‘Stop the slop’: Meet the young people fighting western Sydney’s data centre rush

As the battle against data centres in NSW rages on, a new contender has emerged to take on the major industrial developers: an emerging group mostly of twenty-somethings from western Sydney.

Stop the Slop, made up of a core group of eight people, has been rallying residents to oppose the developments planned for Sydney’s west, which is fast becoming a data centre hub.

Dozens of data centres are operating in or proposed for suburbs stretching from Marsden Park to Kemps Creek. Christie Duong, who started the group, said the data centre resistance in the US inspired her to learn more about the developments proposed in her own community.

After that, Duong said, the floodgates opened.

She discovered the scale of the data centres planned for western Sydney, connected with other young people from across the region, and they began campaigning against these projects on social media.

The response was positive: their posts gained the attention of a younger audience, and many were excited there was finally movement in Sydney’s west against the projects.

“The reason why we’re focusing on western Sydney in particular is the fact that it’s perceived to be a data centre hub with a few data centres already existing there, and how they will continue to pop up,” she said.

“We want to knock out all of [the data centres] because they’re just shady in general.”

The group has been advocating against the $7 billion plan for a data centre development in Kemps Creek, located near three schools. If approved, it would see US technology company AirTrunk develop data hall buildings across 52 hectares of vacant land.

The facility would have a power capacity of 1.2 gigawatts, which is roughly equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of about one million Australian homes. In a video posted on Instagram, Duong explains the scale of the project would be the equivalent of 52 football fields. One comment asks: “wtf why have we got this epidemic of data centres?”

Duong said: “I feel like if this gets approved, then what does it mean for the others? Like, how far can [data centres] push this?”

Project manager Plan PM said in a statement they had undertaken extensive stakeholder engagement, received feedback and were actively working with the relevant bodies to find solutions to the matters raised. Amendments to the project were submitted in July, and included reducing it from six buildings to three.

There has been recent success in communities taking on industrial property giants and winning. Goodman Group abandoned plans for a hyperscale data centre on Sydney’s north shore in September following outrage among residents.

An application for a data centre in the Blue Mountains was withdrawn in June after significant community backlash. This month, a proposal for an AI data centre on the banks of the Cooks River was scrapped.

Duong had been inspired as residents across NSW banded together to stop these developments, but she believed the “organising landscape” in western Sydney required a different approach.

“I think, as it’s been shown, visibility is important, but I think there are other things in the background that make things fall through, and we really want to be strategic about how we target [data centres] as well, and what it means for western Sydney as a data centre hub,” she said.

She says Stop the Slop members, who range in age between 21 and 32, are hopeful they can have similar success by hosting education sessions and continuing to reach people through social media.

Campaigns against data centres in western Sydney have ramped up recently, with the $1.1 billion Project Pluto data centre in Guildford West the latest to receive significant pushback from residents.

The development, which would be built next door to a sports ground and operate 24 hours a day, didn’t receive any submissions from the public, with many in the community saying they weren’t notified of the plans.

A petition to stop the project, which was approved in July, has been signed by more than 5000 people. Goodman Group was contacted for comment.

Data centres have become a major political flashpoint. A NSW parliamentary inquiry last week said the government should plan for large-scale data centre development in precincts, supported by shared energy and water infrastructure, rather than as isolated developments.

Among the 23 recommendations was requiring AI companies to properly listen and respond to community concerns.

Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles this week said the suburbs were “not a place where you would have data centres”.

As Stop the Slop grows in supporters, Duong wants governments to pay attention.

“I think it is the time, it is important that they listen,” she said. “Things are at stake for them.”