Finland investigate Google over destruction of 250k trees
yle.fi
yle.fi
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50194283
They'd also applied for a landscaping permit for the site, but were denied one by the municipality because they'd still not performed the environmental impact assessment.
A viscous cycle all around!
The details are much less dramatic: The company doing the work messed up on a part of the approval process that was supposed to be completed first. It’s technically possible that the environmental impact review would come back with some obscure exception that required them to revise their plans, but it’s unlikely that anything was going to stop those trees from being cut down.
The 250K trees headline appears dramatic if you don’t know that Finland is covered in trees and cutting down a lot of them is part of building anything.
The tricky part with "no permit needed" is that while you can just go and do whatever, if someone charged with enforcement suspects you're doing something that requires a permit, they can still demand you prove you don't (and stop work until you do), and if you guessed wrong and you did indeed need a permit, you're double-fucked.
That's why for many of these processes, there's also something like a certificate of no-permit needed, where you go through an abbreviated permitting process spending a lot of time and money while all of the clerks and officials stare at you like you're a moron before finally giving you a piece of paper saying you didn't need to do any of that in the first place.
And that's why a lot of people with a lot of experience and a good understanding of the law skip getting a "no permit needed" certificate.
I am assuming it's similar in other countries.
Amusing. It sounds like it's a permit to not need a permit.
If you, say, go and get a certificate of no-permit needed when you're replacing all of your kitchen cabinets, and then you decide to move the sink while you're at it, you're back to still needing a permit for the plumbing change (and even if you aren't, if your neighbor calls the inspector and says they think you might be, the inspector might say, "no, we already know about that, it's just cabinets", or they might wonder if you are and then you're back in the situation you'd be in without the certificate).
1) To double check the harvest was not going to affect things outside their property (neighbors, land slides, erosion, etc), or special govt. interests on their property (endangered species)
2) To maintain their significant tax break. The break was for owning forest land, and you needed a plan to replant successfully.
Keep in mind that these are mostly 'working forests' that are more akin to wheat fields than wild forests.
It sounds like the issue was insufficient analysis of #1, resulting in excessive water run-off to neighboring privately owned property.
That being said, it could also be #2. The same friend worked on 'conversion' permits, wherein the owner asked to turn forest land into a residential or business property, and special considerations had to be addressed.
See for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_roof
Significant soil depth can be part of the solution, which no doubt requires additional strength in the structure underneath the roof..
For a worked example:
"The 5.4-acre green roof has soil depths that vary from 18 inches to 4.5 ft. This layered planting system is a structurally engineered component of the building that functions to balance seismic shifting, collect and filter stormwater, and irrigate the gardens. Geosynthetic fill was used to build up the rolling topography of the park while adding minimal weight to the structure."
From https://www.landscapeperformance.org/case-study-briefs/sales... under the "sustainable features" tab.
• You need this permit when the land use changes (from forest to build area)
• The subcontractor might not have known that they are clear-cutting without all permits, or at least they might have plausible deniability
• The decision makers of the town of Muhos want the data center, as it bring jobs and taxable income
• The town building inspector had given a green light for Google to proceed
• Finland is, still, a high-trust society. Punishment for this kind of wrong-doing is likely lenient (some relatively small fines), the shame of having been sentenced in court is supposed to be the main deterrent in itself
• Thus, it might make financial sense for Google to cut corners and proceed faster, even if it means they end up paying some fines
• Unless the bad publicity ends up costing more than the saved project time
That's how it looks like in the photos and videos and maps, yes.
https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000012304991.html
https://www.mtvuutiset.fi/artikkeli/miljardeja-euroja-ja-tuh...
https://www.tervareitti.fi/artikkelit/googlen-datakeskus-tul...
> “We had wolves coming into the village because all the wild animals moved out of the forest,” Anni Ranta, a resident of Otanmaki, told The Guardian. “They fled.”
https://fortune.com/2026/10/26/wolves-finland-google-1300-ac...
https://www.finder.fi/IT-konsultointi+IT-palvelut/Tuike+Finl...
Notably, this is the address of Google Hamina Campus.
> Police said that, based on current information, there have been irregularities and shortcomings in drainage and water management at the data centre project's worksite
250K trees sounds like a lot, but Finland has like 20B trees, so it would take 3 hours for Finland to grow this back
That's not how math.....or trees.....work.
Finland, comparable in size to Montana, is basically one huge forest (75% tree cover) dotted with lakes, and a lot of those forests are harvested every year. Of the entire EU, this is probably the place where trees are the least rare.
250 thousand trees cut down in England would have been a very different story.
I realize it is seasonal, but the maths still works. distribute all trees in cohorts of three hours age. every three hours they move one up. every three hours there's 250k trees more over the entire range, allowing Finland to cut the mature trees to make paper.
Turns out, if the trees lost are about 2000kg, it takes about ~ 2.5 days.
a. Even if this model were reasonable, removing trees isn't ameliorated by letting them grow back in 2.5 days. As an analogy, if I steal $100 from you, it's not reasonable for me to say, "But it only takes you x hours to earn that $100 back." No, you're out that $100.
b. Tree growth (eg, carbon sequestration) is non-linear. The first year of growth of a tree is much less productive than the 50th year.
Growing stock volume: ~2.66B m^3
Annual volume increment: 103M m^3
Approximate number of trees: 20B
Implied average tree volume: ~0.1275 m^3
Volume of 250K trees: 250K x 0.1275 m^3 ~ 32K m^3
Time for remaining trees to grow that volume back: 32K m^3 / 103M m^3/year ~ 0.00031 years ~ 2.7 hoursIn this case, it's 3.3 sq-km (or 1.3 sq-miles) of forest.
The real issue seems thay they didnt implement proper water mitigation which is about 100x more damaging and potentially hazardous than cutting down trees. You can see it in the photo, they arent building that complex with much concern for the surrounding environment.
Google is already feeling pain from this.
Maybe the delay and opportunity cost caused them some pain, but whatever they invested in contracts, labor etc is probably pocket change for them