Fort Erie data centre: what the town has on file

I live in Fort Erie, and I work in tech, so I have been following the local data centre conversation closely. There is a lot of worry going around right now, and before anyone picks a side, it helps to separate what is actually happening from what is just circulating.

The short version:

• The Town of Fort Erie has received no formal application and no pre-consultation request for a data centre.
• The alarming power figures come from a developer’s own marketing material, not from any public review.
• Ontario’s grid is run by the not-for-profit IESO, and the rules put much of the cost to connect a large new load on the customer that creates it, not on your bill.
• Water use is a fair question, and so is transparency, since Ontario keeps no public registry of proposed data centre sites.
• None of this is a yes or a no on data centres. It is a request to argue from the facts.

Here is the fact at the centre of it. The Town of Fort Erie has confirmed it has received no formal application and no pre-consultation request for a data centre. A developer is marketing a parcel of local land as a possible site, and a company promoting property is a long way from a project being proposed and approved. Any data centre would need municipal zoning approval before a shovel hit the ground, and we are nowhere near that point. The eye-catching figures making the rounds, the ones about tens of thousands of homes’ worth of power, come straight from that developer’s own marketing material. No public body has reviewed a plan, because there is no plan to review yet.

A company promoting property is a long way from a project being approved.

What would actually have to happen first

It is worth knowing how this process works, because the steps are public and slow by design. A developer would first bring the Town a pre-consultation request, then a formal application. A data centre on land not already zoned for it would need a zoning bylaw amendment, which triggers staff review and a public process, ending in a council vote that residents can speak to. That council decision is the moment residents actually have a say, and it happens at a public meeting that goes on the record. None of those steps has started. The land being marketed online is just that, land being marketed, and marketing is the cheapest part of any project.

How Ontario pays for new power, and why it changes the math

The fear is understandable. Most of the alarming headlines are American, and in the United States they are alarming for good reason. There, regulated monopoly utilities can build the power infrastructure a large data centre needs and spread that cost across everyone’s bill, and communities near data centre hotspots have seen real rate spikes because of it.

Ontario runs on a different model, and that difference is the whole point. Our grid is managed by the IESO, a not-for-profit operator, with generation procured under contract. The province already has rules about who pays to connect a large new load, and they put much of that cost on the customer that creates it. That is a very different setup from a private utility that can overbuild and send your house the bill.

The scale here also stays small for now. The IESO projects data centres at roughly four percent of total provincial electricity demand by 2035, and it calls the whole category an uncertain area of growth. The larger pressures on our bills are the refurbishment of nuclear plants and the broad electrification of cars and home heating. Server farms sit a long way down that list.

The fair questions to ask, on water and on transparency

Fresh water deserves the same calm treatment. Cooling does use water, and how much it uses, where it comes from, and what happens to it afterward are all fair things to ask. Not every data centre cools the same way, and newer designs lean on less water than older ones, which is exactly the sort of detail a real application would have to spell out. Ontario sits a long way from the drought-stressed American Southwest, and local water and wastewater capacity is something you can get real numbers on. So ask for them.

The harder problem is that those numbers are not always there to find, and the one real gap here is transparency. That is the part I would actually push on. Ontario keeps no public registry of proposed data centre sites, and it does not require operators to report site-level energy or water use. That kind of vacuum is exactly where rumour rushes in. Until that changes, the work falls to residents and the Town to ask for specifics in public, and to any future applicant to put real numbers on the table up front, while a decision can still be shaped by them.

None of this is a yes or a no on data centres. It is a request to argue from the facts. If a genuine proposal ever lands here, Fort Erie will be far better served by good questions than by a game of telephone.

Common questions about the Fort Erie data centre

Has the Town approved a data centre? No. The Town has confirmed it has received no formal application and no pre-consultation request, so there is nothing to approve yet.

Where do the big power numbers come from? From the developer’s own marketing material, not from any public body. No one has reviewed a plan, because there is no plan to review yet.

What is the real thing to watch? Transparency. Ontario keeps no public registry of proposed data centre sites and does not require site-level energy or water reporting, so the work falls to residents and the Town to ask for specifics in public.

I have questions about the tech side of this. I live here and work in tech, so if you want to talk it through, you can reach me any time.