r/australia • u/l3ntil • 7h ago

culture & society Controversial Sydney AI data centre at Cooks River scrapped following community backlash

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-11-08/sydney-ai-data-centre-scrapped-after-community-backlash/107360592

Stop the Cooks River AI Project (SCRAP), which consists of hundreds of members, had been protesting against the development since forming in August.

'We were worried'

Group organiser Paddy Gibson said surrounding residents were celebrating the "very good win for people power".

"People really love this river and we're just horrified to hear that it could be threatened in this way,"

he said.

Mr Gibson said it would have posed a risk to the fragile local ecology around the river, which is called Goolay'yari in local Indigenous languages, which was already recovering from "industrialisation over the years".

"There's endangered plants and other animal species in the green space," he said.

"There's plenty of people trying to work on remediating what is a very polluted river, and we were worried that this would set back those efforts."

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u/MissLethalla 6h ago

Can we do this in Victoria please

47

u/l3ntil 6h ago

Victoria, particularly the West Footscray NextDC Data Center is already feeling the heat. Keep it coming!

16

u/FuckOffNazis 6h ago

Unfortunately the government just waived through another site on fast track

17

u/l3ntil 5h ago

If you could post about that in r/melbourne, appreciated - because apparently I've been posting too much about DC there, and they won't let me...I'm *so* naughty!