A proposed 174 MVA hyperscale data centre development in Cape Town remains suspended pending an appeal after a housing rights organisation and a UK technology justice group challenged the city’s approval, arguing that key information about its potential impact on water, electricity and surrounding communities was missing.
The appeal, filed on 6 August by the Housing Assembly and Foxglove, represented by the Legal Resources Centre (LRC), challenges the Municipal Planning Tribunal’s approval of Equinix’s land-use application for the King Air Industria precinct.
The appellants argue that the tribunal did not have fundamental information needed to properly assess the development and that key questions about its eventual operation were unlawfully deferred until after approval.
They also argue that the combined impact of two data centres planned for the precinct was not assessed.
Kimal Harvey, an attorney at the LRC, said the appeal had two main 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,” he said.
The communities represented by the Housing Assembly include residents of Gugulethu and Bishop Lavis, where Harvey said access to water, electricity and other basic services was a concern.
The appellants’ statement said information before the municipal planning tribunal included little or nothing on water, emissions, diesel generators, air pollution and noise, while information on electricity was limited.
According to the appellants, a member of the tribunal, urban planner Wally Johnstone of Macroplan, voted against approving the application. He raised concerns about the lack of information on water use and said Equinix’s representatives had indicated that this would be confirmed at the site development plan stage.
Johnstone also questioned the potential impact on electricity supply, against the backdrop of prolonged load-shedding and outages in Cape Town.
The proposed facility would stand adjacent to the Barcelona informal settlement, Bishop Lavis, Gugulethu and KTC, where many residents struggle for reliable access to water and electricity, in a city that came within weeks of “Day Zero” in 2018, the appellants said.
“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.”
Eddie Andrews, the city’s deputy mayor and MMC for spatial planning and environment, said the application was subject to an appeal process.
“In terms of Section 105(2), the approval remains suspended until the appeal has been finalised and a final decision has been made,” he said.
He said that once the appeal report was finalised, it would be submitted to the Planning Appeals Authority, which was the executive mayor. As it had not yet been submitted, no date could be provided for the appeal decision.
Andrews said the city said it could not comment on the merits of the appeal, including matters relating to backup generators, diesel storage, emissions and environmental authorisations, as that could pre-empt the decision of the Planning Appeals Authority.
The city, he noted, was also “in the process of formulating refined development guidelines for large data centre applications”.
The appellants are asking the appeal authority to set aside the tribunal’s decision and require any fresh application to be considered on complete information and with meaningful engagement with surrounding communities.