My name is Alison, and I’m a member of PASU’s Comms Team! If you’ve been following our newsletters, you’re probably familiar with the threat data centers pose to our communities in Pennsylvania. If you haven’t heard about them yet, you can check out this article to learn more about what data centers are.
Recently, data centers have become a direct threat to my community. A data center isn’t just a warehouse with some computers in it; it’s a massive campus of buildings taking up hundreds of acres of our land, draining our water supply, and driving up our electricity prices. It’s leaving my community feeling helpless, like there’s nothing we can do to stop billionaires from upending our lives. Even after reading many articles like this myself, I always felt like something was missing—an action plan. So, rather than give you more facts about data centers in the abstract, let’s get into what’s actually happening right now in our communities and what we can do about it.
I recently attended a planning commission hearing in Greene County, PA, where they were discussing a land development permit for a plot of land in the town of Alicia. The developers planned to build a power plant in hopes of attracting a data center (though they didn’t have a buyer). The turnout at the meeting blew me away! I expected maybe a dozen people, but the room filled up completely. Seeing all of those people taking a stand was incredibly empowering. For the first time, I felt like we had a fighting chance. For hours, community members expressed their concerns about noise, water usage, pollution, and false promises of economic development. Neighbors were angry and fearful about utility bills becoming unaffordable, roads becoming more dangerous, property values plummeting, and dozens of other threats to their well-being.
Despite our concerns, the board voted to approve the permit.
This wasn’t a meeting to approve a data center, or even the power plant. The permit they had applied for was to clean up and prepare the land for development; to do further development, they will need additional permits. The council’s options were to approve the permit or, if they found that the proposal didn’t align with their requirements, to table the discussion until they did. Since they met all the requirements, the county subdivision land development ordinance required them to approve the permit or face a potential lawsuit.
So, if they’re required to approve these permits, how on earth are we supposed to fight this? Since hyperscale data centers are a relatively new phenomenon, most areas lack zoning laws that would limit them in any way. Data centers are trying to push their permits through before these loopholes can be closed. If we simply wait until the permit hearings, I fear most of the time the outcome will be similar to what I saw. Unfortunately, PA law, as it stands, favors data centers, and several municipalities have threatened to sue other municipalities, but that doesn’t mean we can’t keep our communities safe. We can dissuade developers from building data centers in our communities by making it difficult to obtain permits and, if they still get approved, by limiting the harm they cause through zoning ordinances.
We need to adapt our zoning ordinances accordingly. This happens for the most part at the municipal level, so your township, borough, or city. The first thing to do is reach out to your municipality to see whether they have a data center ordinance or are working on one. You can use this form to send an email to your municipality. This includes this template ordinance, drafted by Brigitte Meyer, staff attorney at PennFuture, to use as a starting point. When they consider these ordinances, these are the hearings you need to be showing up to. You should do this even if you haven’t heard anything about a data center near you. In fact, you should do this especially if you haven’t heard anything; the only way to fight this is to get ahead of it.
Of course, in many places, it’s too late to get ahead of the data centers; projects are being announced across the state before their municipalities have a chance to update their zoning. If you’re not sure if there are already plans for a data center near you, you can check out this proposed data center tracker. What do you do if the wheels are already turning? One topic that kept coming up at the Greene County meeting was the economic benefits residents would receive. The residents were incredibly skeptical, and rightfully so. To ensure that the community sees these benefits, we need to codify these promises. The way to do this is through a community benefits agreement. This is essentially a private contract between the community and the developer where the community agrees not to oppose a project if certain benefits are provided. You can see this example from Lancaster, which stipulates a number of conditions that the developer must adhere to.
To fight this, it’s imperative that we be proactive and persistent. Big tech and elected officials have been touting data center growth as the next big thing for Pennsylvania. But we know these data centers will wreak havoc on working class families through rising electricity costs, poisoning our water, constant noise pollution, increased mass surveillance, and so much more damage. Come meet other folks from your area who are concerned about data centers and learn what’s possible when we come together as a community to stand up to big tech. Join us on March 26 from 6 – 7:30PM on zoom!
In solidarity,
Alison