Data centers could reshape landscape in NEPA

Yahoo

18-05-2025

Data centers are coming to Northeast Pennsylvania.
In a region once fueled by coal, a new industry aims to reshape Northeast Pennsylvania, tapping into the high-voltage power lines slicing through the valley to fuel sprawling campuses of computer-filled buildings powering artificial intelligence and cloud computing.
Because of the sudden surge in data centers, local municipalities do not adequately address them in their zoning, leaving communities scrambling to update their land-use legislation to address the rapidly growing industry.
Over the last six months, Lackawanna County — primarily in its Midvalley region — has experienced a burst of interest from developers looking to construct large data center parks, joining Luzerne County where Missouri-based NorthPoint Development plans to construct a 15-building data center campus in Hazle Twp. called 'Project Hazelnut,' and where Amazon seeks to operate a data center in Salem Twp. near a nuclear power plant.
In Lackawanna County, Archbald has become the hotbed for new data center activity, with three data center campuses proposed for the town, all along the Business Route 6 or Eynon Jermyn Road corridors. Although nothing is official, another developer looks to build a data center in Jessup, and on the southern tier of the county, Clifton Twp. officials are looking to update their zoning in light of a data center proposal.
While data centers offer significant tax revenue and high-paying jobs, they could have adverse effects if not properly legislated by municipalities.
Local officials are looking to amend their zoning to provide more oversight over data centers and potentially restrict where they can be built, though for some projects, it could be too late.
According to the Data Center Coalition, data centers are physical locations that organizations use to house their critical applications and data.
'Data centers are the foundation of the digital infrastructure on which our modern society and economy are built,' according to the industry group's website. 'Data centers aggregate our collective computing demands — everything from sharing photos with friends and family to streaming our favorite shows to supporting online learning and storing important medical and financial information — efficiently and securely in one location.'
The Data Center Coalition is a membership association for the data center industry, with members including Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft and Meta.
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Power lines span over the Scranton Carbondale Highway in Archbald Thursday, May 15, 2025. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
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Power lines span over the Scranton Carbondale Highway in Archbald Thursday, May 15, 2025. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
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Power lines run through a section of the Archbald off of the Scranton Carbondale Highway Thursday, May 15, 2025. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
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Power lines span over the Scranton Carbondale Highway in Archbald Thursday, May 15, 2025. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
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Why now?
Growth in artificial intelligence is the driving factor behind the surge in data centers, said John Augustine, president and CEO of Penn's Northeast, which is a Pittston-based collective aiming to promote new investments, jobs and business opportunities by promoting Northeast Pennsylvania.
'Cloud computing, computer programs themselves, also play a role in data centers, but really, AI is driving this fast-moving train,' he said.
Virginia was essentially the birthplace of data centers, but portions of the state put moratoriums in place on new developments because of the amounts of water and power they use, he said.
In response, Amazon looked at tapping directly into the Talen Energy nuclear power plant in Salem Twp. for a data center,, Augustine said.
Amazon's data center put Northeast Pennsylvania on the map for new developments, piquing the interest of other major data center firms like Google, Meta and Microsoft, he said.
'Amazon was the first and kind of said, 'Hey, look at this place. They have water, they have land, and most importantly, they have the power,'' Augustine said.
But, the online retail giant's project hit a roadblock when members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in November opposed Talen Energy's proposal to increase the amount of power that it would directly supply to Amazon for data centers. Last month, FERC upheld that decision.
With multiple natural gas power plants in Northeast Pennsylvania and the ability to draw natural gas from the Marcellus Shale, Augustine believes the region is well suited for data centers. If data centers use natural gas to generate power onsite, they will pay markedly less per kilowatt of power, he said.
'We have the second largest natural gas reserve in the world,' he said. 'Now it's time to put it to work for what is literally generational, life-changing opportunities.'
In Archbald, borough Manager Dan Markey said borough officials have asked people why their town has so much interest, and the answer is always the same.
'We have the trifecta,' he said. 'We have the power, we have the fiber (internet), and we have the land.'
Archbald now has three proposed data centers.
Wildcat Ridge AI Data Center Campus: A 17.2-million-square-foot proposed data center campus spanning nearly 400 mountainside acres along Business Route 6 and Wildcat Road, or Route 247. A firm first approached Archbald during a January council work session touting an estimated $2.1 billion investment. The data center campus would consist of 14 three-story-tall data center buildings, each with a 126,500-square-foot footprint, according to conceptual plans for the project. For that to move forward, Archbald will have to either rezone hundreds of acres of resource conservation and medium/high density residential land, or grant a special data center overlay.
Project Gravity: A data center campus that would be built on just over 186 acres between Business Route 6 and the Eynon Jermyn Road, with entrances on both roads. Proposed by New York City-based Western Hospitality Partners, operating as Archbald 25 Developer LLC, Project Gravity would have at least six two-story data center buildings, each with a 135,000-square-foot footprint. The same developer has proposed data centers in Indiana and Illinois.
Archbald Data & Energy Center: A project to remove the Highway Auto Parts auto salvage yard on the Eynon Jermyn Road and build three data centers, each under 70 feet tall with a roughly 150,000-square-foot footprint, along with ancillary buildings and structures.
Another developer is looking at building data centers in the Jessup area near the Lackawanna Energy Center natural gas-fired power plant, Augustine said.
Augustine believes power will be the limiting factor for the Midvalley projects.
'Will we necessarily see all four of these proposed (data centers) happen?' he said. 'There's not enough power in Pennsylvania, there's not enough power on the PJM grid to be able to handle all of the data centers that are looking currently in the region.'
The PJM is a regional transmission organization that coordinates the movement of wholesale electricity throughout the eastern United States.
However, Augustine noted plans to add more than nine gigawatts of power to Pennsylvania, with seven gigawatts dedicated to the northeast.
Impact of data centers
Augustine pointed to job creation and 'game changing' amounts of tax revenue that could be generated by data centers.
Data center campuses will take up to five to seven years to completely build, creating potentially thousands of construction jobs with good wages and union labor, Augustine said. Then, once the data centers are complete, each building will employ around 12 to 15 people to operate them, with jobs paying $80,000 to $100,000-plus, he said.
'The dollars that we're talking about in terms of going back to the school districts and the municipalities is just absurd,' he said.
Unlike warehousing and distribution centers — another thriving industry in Northeast Pennsylvania — data centers do not have constant truck traffic, aside from the initial construction traffic, Augustine said.
'If some of these companies go through with what they're looking at in Northeastern Pa. and across the state, it will be the largest expenditures ever spent in Pennsylvania history,' he said.
For Archbald, the borough reached out to other areas of Pennsylvania and across the country looking for more information on data centers, Markey said. Borough council's top priority is to ensure its residents are safe and healthy, he said.
The borough was warned of the possibility of hearing a low hum from the data centers if they're near residential neighborhoods with air cooled systems rather than liquid cooling, he said. Borough officials also learned of the economic benefits, not just from tax revenue but job creation, he said.
'All of a sudden, restaurants become busier, and gas stations and grocery stores become busier,' he said. 'Residential housing is no longer vacant.'
Archbald Neighborhood Association co-founder Kayleigh Cornell has taken an active role in informing the community about data centers proposed in her town, attending meetings and using her organization's Facebook page to share news and updates. Residents have reached out to the association, and she has family living near the proposed Project Gravity, she said.
'With the data centers, we're not for or against them,' she said. 'We just want the residents to benefit as much as possible from them.'
Noise is the largest impact for residents, Cornell said, advocating that data centers use closed-loop water cooling systems for the least noise, as well as using enclosed diesel generators for backup power.
Light pollution is another impact, which could be resolved with downward-facing lights, she said.
'Hopefully we could get them to be better neighbors and implement some of the strategies that other municipalities have used,' Cornell said.
For guidance, Cornell spoke with the Community & Environmental Defense Services organization.
For four decades, CEDS has worked with communities across the country as they navigated proposals from warehouses, transfer stations, landfills, highways and other uses, founder and President Richard Klein said in a phone interview Thursday. Over the last six months, he has been working with communities on data centers.
Data centers are attractive because of their tax benefits, and Klein encourages towns to look at ways data centers can be managed to get the tax benefits without causing noise pollution, air pollution, high electricity cost impacts and potential impacts to ground and surface water. They are more benign than warehouses, he said. Older, air-cooled data centers with large fans put out a 'horrendous noise,' but better water-cooled systems and diesel generators stored indoors prevent those adverse effects for residents, Klein said.
'We want you to adopt regulations first to attract the good data centers, the ones that are good neighbors with lots of tax benefits, and discourage those that would cause the excessive impacts that some data centers have caused,' Klein said. 'That strategy is far more successful than trying to kill a data center, which is a conventional approach.'
Klein suggests that towns require a noise impact study, a water resources impact study and an air quality study. Data centers should give local governments the funds to hire independent experts for the studies, he said.
Legislating data centers
Municipalities in Pennsylvania have to allow for every type of land use somewhere within their borders, creating zoning ordinances and maps designating land uses for everything from data centers to strip clubs and landfills. While the process to create a new zoning ordinance is often comprehensive, involving public meetings with guidance from zoning experts, new land uses from burgeoning industries like data centers may not appear in zoning ordinances, even if they're recent.
As data center developers look to build along the high-tension power lines throughout the region, Mary Liz Donato, the planning department manager for the Lackawanna County Regional Planning Commission, said there is not an ordinance in Lackawanna County that addresses data centers. Newer legislation, like in Archbald and Jessup, mentions them, but they lack criteria, she said.
Lackawanna County is now doing research through the American Planning Association and other organizations to get model ordinances and get more insight into data centers, Donato said. She also expects to get legal advice.
'If you're a municipality and you've got those high-tension power lines running through your community, I would be looking into doing an amendment sooner rather than later at this point, because that seems to be where they're going,' she said.
Archbald adopted its zoning ordinance in March 2023 as part of a year-and-a-half-long process, but its only language on data centers is: 'Data Center, which may include an Internet Server Building.' Although he was not with the borough when it was adopted, Markey said he was told the borough saw data centers as smaller external buildings — not the large campuses now proposed in town.
'Nothing was taken lightly,' Markey said. 'Personally, I don't know if this was ever forecasted by anyone in Northeast Pennsylvania … two years ago.'
The zoning challenge for Archbald stems from how it designates data centers as principally permitted uses, including in general commercial districts, giving developers a more direct path toward approval. The borough is now trying to remedy that by reclassifying data centers as conditional uses, which would require developers to attend a public hearing where they could be questioned by borough officials and residents. If council approves the project, the borough could attach conditions to the approval.
Archbald has not yet set a hearing date to consider the zoning amendment, Markey said. The borough and Lackawanna County planning commissions both have to review and comment on it, then the town has to advertise a hearing date for the zoning amendment, he said.
Until the law is changed, Archbald has to follow the legislation as it is written, Markey said. That means considering any data center applications as principally permitted uses until council makes them conditional uses. As a principally permitted use, data centers still have to abide by Archbald's ordinances, including reviews by the borough and county planning commissions, zoning officer, fire chief and solicitor, Markey said.
'We are doing our very best to follow the laws that we have in place right now,' he said.
To navigate the zoning process for data centers, Archbald hired engineering consulting firm Pennoni.
The Archbald Neighborhood Association advocates for the borough to go through the process as thoroughly as possible, Cornell said.
Seeing what's happening in communities like Archbald, and with rumblings of a data center near the Lackawanna Energy Center, Jessup Council Vice President Jerry Crinella said his town wants to be proactive. Jessup adopted its zoning ordinance in November 2020; Archbald later hired the same firm to create its zoning ordinance. As a result, the two towns have very similar zoning in place for data centers.
'I would love to see a data center in Jessup, but I would love to see it in the area that's designated for it and is appropriate for it,' Crinella said.
Jessup is looking to better define data centers in its zoning, define where they can and cannot be located, and where possible, make them conditional uses, he said. He expects the borough to bring in an expert to navigate the process.
'You probably make the largest investment of your lifetime when you decide to choose your residence and site your family and build a home or buy a home,' Crinella said. 'Changing zoning should always be done with the utmost care, because you want to make sure that you are not negatively affecting all of the people and current businesses that have already invested in your town.'
With his district seeing the most data center interest in Lackawanna County, state Rep. Kyle Mullins, D-112, Blakely, encouraged developers to come in prepared to work with their host communities.
'The health and safety of residents is paramount, and any project proposal — it must demonstrate and be held to that standard of health and safety of residents, and the environment and quality of life in the area,' Mullins said. 'I would strongly encourage prospective developers to work with community members to provide assurances and proof that those standards can be met, and that they will be not only good employers, but good neighbors.'