Residents living in New South Wales’ Blue Mountains are celebrating the news that a Sydney-based civil engineering and construction company has withdrawn its development application for a $4.8 million data centre in Katoomba.
The Stop Data Centres Blue Mountains group has been fighting the DA over concerns about 24/7 low-frequency noise intrusion, launching a petition and filing formal objections with council.
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City of the Blue Mountains Mayor Mark Greenhill said, “This is a welcome, mature reflection from the applicant. I am heartened to hear that the views of the community matter to them. Anything that threatens the local environment in Blue Mountains will raise the ire of our community and of the council.”
Stop Data Centres Blue Mountains said in a statement, “We’re not done. The developer has been clear: they haven’t ruled out a future application. Their statement says they want to ‘undertake further consideration’ and may come back with a revised proposal—this time with earlier community engagement.
“And the bigger issue hasn’t gone away. The state government is actively courting data centres for NSW. Treasurer Daniel Mookhey said in March that NSW wants to be ‘a destination for global data centre investments.’ The planning loophole—Clause 2.31 of the NSW Infrastructure SEPP—that let this DA happen in the first place is still there. It will let the next one happen too, somewhere in NSW. Maybe here again.”
“This was one small data centre application in one town. But the people who opposed it were looking at something bigger: what kind of place the Blue Mountains is, and who gets to decide what gets built here.
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“Today, the answer is: the community does.”
In addition to concerns over low-frequence noise emissions, data centres require large amounts of land, have immense electricity demands, heavy reliance on water for cooling, and can create carbon emissions from backup generators.
