No, either you misunderstood or there was misinformation in the other thread.

There are two things that Google would’ve been allowed to legally do without an environmental review:

* Log the trees for economic use, then plant new ones on the same property, definitely not do terrain alterations. Like your average forest owner. But obviously that’s not what they wanted to do, they wanted to build a data center.

* Log less than 150 hectares, do any earthmoving etc needed within that area, build a data center.

These are mutually exclusive operations.

There’s no world in which Google would’ve been allowed to log the 300 hectares and do all the other preparative work on the property that they’ve done. They were told that they need a YVA (environmental impact review) process before doing anything beyond some very light reversible preparations because the area they wanted to modify exceeded 150 ha.

Somehow, even with the ability to hire the best lawyers in the country, they either fucked up and misunderstood the relevant legislation and the quite clear communication from LVV, the govt office responsible, or they just ignored all that and reasoned that they can get away with it because they’re big and – unfortunately – there’s no sanctions specified in the law for skipping a required env review.

The other thread (these are all internal links to the same HN post):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50050097

>> Logging a few hundred hectares was not a problem. Google could have done that without additional permits, if their intention was to plant a new forest afterwards. Environmental impact assessment was only necessary, because they intended to replace the forest with something else.

>> The key question is whether Google can comply with the law after the fact. If they complete the assessment and the government finds nothing that would prevent the construction of the data centers, the project can go on. Maybe there will be some minor sanctions, as well as some delays, as they didn't do things properly the first time. And even if there is something that prevents construction, Google can still probably comply by planting a new forest.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50051670

>> Either way, you need to complete the EIA [environmental impact assessment]. It'd probably show that this was, indeed, a good location for a DC [data center]. Not doing the assessment before starting to chop down the trees is the problem here, not that the forest is particularly ecologically valuable.

>>> Finn here. Not really. You're allowed to log if you resow.

>>> So this seems to be a calculated move: When permits pass, prep is done. Worth paying minor fines for jumping the gun. Permits don't pass, just resow. That's a well informed expected value calculation.

>>> That's a bad calculation, if the risk model failed to account for a political scandal in a small country that's very proud of their tree plantations and deeply suspicious of megacaps [sic]. But even with that tail risk realizing the likely outcome is that permits pass and prep is done.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50062379

>> I found a source [0] claiming that some areas that are important for biodiversity were first spared and then cut down, but this does not mean that they were old growth and the Muhos county official Mikko Kari states "[The areas] are not legally mandated to be protected."

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The takeaway appears to be that LVV hasn't actually stated what they think the problem is, but they want to do an investigation, and that cutting down the trees poses no legal problems. At least, according to local regulators. If doing some earthwork between logging and sowing is a problem, there seems to be no mention of the fact anywhere, including in statements by the agency that wants to stop the development.