On a rainy Monday night during a town hall event led by Greenpeace Australia Pacific at the Lane Cove library, locals say they were never consulted on their area becoming a data centre hub.

One of the proposed centres from the cluster is 16m from the nearest home and 160m from a local primary school.

In addition, Flood says if the four data centres get approved in the industrial park, 50% of the current businesses will have to move – taking their jobs with them.

Felipe Tanaka, 40, is a manager of a business in the industrial park who has been told he must relocate for a data centre.

“We never knew that something like this would happen,” Tanaka tells the BBC. “Thousands of jobs are going to be gone from this area in the next few years.”

While a large data centre can employ more than a thousand workers during construction, research says that number drops to more like 100 jobs once the centre is operational.

“Most of our 300 to 400 workers here are locals,” Tanaka says. “Having to move will probably see half of my employees gone.”

NSW Treasurer Mookhey says the jobs that data centres will bring come not from those who work in them but from those who use them.

“When Microsoft and Amazon do business here in NSW, it’s pleasing to see they are committed to providing some of their more skilled operations and locating them here,” he says.

But what other skilled jobs might be created is not clear, and effectively what the data centres will be used for. As some critics have pointed out, many AI users are making cat GIFs, which uses the equivalent amount of energy as running a microwave for an hour.

“They’re telling us this is essential… that we need to have these centres in our neighbourhood but they’re not saying what it’s for,” Flood says.

“When our drinking water, energy and land is being used for generative AI slop, that is not giving any value back.”

*Names have been changed to protect identities