Finland investigate Google over destruction of 250k trees

ChrisArchitect

Discussion on previous developments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50194283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50048638 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49968324

ActionHank

Nothing will happen, calling it now.

akudha

What is the point? They will pay a fine and move on to their next exploit. Maybe the punishment should be to force them to spend as much money/time/effort as needed to regrow the entire forest, all 250,000 trees, and then some. Even if it takes 20-30 years - pay for reforestation, hire crews, pay for inspections/watchdogs to monitor etc

tschellenbach

It's a weird story. There must have been dozens of approvals by the government for this project.

Hamuko

The HN submission title is wrong and editorialised. Google is not being investigated for cutting trees. They're being investigated for environmental damage, including drainage and water management at the site. There's been reports of water running from the site out into the environment. The local residents have been worried over brown, muddy water streaming out from the clearance site into the surrounding nature ( https://www.hs.fi/suomi/art-2000012327899.html ).

tremon

This is what happens when you think you can skip the environmental assessment: > “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...

dosinga

I think this is a case of a misleading headline. Do the 250K trees even enter into this: > 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

mig39

Not to excuse things, but was this an industrial monoculture tree farm that they replaced with a data centre? This isn't "wild" forest, is it?

eithed

I'm confused - isn't a contractor (Tuike Finland) doing and being responsible for this work?

nazgulsenpai

Where does the linked article say anything about trees? It's about water management