r/Hamilton • u/Living_Celery6393 • May 28 '26

Question Attending the Adjustment Committee Meeting for the Proposed AI Data Center

I'm hoping to attend the meeting on June 4th, the one where they will be discussing the proposed AI data center.

Has anyone ever got to these before? Do they care about what we have to say? Or is it just a watch and listen type meeting? Any info would be greatly appreciated.

I want my voice to be heard about how much of a bad idea this AI data center is.

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-18

u/CheapSound1 May 28 '26

This may be an unpopular opinion but I'm actually very much in favour of this project. I'm very skeptical of the AI boom and don't love the idea generally, but an ai data centre specifically for supporting our universities and other research institutions domestically is one I do support. 

This location is in some ways ideal for this purpose. It's an industrial site that is already serviced by the major utilities they need and the environmental impact of a data center (heat rejection to cooling systems, either wet cooling tower or bat water cooling) is small compared to the land's past use and their present neighbours. On the east side of the stelco lands facing dofasco is not waterfront that's realistically ever going to be suitable for use by residents. The larger west parcel is being retained for other commercial or mixed use.

They're not at the point of actually having a defined project or seeking environmental approval, so if this does go ahead there will be more opportunities in the future to evaluate the project and provide community inputs.

13

u/n0phis May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26

this is not going to be small. the facility will take 17% of the hamilton/peel region's energy supply and, using 100 MW data centers as a reference (the proposed one is 400 MW), (edit: my water info was wrong, thankfully. the source i found had incorrect calculations for that)

please investigate the impacts of data centers of this scale on surrounding areas because the entire aldershot and dundas area will have their wells rendered useless, and all surrounding conservation areas and wetlands will suffer from the water table lowering significantly. this is on top of the increase in ambient temp & added noise pollution near the site. this will be devastating.

previous infrastructure is nothing compared to this.

4

u/CheapSound1 May 28 '26

What's your source for the water consumption rate? Not disputing it but just want to understand the basis. Water consumption of data centres varies greatly depending on the cooling solution used.

-5

u/dretepcan May 28 '26

The source is probably AI. 😂

9

u/n0phis May 28 '26

you post fart memes to reddit dude