The 725-Hectare Project That Rural Queensland Calls 'Stupidity'

There is a particular weariness that settles over a community that has watched booms arrive and depart—a weariness made of promises that were not kept, of jobs that came and went, of a landscape scarred by extraction and then abandoned. For the people of Queensland's Western Downs, that weariness has a long history. They have lived through the coal seam gas boom, which brought thousands of workers, drove up rents, and then left behind debts and doubts . Now, a new proposition has arrived: a $31 billion data centre, the largest in Australia, proposed for a 725-hectare plot of land near the town of Dalby. And for many residents, the response has been the same as it was for the gas fields: once bitten, twice shy.

The project, known as the Western Downs Digital Park, is being developed by Singapore-based Zerra DC and would serve as the Australian base for Anthropic's Claude artificial intelligence. It would occupy land currently used as a 24,000-head cattle feedlot, surrounded by gas wells, power stations, and transmission infrastructure . At full capacity, the facility would draw 2.16 gigawatts of electricity—about the same as 1.5 million average Australian households, or roughly a quarter of Queensland's total daily energy demand . During construction, it would require about 522 kilolitres of water per day, followed by a one-time flush-and-fill process equivalent to the annual water use of 155 households .

The scale of the proposal has triggered a backlash that is both immediate and deeply rooted in local memory. A petition launched by Dalby travel agent Mordechai Winters has gathered more than 21,500 signatures in just a few weeks, with most coming from the surrounding area . The petition, submitted to the Queensland Parliament, cites concerns about "scale, noise, water requirements, traffic and road impacts, agricultural land, electricity and other infrastructure requirements, environmental impacts, visual amenity, fire and emergency management, and proposed construction workforce accommodation" .

For residents like Denver Kanowski, who has watched resources companies come and go for seventy years from his bush block, the data centre represents something beyond the familiar cycle of boom and bust. "This is the power of money and the power of greed and shortsighted stupidity," he told The Guardian. "I've read this book before" . Farmer Liza Balmain, who led a long campaign against the gas industry, sees "huge similarities" between the coal seam gas era and the proposed data centre. The gas industry brought a massive influx of workers, attracted labour away from farms and local businesses, and then left as quickly as it arrived, leaving business owners with debts on investments they no longer needed .

The Queensland government has framed the project as a major economic win. Premier David Crisafulli announced Anthropic's lease agreement in parliament, describing it as "a major win that will deliver more jobs and put more energy into Queensland's grid" . The project is expected to create around 1,400 long-term jobs and contribute $760 million a year to the state's economy . The developer says the facility will use air-cooled technology, reducing water consumption compared to traditional data centres, and will connect directly to the high-voltage transmission network rather than drawing from the local distribution system .

But the concerns extend beyond the familiar questions of water and power. The Environmental Defenders Office has reported a 250 percent increase in queries about data centres since January, with CEO Jo Shulman describing the data centre as "the new frontier" for community opposition . She has called for a moratorium on further data centres until national standards catch up, warning that otherwise the same mistakes made with coal seam gas will be repeated. The project remains subject to approval by the Western Downs Regional Council, whose mayor, Andrew Smith, has acknowledged that water, power, and geography are the key issues being raised by residents . For Kanowski and others, the question is not whether the data centre will bring jobs—it likely will—but whether the community will be left, once again, to absorb the costs of a boom that was never truly theirs.

AI Image Disclaimer: The visual elements in this article were created using AI generation tools and are intended for illustrative purposes only.

Sources: The Guardian, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Queensland Parliament, Mingtiandi