The Quinte West Planning Advisory Committee will be discussing a hot-button issue on Thursday night.
The committee will receive a report on a request for a zoning change at 7 Riverside Drive (just north of the 401 in Trenton) to allow for the construction of a small data centre.
The project would use the existing building already on the site (former Saputo property) and support the creation of 14 jobs.
In addition, this application also proposes to add the definition of a ‘data centre’ to the City of Quinte West Zoning By-law as the use is not currently captured in the existing Zoning By-law.
Councillor David O’Neil, who sits on the committee, says he is in favour of approving the zoning change.
He says some of the feedback circulating about the project online are not relevant to this specific proposal.
Some people have commented on data centres requiring large amounts of water, but O’Neil says this proposed facility will use a closed-loop dry cooling system and will not draw on local water sources.
He says the existing site also has the necessary power capacity and infrastructure to support the proposal.
The Quinte West Planning Committee meets Thursday at 6 pm.
You can see the report to be presented at the meeting here.
