Mumbai: Amazon Web Services (AWS) has pushed back against public anxiety surrounding its proposed Hyperscale Data Centre in Thane’s Balkum area in a bid to defuse escalating community resistance. The tech giant has released an exhaustive list of myth-busters alongside multimillion-dollar regional sustainability pledges, claiming that its project has maintained absolute regulatory transparency. However, the project is facing severe backlash from the local residents, who have asked the chief minister to conduct a review of the project.
Company Counters Concerns Over Data Centre Scale
Amazon has sought to counter localised misconceptions after being faced with mounting local pushback over the sheer scale of the digital infrastructure project coming up in a residential area. It has defended the data centre claiming its dedication to water conservation, power grid independence and strictly permitted green restoration. It refuted the allegations that the data centre will consume a high amount of water and has claimed that it will not use drinking water to cool down the high-powered servers, using only 0.01 MLD (10,000 litres per day) for drinking and other purposes.
It rejected the allegations of unauthorised tree felling and said that tree felling will be carried out under valid approvals from Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) along with compensatory plantation of more native trees on site. While multiple green activists have alleged that the data centre will pose a risk to the local environment and biodiversity, Amazon has clarified that it has collaborated with non-profit organisation Hasten Regeneration for Thane Creek cleanup and has invested $1.2 million for the cause. The project also includes the plantation of about 3.75 lakh mangroves and the preservation of flamingo habitat in the nearby sanctuary eco-sensitive zone.
AWS Claims All Approvals Obtained
AWS claimed that it has all the required government approvals and the environmental impact assessment documents have been made publicly available on the PARIVESH portal since day one. The big tech has pledged to provide STEM education for 900 school students, fund cloud computing for over 200 local youths, deliver nutrient-rich meals to over 2,000 students from underserved communities and deliver over 1,800 million liters of water annually to communities around Mumbai and Hyderabad, in partnership with water.org and ICRISAT.
However, the corporate defence has failed to pacify local resident coalitions. On Saturday, hundreds of citizens from multi-storey housing societies and adjacent villages staged a massive peaceful demonstration against the data centre outside the proposed site. The standoff has now escalated into a civic battle, with citizens firing off legal interrogatories to Thane municipal commissioner Saurabh Rao, AWS management and Maharashtra CM, alleging hazardous zoning and gross regulatory discrepancies.
Residents Raise Concerns Over Location Of Facility
Manoj Pradhan, one of the initial opponents of the project, raised concerns about it being located in the middle of a residential area. "This isn't a standard corporate office block, this is a massive, industrial-scale digital infrastructure coming up right in the middle of a densely packed residential ecosystem,” he said.
Local village representatives voiced distinct fears about the transformation of Balkum from a residential neighborhood into a high-security industrial enclave, predicting gridlocked arterial roads, increased heavy-vehicle traffic, and systemic safety hazards.
Villagers Fear Traffic And Safety Issues
Local residents’ association Satark Nagrik Foundation’s president, Dayanand Nene, amplified the neighborhood's technical anxieties. "Internationally, hyperscale facilities are notorious for a constant, low-frequency humming noise generated by massive cooling infrastructures. Add to that the installation of 193 heavy-duty diesel generator sets for backup power, the intense localised heat rejection and the cumulative impact when Phase 2 goes operational – this demands rigorous public scrutiny, not backroom approvals,” he said.
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Anuradha Rode, a resident of Lodha Luxuria, added that, "The well-being, peace, and health of thousands of local families must remain the foremost priority. This belongs in a designated technology park or industrial zone, not 40 meters from our bedroom windows. We are not anti-development; we are anti-zoning."
Following the protest, residents’ group 'Wake Up Thanekar' escalated the battle to the bureaucracy, submitting petitions to TMC commissioner Saurabh Rao and AWS management highlighting major statutory and physical contradictions in the project's paperwork. Activists have raised doubts about the data centre being a fully closed-loop air-cooled system, highlighting that while Amazon had disclosed to the state government in August 2025 about the requirement of only 125 kilo litres of water per day, the TMC has agreed to supply a whopping 12 million litres per day of recycled sewage water to the facility.
Nene has written to the CM, requesting the immediate intervention of the state cabinet to review and cancel the project's layout permissions, alleging that hyperscale data centres are low employers once built and their continuous heat rejection, massive electromagnetic footprint, and microclimate alterations create a permanent urban heat island effect. "Thane is already hyper-urbanised, choked with traffic, and battling systemic power and water deficits. We cannot compromise the air, temperature, and quietude of lakhs of citizens for a private corporation's servers," the letter read.
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