Housing Assembly appeal suspends Equinix data centre approval in Cape Town

A planned 174 MVA hyperscale data centre in Cape Town cannot go ahead while an appeal against its municipal approval is decided, the city’s deputy mayor has confirmed.

The approval granted to Equinix for the King Air Industria precinct is suspended under Section 105(2) of the planning law until the appeal is finalised, deputy mayor and spatial planning MMC Eddie Andrews said. The appeal was filed on 6 August by the Housing Assembly and the UK technology justice group Foxglove, represented by the Legal Resources Centre.

As the Mail & Guardian reported on 21 September, the appeal challenges the Municipal Planning Tribunal’s decision to approve Equinix’s land-use application for the site.

What the appellants argue

The appellants say the tribunal did not have the basic information it needed to assess the development properly, and that important questions about how the facility would operate were unlawfully pushed to later stages after approval.

They also argue that the combined impact of two data centres planned for the same precinct was never assessed as a whole.

Kimal Harvey, an attorney at the Legal Resources Centre, said the appeal rests on two grounds: inadequate public participation and insufficient information before the tribunal.

“The kind of information that is important is not only the environmental impact that this data centre may have but also the socio-economic impact that it might have on the surrounding communities,” Harvey said.

The appellants’ statement says the information before the tribunal contained little or nothing on water, emissions, diesel generators, air pollution and noise, and that what it did contain on electricity was limited.

According to the appellants, one tribunal member, urban planner Wally Johnstone of Macroplan, voted against approval. He raised the lack of information on water use and noted that Equinix’s representatives had said this would be confirmed at the site development plan stage. Johnstone also questioned the impact on electricity supply, against the background of prolonged load-shedding and outages in Cape Town.

The communities next door

The proposed facility would stand next to the Barcelona informal settlement, Bishop Lavis, Gugulethu and KTC. The appellants say many residents there struggle for reliable water and electricity, in a city that came within weeks of Day Zero in 2018.

“Our members know what it is to queue for water, to go without electricity and to wait decades for decent housing,” said Kashiefa Achmat of the Housing Assembly. “Now a massive data centre is trying to jump the queue and take our land, water and energy. We are appealing because our communities have the right to make the decisions that will affect what comes out of our taps and our grid.”

The Housing Assembly represents residents of Gugulethu and Bishop Lavis, where Harvey said access to water, electricity and other basic services is already a concern.

Where the decision now sits

Andrews said the appeal report, once finalised, will go to the Planning Appeals Authority, which is the executive mayor. It has not yet been submitted, so no date can be given for a decision.

The city declined to comment on the merits of the appeal, including backup generators, diesel storage, emissions and environmental authorisations, saying that could pre-empt the authority’s decision. Andrews added that the city is “in the process of formulating refined development guidelines for large data centre applications”.

The appellants want the authority to set aside the tribunal’s decision and to require any fresh application to be considered on complete information and with meaningful engagement with surrounding communities.

Source: Mail & Guardian, Housing group challenges Cape Town approval of Equinix data centre