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Upper Merion Township in the Philadelphia suburbs is no stranger to development.
During the holiday shopping season, the once-rural community’s population swells to more than 350,000 as people flock to the King of Prussia Mall. Combined with about 35,000 residents and 70,000 workers, it temporarily becomes the third-largest municipality in Pennsylvania, Bill Jenaway, vice chairperson of the township board of supervisors, said.
When township officials got word last year that a developer was eying sites for data centers, they got to work amending the community’s zoning ordinance to regulate the facilities, he said.
They reached out to experts in the field and leaders in Loudoun County, Virginia, dubbed the “Data Center Capital of the World,” with nearly 200 facilities that handle a sizable share of the world’s internet traffic. They consulted their planner and listened to community members, Jenaway said.
“We thought what we had was a very solid ordinance,” he said during a discussion Tuesday among township officials from around the commonwealth. It was hosted by the Pennsylvania Association of Township Supervisors (PSATS) at the group’s annual conference in Hershey.
But only 10 days before the new regulations were to be submitted to the board for approval, the developer submitted nearly a dozen proposals to construct data centers in parts of the township that were zoned for office and industrial use.
READ: Bucks County Is the Newest Frontier in the Data Center Boom. Buyer Beware
Under the commonwealth’s land use laws, Upper Merion Board of Supervisors Chairperson Tina Garzillo said, the new ordinance, when adopted, won’t apply to those proposals.
“You want to be able to set the rules,” Garzillo said, urging township leaders to prepare for data center proposals before they arrive.
Data centers have grown hand-in-hand with the internet. Simply stated, they’re buildings that can house thousands of computers that answer requests for information, streaming videos and music and, more recently, the computing power for artificial intelligence applications.
Pennsylvania, with access to natural gas for electricity generation, electricity infrastructure and proximity to large population centers, is the location of 52 active data centers with about 70 proposals in various stages of review, according to Datacentermap.com, a resource for businesses seeking data center services.
A single data center can consume as much electricity as a small city, raising alarm among state and national leaders that the region’s electricity generating capacity and transmission grid could be overtaxed and lead to blackouts. PJM Interconnection, which manages the grid serving 67 million people in Pennsylvania, a dozen other states and Washington, D.C., has forecast its peak load will increase by nearly 17% over the next decade.
Proposals across the state have drawn pitched opposition from Pennsylvanians. Drawing on the experiences of residents in Loudoun County, Memphis, Tenn., and elsewhere, people have called on township officials to block data center development, citing noise, air pollution and the demand on water resources.
Township officials, who are required to remain impartial and judge proposed developments according to the law, often find themselves caught between angry constituents and litigious businesses.
“We know what we need, and not every ordinance for every municipality will be cookie cutter, so there’s not a template that says one size fits all.” – Upper Merion Board of Supervisors Chairperson Tina Garzillo
Covington Township Supervisor Marshall Peirce spoke about considering zoning for data centers after a proposal landed in that Lackawanna County community. He and his fellow supervisors traveled at their own expense to Loudoun County to see data centers firsthand.
Peirce estimated 500 people attended the meeting where the board approved the zoning and called it “truly awful.”
“When it was the supervisors’ turn to speak, I pretty much wasn’t allowed to speak,” he said. So we had an executive session for a couple minutes. We came back in, we voted and we passed the ordinance. So hopefully we did our homework.”
PSATS Executive Director David Sanko said the organization hosted the discussion to address the concerns and questions of elected officials who may be struggling to sort misinformation from reality.
”There’s dozens of communities that have already dealt with this and are moving through the process,” he said. “So we wanted to show that townships were already out front and dealing with some of this stuff way before Harrisburg wants to address it.”
State lawmakers this session have proposed bills to protect consumers from electric bill spikes driven by the energy-hungry projects, address data center cooling water consumption and zoning are working through the legislative process. State Rep. Robert Matzie (D-Beaver) last month hailed the passage of his House Bill 1834, which he describes as the first regulatory framework for data centers.
Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, meanwhile, has touted the economic benefits of courting a rapidly growing sector of the tech industry and has called for reform at PJM to protect consumers while making power available to large users such as data centers.
Sanko said he’s concerned there is a disconnect between local and state leaders.
“I don’t see 300 people showing up outside the legislature pounding their fists, but they do show up in a township to express concerns about the safety of their communities, and the local officials are tasked with making sure that works,” he said.
Gregory Molter is the planning director for Montour County and a supervisor in Derry Township. That’s where Talen Energy, owner of the Montour Steam Electric Station, has been paying a premium for farmland land around the 1.5 megawatt power plant, sparking concern from township residents.
Talen also owns the nuclear-fueled Susquehanna Steam Electric Station in neighboring Luzerne County, where the Houston-based company last year sold a data center development adjacent to the plant to Amazon Web Services for a reported $650 million.
READ: State House Bill Seeks to Protect Pennsylvania Communities from Data Center Impacts
“People start to worry what’s going to happen to our water, what’s going to happen to our farmland?” Molter said, noting that the county planning commission meetings went from five members of the public in attendance to more than 300 in February, when the body voted to deny a zoning change for 870 acres of farmland that Talen requested.
“When we gave our decision and made it public, they broke into song, singing, ‘This land is my land, this land is your land,’ and ‘We’re so happy that we won,’” Molter said.
“People start to worry what’s going to happen to our water, what’s going to happen to our farmland?” – Gregory Molter, Planning Director for Montour County and Supervisor in Derry Township
He noted that even with the agricultural zoning in place, the data center development could have been granted as a special exception, so the planning commission decided to develop a zoning amendment to address data centers.
Members of the county planning commission and officials from each municipality formed a committee that gathered information from municipalities and counties that already had data center amendments. The amendment was completed in less than four months and was adopted by the Montour County commissioners earlier this month.
Molter said developing a data center zoning amendment can take anywhere from months to years, but with a cost ranging from $30,000 to $150,000, professional assistance may be out of reach for smaller municipalities. He recommended those municipalities reach out to neighbors where zoning is already in place for guidance.
Garzillo, of Upper Merion, noted Montgomery County and Chester County jointly developed a guide to drafting data center regulations that’s a resource available to municipalities across the commonwealth.
“We know what we need, and not every ordinance for every municipality will be cookie cutter, so there’s not a template that says one size fits all,” she said.
Pennsylvania Capital-Star, where this article was originally published, is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Pennsylvania Capital-Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor for questions: info@penncapital-star.com.
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