What’s Missing From the Bylaw?
A public review of the County of Newell’s proposed data-centre regulations
There is something the County of Newell deserves credit for before anything else is said about its proposed data-centre bylaw:
It is trying to write the rules before the projects arrive.
That should not be remarkable, but in the rapidly expanding world of data-centre development, it often is.
Across Alberta and elsewhere, communities are increasingly being asked to consider projects with enormous potential demands for electricity, water, industrial infrastructure and public services. Too often, the detailed questions begin only after a specific proposal is already moving through an approval process.
Newell is attempting to get ahead of that.
Proposed Bylaw 2129-26 would establish specific land-use rules for Data Processing Centres and a second category called Small-Scale Energy-Integrated Data Centres.
That is a good starting point.
But a good starting point is also exactly when a bylaw should be examined closely.
And one of the most useful questions we can ask about any proposed regulation is not simply: What does it contain?
It is: What might still be missing?
In examining the proposed bylaw, I also worked through questions raised in two resources I have developed around data-centre decision-making: The Data Center Anarchists’ Handbook and Before the Data Centre Decision.
Neither is a model bylaw, and the purpose was not to measure Newell against a predetermined set of answers. They were used as prompts: What should a municipality be asking about noise, water, power, infrastructure, cumulative effects, public costs, emergency response, expansion and eventual closure? Then I went back to the proposed bylaw to see which of those questions it answered, how it answered them, and which ones remained open.
Mentioning an issue is not necessarily the same as regulating it
At first glance, Newell’s proposed bylaw addresses many of the issues people would expect.
- Noise.
- Water.
- Electricity.
- Public consultation.
- Emergency planning.
- Infrastructure.
Those headings can make a regulatory framework appear comprehensive. But the more important questions often sit underneath them.
If a bylaw requires a developer to predict noise before construction, does it also require anyone to measure what the facility actually sounds like once it is operating?
If it establishes a property-line noise limit, does it consider what people hear at nearby homes?
If it measures sound only in dBA, does it adequately capture low-frequency or tonal noise?
If an applicant must disclose where its water will come from, does the bylaw also require an assessment of maximum demand, drought conditions, cumulative use and effects on existing users?
If a project requires a new road, water line, substation, gas connection, emergency-response capacity or wastewater infrastructure, is that infrastructure considered part of the development?
And who pays not only to build it, but to maintain and eventually replace it?
Those are different questions.
A regulation can require a developer to describe an impact without necessarily establishing what performance the development must achieve. That distinction became one of the central themes of my review.
Five acres does not necessarily mean “small”
One provision particularly caught my attention.
The proposed bylaw defines a Small-Scale Energy-Integrated Data Centre partly through a maximum development footprint of five acres.
But acreage measures land. It does not necessarily measure industrial intensity.
A facility can grow vertically. It can extend below grade. Computing density can increase dramatically without expanding the building footprint. Electrical demand and generating capacity can also be concentrated into relatively small spaces.
That raises a straightforward policy question: Should “small-scale” be determined primarily by acreage, or should electrical demand, generating capacity and gross floor area also matter?
There is also the possibility of fragmentation: several technically separate developments may still function as one industrial system through shared power, gas, water, communications, cooling or access infrastructure.
If a regulatory category is intended to be small, the definition has to measure the thing we actually mean by small.
Noise may be one of the clearest examples of why details matter
Newell proposes different modelled property-line limits for the two categories: 55 dBA for larger Data Processing Centres and 45 dBA for Small-Scale Energy-Integrated Data Centres.
The lower small-scale standard makes sense, particularly because those facilities may potentially be located in agricultural and other non-industrial areas.
But the review raises several additional questions.
Why should the property line be the only meaningful measurement point?
People do not sleep at the property line.
And is dBA alone sufficient for facilities containing large cooling systems, fans, transformers, pumps or generators?
Alberta’s own Utilities Commission noise framework recognizes that A-weighted measurements can be insufficient where low-frequency noise is involved and uses C-weighted measurements and frequency analysis as part of its assessment approach.
That does not mean the AUC’s rules automatically apply to data centres. It does mean Alberta already has regulatory experience showing why a single dBA number may not tell the whole story.
The larger issue is even simpler: Prediction should eventually be followed by measurement.
A model prepared before construction is important. It is still a model.
Once thousands of pieces of equipment are operating through summer heat, winter cold, changing server loads, generator testing and different weather conditions, someone should verify whether the development is actually performing as predicted.
And for large facilities operating continuously for years or decades, that probably should not be a one-time exercise.
The Pincher Creek surprise
One of the more interesting parts of this review was discovering how much of this ground has already been covered by another rural Alberta municipality. The Municipal District of Pincher Creek No. 9 adopted its own data-centre land-use provisions in 2025.
I did not begin this review expecting Pincher Creek to provide one of the stronger municipal comparisons.
It does.
Its bylaw includes, among other things, a 1.6-kilometre area for public notification and noise-impact consideration, requirements for information about generating capacity at full build-out, mandatory developer consultation, fire and emergency-response planning, and provisions dealing with reclamation and financial security.
That does not mean Newell should simply copy Pincher Creek. Different municipalities have different landscapes, development pressures, infrastructure and planning objectives.
But it changes the discussion.
Some ideas that might initially sound unusually restrictive or administratively ambitious are already part of an Alberta municipal data-centre bylaw. The question is therefore not only could a municipality do this? In several cases, another Alberta municipality already has.
The more useful question becomes whether Newell should adopt a similar approach, a different one, or deliberately choose not to—and why.
The project does not stop at the fence
Another recurring issue is regulatory fragmentation.
A data centre may require much more than a building containing computers. It may require:
- roads,
- water and wastewater infrastructure,
- electrical substations,
- transmission connections,
- natural-gas infrastructure,
- on-site power generation,
- stormwater systems,
- and expanded emergency-response capacity.
Different pieces may require approvals from different regulators. But physically and economically, they may still exist because of one project.
That matters.
A power plant does not become unrelated to a data centre simply because the AUC approves one and a municipality approves the other.
A water line does not cease to be part of the development’s impact because it is located outside the property boundary.
And infrastructure costs do not disappear simply because someone else pays the initial construction bill.
Municipalities also need to understand maintenance, repair, replacement, pumping, staffing, road rehabilitation and other long-term costs that may eventually fall on taxpayers or utility ratepayers.
A useful test may be: Would this infrastructure reasonably be needed if the proposed development did not exist?
If the answer is no, it deserves to be considered when the project is assessed.
What happens twenty years from now?
Land-use decisions are often made around the moment of construction.
Industrial developments have much longer lives.
Technology changes.
Operators change.
Companies fail.
Computing density rises.
Cooling systems are replaced.
Generators are added.
Water requirements change.
Buildings are expanded—or abandoned.
That is why the draft review also looks at material changes, decommissioning, reclamation and financial security.
It is much easier to establish those expectations before development occurs than to negotiate them after an operator has disappeared.
This is a draft. That is intentional.
I have prepared a detailed review of proposed Bylaw 2129-26 containing twenty recommendations, suggested wording and an appendix explaining the regulatory precedents and reasoning behind them.
It is not yet the submission I intend to send to the County of Newell.
I am publishing the draft first. You can find it here.
That is intentional.
Public consultation should not consist only of individual people privately sending comments to government.
Residents should be able to see what other residents are proposing.
Municipal officials should be able to respond.
Developers and industry participants should be able to identify recommendations that are technically impractical or based on incomplete assumptions.
People who disagree should be able to explain why.
Perhaps something I have identified as a gap is already adequately addressed somewhere I have missed.
Perhaps proposed wording creates an unintended consequence.
Perhaps a recommendation should be stronger.
Perhaps one should disappear entirely.
Those are useful contributions.
Arguments against these recommendations are as welcome as arguments supporting them.
The purpose is not to manufacture agreement.
The purpose is to improve the eventual submission before it becomes final.
That is also the spirit in which policy work is presented through Civic Sketches.
Policies posted here are sketches in the literal sense: attempts to put an idea on the page clearly enough that other people can examine it, erase parts of it, redraw them, challenge the assumptions underneath it, or take the useful pieces somewhere else.
For the same reason, the draft is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0).
You may share it.
Quote it.
Adapt the recommendations.
Use wording from it in your own submission.
Use the research to argue for something different.
If another municipality finds one clause useful, take it.
If a resident wants to submit one idea rather than thirty-four pages, take that too.
Attribution is required.
Agreement is not.
The question I keep coming back to
The County of Newell is doing something worth encouraging: trying to establish the rules before major data-centre development arrives.
The purpose of scrutinizing those rules is not to punish the County for trying. It is to make the effort stronger. And the exercise has reinforced a question that applies far beyond data centres.
When reading any proposed policy, regulation or bylaw, do not stop when you find the paragraph saying an issue has been addressed.
Keep reading.
Ask:
- What exactly must happen?
- Who measures it?
- Where is it measured?
- When is it verified?
- Are the results public?
- What happens if the prediction was wrong?
- Who pays for the infrastructure the policy creates?
- What happens when the development changes?
- And what happens when it eventually closes?
Sometimes the most important part of a policy is not what is written into it. It is the space around the words.
This policy is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0). You are free to copy, share, adapt, translate, and build upon this policy for any purpose, including use by governments, organizations, advocates, researchers, and members of the public, provided appropriate credit is given to Lawrence Nault and any changes are clearly identified.
These proposals are not party platforms or final answers — they are working drafts meant to invite discussion, challenge, and refinement. If this idea seems worth debating, please share it, add your own perspective, and help widen the conversation beyond slogans.
If this proposal was useful, you can buy me a coffee — it helps keep the research going.