There has been a delay in granting planning permission to Art Data Centres on its €1.2 billion ($1.4bn) Ennis data center campus in Clare County, Ireland. The reason for the delay is because local officials need more information on the data center development. The planning authorities of Clare County are already due to make a decision on the data center development. However, Art Data Centres will have to respond to the county's questions before a conclusion can be made, and it only has six months to respond.
The proposal for the data center was initially for a €450 million ($526m) facility before it was expanded to €1.2 billion ($1.4bn). The proposed facility will have six two-story data halls with up to 200MW of capacity upon full buildout. When the expanded plan was revealed, it drew criticism from Extinction Rebellion and some other groups.
According to the Clare officials, the construction of the data center facility can lead to more flooding at the Aughavaddy Bridge when it storms. The officials have requested that a survey be done on the impact of the installation and the bridge's ability to contain the Gaurus river's flow when there's a storm. The authorities noted that the bridge has a bottleneck for the Gaurus river flow, and adding another pipeline may increase the probability of flood during a storm.
Art Data Centres has been asked to address the problem and find another route or upgrade the bridge to remove the bottleneck.
