Yesterday we had a meeting at the site with Canterbury MP Rosie Duffield and Valencia Waste Management at Shelford Landfill, she had also spoken to the EA last week and set up both meetings, following our public meeting. I attended with community reps from Sturry and St Stephens. We had expected a tour however, but instead we stood at the foot of the landfill in the car park as plastsic and rubbish and a huge amount of dust blew around in front of us as we talked and the lorry’s rolled in. This dust blew off the site and taken up by the wind no staff worse masks, all the cars in the car park where covered in dust and the roadways not sufficiently dampened, in fact the only part which was wet soon dried out in front of us, so dust was a highly visible issue and concerning when we discussed without much information from them how they get asbestos off site and what happens when asbestos ends up on site, we were told the companies dumping have to remove it no data on how often that happens and how like most things at the site was forthcoming. Online the last meeting we were told they rarely turn back lorries yesterday it became once a month. As ever totally contradictory information was shared with us, which changes from meeting to meeting and person to person even during the hour long discussion about the site we had with them. We were told at last meeting in no uncertain terms food waste did not go on the site they at the site the story changed as it was clear seagulls were eating food off the site. The newsletter they are promising was still not forthcoming either.
Valencia quite tellingly also used the visit visit to introduce us to Tom Humphreys who https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-humphreys-1356a426/
He is the CEO of Era4 just formed last year, this new company has very strong links to Valencia the new company was started and shared directors with Valencia director who stepped down in Feb . They have applied for planning permission to set up AI Data Center on the Canterbury site and others in UK. It seems Tom Humphreys has not previously run any data centres that are fully up and running. He also was also totally unaware of power and water issues in the area and fittingly we had a power outage across Canterbury just before the meeting.
Our Canterbury MP made it known that based on the power issues alone in the area, we know this proposed site will also use grid power and back up and top up, so it will be highly problematic. She also mentioned it was power outages which causes water pumping to fail in the area so just in that light was not behind this current application also we had a power outage just before the meeting and the day after in the city.
The application for the data centre at Shelford has been listed to be debated at the Canterbury City Council Planning Committee at 7pm on 21 July at the Guildhall Canterbury.
The committee can also be viewed live and in recorded form on YouTube.
Details are be found here - https://democracy.canterbury.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx
Only 3 people can speak against the application for 3 minutes!
There is still no word from the EA about increasing waste load to the site and the newsletter that has been long promised to the public has not been forthcoming as yet, like the fences which have been finally fixed after five years I am not holding my breath over that. People have noticed the standard of the fencing is very cheap and performative and was put up in haste after national shaming in the press.
We have big concerns about the way the company has operated thus far. This is also echoed by
Local Government association who wrote of similar concerns across the UK.
‘A central concern for local government is the lack of transparency and consistency in sustainability data provided by cloud and AI providers. Current corporate level reporting does not provide councils with the site specific, verifiable information needed to assess energy use, water consumption, emissions or cumulative impacts at a local level. This undermines effective planning, procurement, FOI responses and public engagement, and exposes councils to reputational risks as public scrutiny of digital infrastructure intensifies. The absence of standardised disclosure requirements also makes like for like comparison between providers difficult and limits councils’ ability to use procurement as a lever to drive improved environmental performance”
The issue of bad actors running AI sites is already being discussed and played out in USA as companies rush for funding to set them up, clearly the new gold rush here is not just creating rubbish mountains but putting AI centres on top of them. However how will they be regulated is another matter, we know the EA is on its knees based on the community meeting we had a few weeks ago and we know we live in a area with power and water issues which are compacted by power cuts.
Canterbury is the tourist UNESCO heart of the garden of England, the Cathedral just a mile away and it seems current council planning is currently failing the city its residents and visitors. Joined up planning does not seem to be happening on any of this and its hard not to see this as a done deal as these things are rushed through with little research and no consideration for wider issues and future uses and current infastructure failings. Fast moving industry should not mean planning corners are cut! which has been the case so far when it comes to the landfill which got retrospective planning for a recyling center which only recycles 30 percent of the industrial waste that arrives !
The site has planning permission to operate until 2036, the operator, Valencia Waste Management, expects it to stop accepting waste by 2031 it has told us and BBC. We are currently campaigning for an earlier shutdown due to odour, rubbish mountain, dust, lorry issues, fire concerns, land, water and air pollution impacting on homes and business.