[Saint John, NB] Lorneville | Spruce Lake Industrial Park Expansion | +1500 acres

[adamuptownsj]

There's also plenty of jurisdictions from Virginia to Texas across the political spectrum going whole-hog. Upstate NY is stagnating massively compared to similar adjacent northern PA on every metric from MHI to GDP. Probably not a great state to emulate.

We need Coleson Cove converted to gas, a second reactor at Lepreau, actual tidal energy success, and more. Power generation is the single most important factor for success this century.

[sailor734]

Another story on the subject from The Washington Post. Interestingly it's not just blue states where the opposition is growing but ruby red states too.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/07/18/how-data-centers-became-symbol-americans-rage/

[paperplane]

Originally Posted by sailor734

Another story on the subject from The Washington Post. Interestingly it's not just blue states where the opposition is growing but ruby red states too.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/07/18/how-data-centers-became-symbol-americans-rage/

Yeah, I don't really see any real benefit to SJ with this Data Centre, it's like putting faith in that call centre boom that went nowhere in SJ.

[Titan2030**]

I wonder if they have considered other areas of NB for this data center project ? Maybe with the New Power plant going into Tantramar and a New unused 200 acre industrial park located near by in a white color area such as this, that could be something else to get the green folks stirred up. The general area is home to over 200,000 people being nearby to Moncton and central to the maritime region.

[Helladog]

Originally Posted by Titan2030**

I wonder if they have considered other areas of NB for this data center project ? Maybe with the New Power plant going into Tantramar and a New unused 200 acre industrial park located near by in a white color area such as this, that could be something else to get the green folks stirred up. The general area is home to over 200,000 people being nearby to Moncton and central to the maritime region.

I think it comes down to the location of 'black fibre'. Apparently NBTel had invested in a good chunk of fibre optic cable which runs into the area.

[Helladog]

Originally Posted by paperplane

Yeah, I don't really see any real benefit to SJ with this Data Centre, it's like putting faith in that call centre boom that went nowhere in SJ.

That's kind of how I feel about it too. Some good construction jobs up front, then high power demand, and pollution with a few jobs at the end.

It's just another chapter in the boom and bust economy SJ has found itself in for far too long.

[EnvisionSaintJohn]

The natural gas “backup” generator piece is my biggest issue with the proposal… like is such a large generating capacity really needed, with Colseon Cove right there, along with Point Lepreau 20km away, let alone abundant potential to invest in solar and battery storage throughout this industrial park.

Coleson Cove needs to be converted to natural gas yesterday, and down the like, maybe it should be turned into some sort of large scale battery storage facility powered by wind, solar, and excess power from Point Lepreau which should eventually have a second, more powerful CANDU reactor, and possibly small modular reactors that could be fueled by CANDU waste.

Allowing “backup” natural gas generators to run on a near permanent basis just seems like a bad precedent to set with this expansion and first major development for the industrial park. The whole industrial park may end up being 10,000+ acres one day, which is plenty of room for major wind, solar, and battery storage projects throughout the park and adjacent areas.

[Woho]

Based on the research I've done on the proposed data centre, it seems like there are a lot of misconceptions about the project.

The on-site power production is definitely not just "backup." The site is expected to require around 400 MW to operate at full capacity, with 190 MW coming from its on-site generators. I would hardly call 48% of its total power supply a backup source. Whether or not this puts a significant strain on our grid is up for debate, but either way, a project of this size would create more incentive for the province to invest in additional energy infrastructure. That's one of the knock-on effects a major project like this can have.

They're also estimating around 210 permanent operational jobs, which is roughly comparable to Irving Tissue's operations in Saint John. That's nothing to scoff at. When the original proposal was valued at $1 billion, it was estimated to generate $3 million to $3.5 million per year in property tax revenue for the city. The project is now being described as a $2+ billion investment. While the final tax assessment hasn't been released, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the annual property tax bill to be somewhere around $4 million. Considering the average household in Saint John pays roughly $2,800–$3,200 in property taxes each year, that's the equivalent of adding around 1,300 average detached homes to the city's tax base.

[bingun]

I've posted about some of these points before, but I will post them again if it's helpful. I appreciate the issues with data centres, but someone needs to explain things sensibly, not dramatically, as you'll see elsewhere.

They've chosen Lorneville for several reasons. From my understanding, it is for the availability of power, gas, water, network infrastructure, and workforce.

• The location is very close to existing power infrastructure coming up from Colson Cove and Lepreau, and the cost to connect will be minimal.
• There is a natural gas line close by that they can connect to in order to power their natural gas power plant.
• There is a municipal water supply available close by with sufficient capacity, reasonable cost, and a supplier with experience working with large industrial customers.
• There is serious network infrastructure nearby, originally put in place by NBTel, that they can utilize to send data/information south or west.
• While Saint John isn't a huge city, it has a strong industrial base and a technology workforce, which should be able to build and sustain the facility.

Is it possible to build this data centre elsewhere in NB or the Maritimes? Sure, but if it were easier or cheaper, they would have chosen those locations. They aren't choosing Saint John out of the goodness of their heart (or spite, depending on which way you see it); it's because it makes the most sense financially and can be done in a short time frame.

As for benefits for the city, it's not going to be a huge employer, although they claim 200 jobs and a much larger number during construction. There'll be some downstream jobs elsewhere to supply their power and other infrastructure, etc.

The benefit that is often ignored is taxes. Assuming the city or the province don't pull any Irving-style BS tax breaks, this could generate about $6-7M annually for the city, which is serious money. That's double the pulp mill and more than the refinery.

If you said to folks in the city, we'll cut your property taxes by 5% if we can build this, I think many could be persuaded. Saint John still has the highest property taxes in the province and a long way to go to meet Fredericton/Moncton. However, from my perspective, I'd prefer they use the cash to boost services. A few million dollars could go a long way for the city's parks, roads, or snow clearing. You could fix up every park in the city to a great standard in a few years.

Originally Posted by Titan2030**

I wonder if they have considered other areas of NB for this data center project ? Maybe with the New Power plant going into Tantramar and a New unused 200 acre industrial park located near by in a white color area such as this, that could be something else to get the green folks stirred up. The general area is home to over 200,000 people being nearby to Moncton and central to the maritime region.

The trouble with putting this close to Tantramar is that the new gas plant there is designed to be a peaker plant, not continuous generation. It picks up during cold snaps or during outages/downtime elsewhere in the province. There is already poor generation in that region of the province, and putting more strain there would be unwise, especially with the rising population of the Moncton metro area. The only way you could make it work is by running the plant far more than planned, and then it's not really a peaker plant, is it?

There is access to gas, and a workforce nearby in Moncton; I am less sure about water supply in that region or network infrastructure. I'd have to do some research.

Originally Posted by EnvisionSaintJohn

Allowing “backup” natural gas generators to run on a near permanent basis just seems like a bad precedent to set with this expansion and first major development for the industrial park. The whole industrial park may end up being 10,000+ acres one day, which is plenty of room for major wind, solar, and battery storage projects throughout the park and adjacent areas.

As the previous user said, these aren't backup generators. They've included these in the design because there isn't enough slack on the electrical grid to meet all their power needs from it, so they are splitting it 50/50 between self-generation and grid power. Does this mean it will cause a bunch of CO2 generation? Absolutely! Is it worth it? That's up for debate. Without more nuclear baseload or huge battery systems that are not yet proven at scale, we can't rely on wind or solar for projects like this, so there isn't another option except not to build them at all. Or more likely, build them in a jurisdiction that will happily take their investment and tax dollars.

[Helladog]

Property tax is the main 'good' in this project, if, like the above poster says, a tax deal isn't made. That said, 'they've chosen Lorneville for several reasons' list should include:

• Saint John is in dire need of tax revenue

But hey, at the end of the day, even if millions of United Statsians loose their right to privacy by Flock cameras and the like, why shouldn't SJ make a few bucks in the process?

[bingun]

Originally Posted by Helladog

Property tax is the main 'good' in this project, if, like the above poster says, a tax deal isn't made. That said, 'they've chosen Lorneville for several reasons' list should include:

• Saint John is in dire need of tax revenue

But hey, at the end of the day, even if millions of United Statsians loose their right to privacy by Flock cameras and the like, why shouldn't SJ make a few bucks in the process?

You're not wrong; I think they would have considered the state of the local municipality, but I don't think that would be the primary motivation. Remember, when this first came up, most people didn't understand data centres, and I am not sure they were expecting resistance to build this much. I'd bundle this up with Saint John having a history of industrial enterprises that make the local population more accepting than others. The lack of other infrastructure aside, this would never happen in Fredericton.

People like to focus on the extremes of AI, like all the slop videos and documents, or things like military or surveillance, but it has a lot of applications, many of which are positive. I work in a corporate environment, and it's very powerful for things like research, document review, transcription, etc.

We can build some of the infrastructure for this in Canada, or we can let it all live in the USA, and then Trump or another braindead future president can threaten to cut it off or tariff it.

[adamuptownsj]

I don't know if 'the resistance' is of any notable size. It's a couple hundred people on Facebook sharing complaints and AI-generated images with each other 24/7. They got one city councilor elected out of 10 in May, failed to interfere with the Moonlight Bazaar, and can't gin up more than a hundred people for their occasional protest.

Even the direction of their protest is unfocused. The crazier ones think it's going to enslave them, or they'll get cancer from it, and the more sane ones who want it built elsewhere for less-unhinged reasons haven't done much to separate themselves.

I've said it before, but what do these people think goes on in a datacenter? It's a warehouse full of servers with a couple of gas turbines. I'd love to survey these people to see what they'd accept in the industrial park and energy infrastructure they moved next to. An asphalt plant? Aluminum smelter? Factory?

Any one of them, or all of them, could have bought the land for a song at any point in the last 30+ years and donated it to the Nature Conservancy, but none of them did. Future industrial land doesn't become your forested backyard through vibes.

[gtsoc]

Originally Posted by adamuptownsj

I'd love to survey these people to see what they'd accept in the industrial park and energy infrastructure they moved next to. An asphalt plant? Aluminum smelter? Factory?

One of the main opponents is already turning his sight to a scrap metal addition that Simpson's is planning for the industrial park. By the sounds of things, he just wants this to be a residential area.. even though he chose to move into an Industrial Park.

[bingun]

Originally Posted by gtsoc

One of the main opponents is already turning his sight to a scrap metal addition that Simpson's is planning for the industrial park. By the sounds of things, he just wants this to be a residential area.. even though he chose to move into an Industrial Park.

This gets at the bigger issue, which is that their position on the industrial park expansion is absolute. They don't want it in any shape or form. What industry is proposed doesn't really matter. This is why they refused any of the conversations about investment in the community, like parks or sidewalks; it would be a compromise.

They've been fortunate that the first proponent is so controversial that it has kept this alive in the news and on social media. If the first proposal was something more mundane, let's say a food product facility, nobody outside of Lorneville would care.

[EnvisionSaintJohn]

Originally Posted by bingun

This gets at the bigger issue, which is that their position on the industrial park expansion is absolute. They don't want it in any shape or form. What industry is proposed doesn't really matter. This is why they refused any of the conversations about investment in the community, like parks or sidewalks; it would be a compromise.

They've been fortunate that the first proponent is so controversial that it has kept this alive in the news and on social media. If the first proposal was something more mundane, let's say a food product facility, nobody outside of Lorneville would care.

It’s really frustrating they aren’t even willing to have conversations with the company about investments for the community. I think many other west siders would happily sit down with the companies and discuss investments in our community.

All this being said, I’ll be pissed if they don’t find a way to save that 400 year old tree and other clusters of trees throughout the expanded industrial park.

[EnvisionSaintJohn]

Originally Posted by bingun

As the previous user said, these aren't backup generators. They've included these in the design because there isn't enough slack on the electrical grid to meet all their power needs from it, so they are splitting it 50/50 between self-generation and grid power. Does this mean it will cause a bunch of CO2 generation? Absolutely! Is it worth it? That's up for debate. Without more nuclear baseload or huge battery systems that are not yet proven at scale, we can't rely on wind or solar for projects like this, so there isn't another option except not to build them at all. Or more likely, build them in a jurisdiction that will happily take their investment and tax dollars.

Yes, I know the “backup generators” aren’t actually “backup” hence the quotes and mentioning they’ll be running continuously.

I think they should be getting way more pushback on this piece of the proposal, since “backup” generators that they plan to run continuously aren’t really backups at all.

Large scale solar, wind, and battery storage solutions throughout the industrial park could at least help limit the use of the “backup” generators to the point where they could actually be justifiably referred to as backup systems.

Hopefully there’s some plans to majorly invest in renewable energy and battery storage solutions throughout this expanded industrial park.

[Helladog]

I don't live in Lorneville, and have nothing to lose either way, but I do see the negatives as something to consider, and a little push back may make the developer a bit more concerned with 'doing it right'.

BTW, I'm not against AI in general, as I run my own LLMs and diffusion models locally under solar power. Most useful AI tools don't even need large data centres.

I'm against adding carbon to the atmosphere in increasing quantities, while research says the global warming situation is out of control. Last century, we learned to take lead out of gas, CFCs out of refrigerant, and acid out of rain, all which improved the environments they impacted immensely. This century, we are failing to do the same with carbon pollution.

The AI thing is being pushed by greedy corporations and their billionaires/trillionaires, who couldn't care less about the environment, or the social impacts of their actions. It's not the AI itself, but the people pushing it without slowing down to take a look.

NB is also running out of power, and this development, should it move forward, needs a clean source of power. Additional nuclear has been proposed, which isn't perfect, but a far cry better than gas both at the data centre and elsewhere in the province.

So yeah, Saint John does need the tax revenue, but to go into it blindly, cheering on AI's benefits without looking at it's impacts is in my mind utterly foolish.

I hope it all works out for the best.

[adamuptownsj]

Lorneville doesn't want it in Lorneville. They use datacenters elsewhere to oppose a datacenter in Lorneville. There's no grand romantic save the planet stuff going on. They've publicly suggested building it on the east side or outside of city limits (how the latter is better for the environment, I don't know).

You have issues with carbon, talk to China and India. They're the ones building coal plants every other month. We need to go all in on natural gas, tidal, nuclear, and better grid connection to Quebec's hydro. Power generation capacity is the single most important thing a country can commit to right now.

[bingun]

A post from Save Lorneville this morning -

In March 2021, Nathan Ough’s mother Brenda Ough wrote to Saint John City Council in opposition of a proposed housing development more than 700m from her house.
She expressed grave concerns about environmental issues, wetlands, runoff, storage, EIA, and the qualifications of those conducting EIAs.
She also raised concerns about a lack of communication, transparency, and community engagement from parties involved, as well as the issues with the developer.
Along with a lack of emergency services being addressed related to the project and the fact that taxpayer money would be used to improve this development where the “private developer is going to be making the most money out of this”.
Reading her letter was like reading a summary of the past 2 years of life in Lorneville amid all of the issues we’ve endured--and this Industrial Park expansion is a mere 150m from residential properties.
It's too bad her own son doesn’t seem to care about environmental concerns and the residents that will live beside this monstruous polluter.

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by Helladog

I don't live in Lorneville, and have nothing to lose either way, but I do see the negatives as something to consider, and a little push back may make the developer a bit more concerned with 'doing it right'.

BTW, I'm not against AI in general, as I run my own LLMs and diffusion models locally under solar power. Most useful AI tools don't even need large data centres.

I'm against adding carbon to the atmosphere in increasing quantities, while research says the global warming situation is out of control. Last century, we learned to take lead out of gas, CFCs out of refrigerant, and acid out of rain, all which improved the environments they impacted immensely. This century, we are failing to do the same with carbon pollution.

The AI thing is being pushed by greedy corporations and their billionaires/trillionaires, who couldn't care less about the environment, or the social impacts of their actions. It's not the AI itself, but the people pushing it without slowing down to take a look.

NB is also running out of power, and this development, should it move forward, needs a clean source of power. Additional nuclear has been proposed, which isn't perfect, but a far cry better than gas both at the data centre and elsewhere in the province.

So yeah, Saint John does need the tax revenue, but to go into it blindly, cheering on AI's benefits without looking at it's impacts is in my mind utterly foolish.

I hope it all works out for the best.

A very good post!

I am concerned about our carbon footprint, but I am not a zealot. For example, I am in favour of the proposed natural gas power plant in Tantramar. we need to support peak demand needs, especially as we are now pushing the envelope in our power production capabilities in the province. I believe it is necessary.

On the whole however, we should be looking at greener energy production options for the province. In particular, we need Lepreau 2, We have tremendous opportunities to boost wind power (and solar power) in the province too. They should be planning the Mactaquac rehabilitation project right now.

No coal. No heavy bunker oil. There are lots of other options. I however have a pretty jaundiced view on tidal power. I just think there are too many engineering challenges to make it an economical option.