planning application requirements or the law but they should be.
“When large and small national and international companies propose developments that will profit them but not necessarily local communities nearby or the environment over the short, medium or long term, there is a fundamental inequity in the process.
“These relate for example to financial, legal and technical resources available to businesses but not local people.
“In addition companies often play the game of overloading communities with large numbers of documents often provided with relatively little notice and a stream of revisions and amendments to project proposals.
“The position is sometimes further compounded by production of detailed ‘environmental statements’ or similar documents, Environmental Impact Assessments and health impact assessments etc from companies and other parties.
“These are not by definition ‘independent’. They are funded by the various sides that may support or oppose the project and are usually carried out by commercial consultants.
“Mitigation of the adverse effects of a proposal are supposedly meant to drive such reports even if they cannot be achieved or it is not possible to fully assess adverse effects in the proposal.
“Without exception, to my knowledge, in researching such proposals over decades, the assessments reflect the interests of those funding the assessments.
“Environmental consultants carrying out impact assessments have told me that they work with rigour.
“They have also acknowledged that if they produced an assessment that cast serious doubt on a company project proposal, it would be unlikely they would obtain future work from that company or possibly other companies in the same sector.
“This is so even when an evidence base for making risk assessments is limited or new data emerge that are not necessarily used in the assessment.
“Some would argue that those supporting a project invariably view everything as manageable and ‘safe’ and those opposed to such a project are much more critical of commercial risk assessments.
“Asymmetric risk assessments often emerge in EIAs and research critical of new developments can all too easily be omitted from in EIAs that are rarely fully referenced in ways that scientific peer reviewed papers would be which identify data gaps and critical studies .
“The recent proposal for a 300 MW Data Centre at Larbert raises many questions.
“These relate to the nature of the centre, its suitability, location, environmental impacts – including flooding risks, pollution, water usage, and a range possible public health effects.
“What is most surprising is that such a proposal has already generated huge amounts of documentation by the company involved and its consultants. Yet there still remain significant data gaps and issues about risk assessments and modelling that external environmental and public health agencies, among other bodies, have flagged.
“Applying the precautionary principle to the evidence, and often lack of evidence, currently available, the local community is right to call for the proposal to be rejected.”
Members of the Say NO to Larbert Data Centre group will join other community campaigns at a protest organised by Action to Protect Rural Scotland outside the Scottish Parliament on Thursday (September 3) to call for a moratorium on all hyperscale data centre applications, so their full impact can be properly understood.
The Larbert group now also has a petition which has nearly 6000 signatures of people objecting to the plans.
