Beacon AI Centers Heartland Project
The Total Impact
- Reference Number
- 71
- Text
I am very concerned about this proposed data centre.
First of all I have family and friends in Sturgeon County and in Gibbons. So this AI data centre will have a direct impact on them. Sturgeon is a strong farming community that has faced droughts in the past. With how much fresh water AI data centres use, I am concerned that drought conditions will become worse and more frequent, leading to failure of crops and also little water, maybe even water rationing, for the people in the community. "Large data centers can consume up to 5 million gallons per day, equivalent to the water use of a town populated by 10,000 to 50,000 people." (https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-consumption); with all this water consumption I'm afraid people in the community will have little to no water to consume. I've seen videos of people in the USA who live near data centres and their water pressure diminishes to a trickle and their water is dirty.
AI data centres use such a large amount of electricity; during heat waves, when everyone is using their air conditioners, we have put Alberta's electricity grid to its limit and created rolling blackouts. Will this AI data centre create constant blackouts for everyone living in the vicinity of this AI data centre? How can we even support this with our current power grid? Other issues with AI data centres is they pump out heat like crazy and raise the overall temperature of the environment around it. This will further encourage drought conditions and make living conditions for everyone around hotter. They are also excessively noisy, so how does that help the farmers with animals? I'm sure the animals will become agitated with the noise. Even people in general will be annoyed with the noise and it will have impacts like lack of sleep, stress. It is estimates "the carbon footprint of AI systems alone could be between 32.6 and 79.7 million tons of CO2 emissions in 2025." (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666389925002788). We are already struggling to meet goals for decreasing carbon emissions, like for the Paris Accord. This extra carbon emmsions will further impact the world in general; increased global temperatures, increased ocean temperatures, more extreme weather events. The list goes on and on.
WE DONT NEED AI DATA CENTRES! WE NEED CLEAN WATER, AND HEALTHY COMMUNITIES!- Submitted by
- Heather Richardson
- Phase
- Planning
- Public Notice
- N/A
- Attachment(s)
- N/A
- Date Submitted
- 2026-05-28 - 7:36 PM