Sturgeon County mayor responds to criticism of lack of public consultation for data centre project

Sturgeon County mayor says she's not sure how the municipality was meant to know that people were against data centres

After the announcement of a major data centre drew the ire of some Sturgeon County residents, the municipality's mayor has said a public vote on the project would have been a stark difference to how they do things. Meta and the province announced the $13 billion data centre to be built in Sturgeon County, in Alberta's Industrial Heartland just east of Gibbons, on Wednesday, July 8. The Alberta government said the project will create 3,000 construction jobs and 300 onsite jobs.

A $4.6 billion natural gas-fired power plant will help power the facility. Mayor Alanna Hnatiw said Sturgeon County toured a Meta data centre in Utah in spring 2025, and said it would have been around that time that administration learned of Meta's interest in building a centre in the municipality. She said there were no negotiations between Meta, council, or county administration while they were there.

"We were there because we had never really seen one. We didn't really know what they were all about, certainly not the larger ones," Hnatiw said. "It was a fact-finding mission."

She said they also wanted to hear from surrounding municipalities on the experience with the centre and to understand the impact on residents, which she said were positive from what she heard on the tour. The Edmonton Sun reported on Sunday, July 12, that Meta had previously looked at the Town of Olds for a high-voltage data centre. Hnatiw said the facility brings the potential for upwards of $40 million per year in tax revenue for Sturgeon County.

Some residents in Sturgeon County felt as though there wasn't enough public consultation done in the lead up to the project. Sturgeon County council updated its land use bylaw at a meeting on Tuesday, April 8, 2025, to make major and minor data processing facilities a permitted use, with different regulations for each type. "That was our process," Hnatiw said.

A post on Sturgeon County's website says that public open houses are not required for approval for data centre development, as they are permitted within that specific land use. Hnatiw said having public consultation for a project like this would be unusual. "I don't recall anywhere in the 25 year and $50 billion investment in the Heartland's history where there's been public votes on whether businesses or sectors are allowed to buy property in those areas.

That would have been a stark difference in the handling of a process that's been in place for quite some time," she said. Data centres have also drawn concern and criticism from residents due to a number of environmental concerns such as the amount of water and electricity they use, and local impact like the amount of noise they make, assistant professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Alberta Yize Chen said. Chen said there's also the potential for long-term health concerns, and the question on if these large scale data centres will create more pollution or emissions, but he said there are factors mitigating these concerns with the location chosen.

"We have a cooler climate, which would require less cooling for data centre computing, which is actually a huge advantage for the operator," Chen said. While Premier Danielle Smith has said the centre will use less water than the average Alberta golf course does in a year, the Greenlight Electricity Centre that will power the facility has an estimated water requirement of 1.25 million litres per day. Hnatiw said this wouldn't have any negative effect on Sturgeon County's water supply.

Chen said the data centre's estimated water usage is reasonable compared to other factories or industries. "I think the water concern is a valid concern, but it's actually advancing a lot. There's a lot of research and also industry deployments which can reduce the water consumption coming from data centres," he said.

Hnatiw said through the year-long process leading up to this announcement, she's not sure where Sturgeon County was meant to understand that "people didn't want this." "Over a year ago, when we made these land use changes and added (data centres) as a permitted use, we advertised that, we had a public hearing. Nobody came to speak to it," she said.

"This was not a secret. There was the same advertising process as there is for any other business. Now I think what we're hearing is that people expect a different process.

And so we are open to a discussion about how to change the process within reason. But if we remove any certainty that anybody can get anything built in Sturgeon County, that is going to have drastic effects on the job opportunities that live here and to the tax base they depend on."