The public hearing is where promises get made. The development permit is where they get forgotten.
You sat through hours of presentations. You listened to the developer’s assurances: new trees, quieter equipment, recycled water, local jobs. You watched neighbours stand at the microphone and demand answers. And finally, council voted yes.
But what happens between rezoning approval and shovels in the ground matters far more than what was said in that hearing room. The gap between a promise and an enforceable condition is wider than most people realize.
The Legal Gap
In Alberta, when council passes a rezoning bylaw, only the words written into that bylaw or into a development agreement carry legal force. Every verbal assurance given at a public hearing, every slide in a presentation, every FAQ on a project website—none of it is binding. A developer can stand before council and promise sound walls and water recycling, then simply omit them from the application documents.
There is a further kicker: development permit conditions can be amended by the Development Authority—usually municipal administration—without any public notice or hearing. After zoning passes, residents lose their seat at the table entirely.
The Cooling Bait-and-Switch
This pattern is not hypothetical. It has played out in the largest data centre projects in North America. In The Dalles, Oregon, Google promised the community recycled water for cooling. Years later, it was drawing over 4 million gallons of potable water per day from the municipal supply—water residents had been told would go to residential growth.
Near Boardman, Oregon, Amazon promised air cooling to a drought-stressed rural community. After approval, they switched to evaporative cooling. Water consumption climbed past 4 million gallons per day. Closer to home, Diode’s FAQ page leaves cooling strategy open to “detailed design”—a weasel clause that turns a commitment into an option.
Noise Enforcement Reality
Loudoun County, Virginia is the world’s largest data centre market and a case study in what happens when noise promises meet 24/7 industrial operations. Residents have filed dozens of formal noise complaints documenting violations at all hours. The county’s response was not to enforce the promised conditions or stop the generators. It was to require more sound studies. Study after study, and the generators kept running. Once a facility is built, the regulatory machinery moves slowly if at all.
Tax Abatement Secrecy
While residents watch council meetings, incentive packages worth tens of millions are negotiated behind closed doors—often after the public hearing is over and routinely shielded by non-disclosure agreements. In Virginia, over 80 percent of municipalities hosting data centres use NDAs in incentive negotiations. The public never learns the true cost until years later, and in many cases the value of incentives exceeds the net economic benefit the project brings.
Decommissioning: The Cost We Are Not Talking About
A data centre has a useful life of roughly 15 to 25 years. At build-out, this project would cover 3.5 million square feet of concrete, steel, industrial HVAC, backup generators, miles of cabling, and hazardous battery systems. The cost of removing all of it will fall on someone. Right now, Alberta does not require a bond or any financial security for decommissioning. No reclamation plan. No closure fund. If the operator walks away, the community inherits the cleanup. We require bonds for oil well reclamation and gravel pit restoration. Why not for a 3.5-million-square-foot industrial complex on farmland?
The Bottom Line
Council has the power to make every one of these promises binding. They can write noise limits into the rezoning bylaw. They can require cooling technology commitments in the development agreement. They can mandate decommissioning bonds. They can disclose incentive terms before the vote. But they have to choose to do it, and right now the default is that verbal promises carry no legal weight.
The hearing is not the finish line. It is where the real work begins.
Read the full Evidence & Research report or join the campaign to demand binding commitments.