NORTH COVENTRY — With a 3-2 vote Feb. 23, township supervisors rejected the idea of building a 120,000 square-foot, three-story “boutique” data center on nearly 18 acres off Route 724 before the proposal had even been formally submitted.
It is the latest volley in a statewide rush to build data centers. Locally, they have been proposed also in Limerick, East Coventry, East Vincent, East Whiteland, Conshohocken and several in the Lehigh Valley and in Northeast Pennsylvania.
The meeting last week was moved to the Norco Firehouse to accommodate the crowd of 100 or more residents who attended, mostly in opposition to the idea.
Supervisors Rick Scheler, Chad Dudonis, and Carrie Hipple voted to reject the proposal, with Bill Soumis and Adrienne Houck voting against that motion, according to Township Manager Erica Batdorf. There was applause after the vote.
Smaller than Other Proposals
A data center is a secure facility that houses computer servers used to store and process digital information supporting websites, cloud storage, financial systems, and other online services, according to a post on the matter on the township web site.
In January, the supervisors first made public that the township had received “an inquiry” from Envision Land Use regarding a “boutique” data center on 18 acres at 299 W. Schuylkill Road, across from the Wawa on Route 724 and along the northbound side of Route 100.
The property is located in the township’s TC-1 Town Center Residential Zoning District and the Highway Interchange Overlay District.
The facility was designed to be “air cooled,” meaning it would not draw down area water supplies as other, larger data centers are feared to do, and would have had about 12 full-time employees, according to the township post.
The building was planned to be about 151 feet from Route 100 and 280 feet from the nearest home. If built, it would have generated approximately $19,200 in annual tax revenues for the township; another $14,500 in annual taxes for Chester County and more than $104,000 for the Owen J. Roberts School District, according to a presentation put together by Envision Land Use.
However, all of those facts are essentially moot now.
A spokesperson for Envision Land Use told The Philadelphia Inquirer last week that the proposal will not proceed any further in North Coventry as a result of the public opposition.
Local data center ordinance debate
However, discussion on the “Prevent North Coventry Data Center Facebook page indicates many residents do not feel the matter has been put to rest by this vote. Some are advocating for the township to craft an adopt a local ordinance specific to regulating data centers in order to enshrine certain protections should a facility be proposed at a different location.
Limerick Township has such an ordinance and it was under its guidelines that a 1.4-million-square-foot data center proposal for 192 acres across from the Philadelphia Outlets was submitted in January.
In East Vincent, a scramble to adopt a data center ordinance was abandoned in December after objections were raised by residents who claimed it was not protective enough. In late February, the plan to build a 1.3 million-square-foot data center on 125 acres on the former Pennhurst hospital and school site was rejected by the township planning commission as being technically deficient. The developers, Penn Hurst LLC did not make a presentation at the meeting and indicated there would be changes to the plan.
Those changes would be made evident at a Conditional Use Hearing before the board of supervisors scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Monday, March 16 at East Vincent Elementary School.
And in East Coventry Township, a request from Constellation Energy, which operates the Limerick nuclear generating station, to amend township zoning to allow for the construction of a data center on 80 acres off Route 724 was rejected unanimously by the township planning commission.
Constellation purchased 80 acres on five adjacent parcels using shell companies in the commercial and limited industrial zoning districts.
Harrisburg Gets Involved
Activists are now worried about a bill in Harrisburg, HB2151, which supporters say will instruct the Department of Community and Economic Development, which has been a key player in attracting data center projects to Pennsylvania, to create an optional statewide model ordinance which townships without data center ordinances can use, or not, to adopt local rules.
Activists worry that the model ordinance could be used as a legal basis for developers to challenge local data center zoning as too restrictive.
The bill was voted out of the House Energy Committee Monday morning on a 14 to 12 vote along party lines, with all Republicans voted against and all Democrats voting in the affirmative.
Locally, state legislators Paul Friel, D-26th Dist. out of North Coventry, and Chris Pielli, D-156th Dist. out of West Chester, are members of the energy committee and both voted in favor of advancing the bill..
Among the bill’s sponsors are state Reps. Steve Malagari, D-53rd Dist. out of Lansdale, and Joe Webster, D-1250th Dist. out of Collegeville. The next step is for the bill to go to the full House for a floor vote. If approved, it would go to the Senate for consideration there.
In a statement provided Monday to MediaNews Group, Friel wrote “data center proposals have been popping up at an increasingly rapid rate around the state, and the local municipalities that oversee approving or denying the projects are too often caught unprepared, with no local zoning ordinance or technical assistance to provide protection. HB 2151 as amended provides for the development of a model ordinance that takes into account a variety of concerns, including water and energy use, noise and vibration, height and size limits, setbacks, aesthetics, parking, and emergency response. HB 2151 also ensures that technical guidance in this process is available to local governments. In addition, this legislation requires that environmental and community stakeholders have a voice in the development of this model, which will be headed up by the Governor’s Center for Local Government Services in the Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED).”
Friel, who posted a video discussing data center issues on his Facebook page, continued, “adoption of the model ordinance would be fully voluntary — municipalities could use all, or some, or none of the model, depending on what their local needs are. I believe that HB 2151 will ultimately provide valuable tools that will assist local communities in protecting themselves against irresponsible data center proposals while defraying the cost and manpower required to develop an ordinance from scratch.”
His statement concluded “our office received much advocacy about this bill, some from community members who favored this legislation and some from community members who shared earnest concern and opposition. Feedback from Chester County residents helped to refine this bill, ensuring that we were clear about the voluntary nature of the ordinance, clarifying that stakeholders would be able to give critical input, and requiring that water usage issues would be thoroughly addressed. I understand that local concerns about data centers remain front and center and I will continue to call for local and state decisions that protect against ill advised data center developments.”
Opponents Unconvinced
A statement opposing the bill was signed by a coalition of 23 organizations fighting data centers and the signers included several local activists including: Joanna Tenney, Administrator of Prevent East Vincent Data Center Development; Paula Terrell, Representative of Prevent North Coventry Data Center; Ginny Marcille-Kerslake, Senior Organizer for Food & Water Watch Pennsylvania; Maya K. van Rossum, Founder of Green Amendments For The Generations and the Delaware Riverkeeper and Maryann L. Smith, Representative of Hobbie Crafters Co-chairs and Indivisible Montgomery County PA and Friends.
The statement reads, in part, “the case has never been made to our satisfaction that legislation is needed in order for the Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED) to draft a model ordinance and share it as it chooses. The current language states more clearly that municipalities can opt out of using the specific language of the model ordinance, but that further begs the question of the need for a law in the first place. In fact, we are concerned that a statute will have the opposite effect — that municipalities will feel the need to use the ordinance as written and that the industry could cite it in legal challenges to more strongly worded ordinances.”
The statement also notes “our concerns are heightened because of the role the DCED has played behind closed doors in negotiating data center deals. We question in whose interest DCED would be acting when drafting the ordinance. The inclusion of a public participation process does nothing to allay our concerns. As we have experienced countless times, by the time the public is provided an opportunity to comment, the project or action under consideration is a fait accompli. HB 2151 provides for a public comment period upon its publication and for each annual update. Municipalities may have their own process for receiving public input. The result could be a cumbersome, likely fruitless, process for the public who, if asked for their opinion right now, would tell you they do not want data centers at all.”
Data Center Moratorium?
At the same time, State Sen. Katie Muth, D-44th Dist., has proposed a three-year moratorium on new data centers. She has actively spoken against the proposals in East Vincent, where she lives, and in East Coventry, as well as opposing a land swap in Linfield between a developer and the Pennsylvania Game Commission which some worry could be a precursor to another data center proposal in Limerick Township.
“In the near future, I will introduce legislation to protect local communities from corporate exploitation by establishing a statewide three-year moratorium on hyperscale data center development. The moratorium would also include data center infrastructure such as new power generating facilities and utility transmission infrastructure required to power hyperscale data centers,” she wrote in a memo released on Feb. 12. “Similar legislation has already been introduced by state elected officials representing both parties in Georgia, Maryland, Vermont, Virginia, Oklahoma and New York, and at least 19 different communities in Michigan have passed or proposed moratoriums on data center development.”
Muth wrote that “Pennsylvania municipalities are being infiltrated by multi-billion dollar corporations looking to build massive, energy intensive hyperscale data center campuses for artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced cloud computing needed to run and train generative AI models. Industry supporters, including state and federal officials on both sides of the aisle, describe hyperscale data center campuses as low-impact, warehouse-like developments that will bring in endless pots of gold to local communities and school districts. In reality, these massive industrial complexes operate around the clock producing constant noise, degrading air quality, draining our electricity supply, and depleting our local drinking water resources. A single site can use as much electricity as a small city and millions of gallons of water each day,” wrote Muth.
“A single hyperscale data center campus can also require dozens of large industrial diesel generators, each comparable in size to a tractor trailer, to maintain continuous operations. Consider that one Amazon permit in Virginia describes a single data center using up to ten million gallons of diesel fuel annually for 173 generators. And across Virginia, there are over 9,000 diesel generators, including over 4,700 in just Loudon County — enough to power millions of homes,” she wrote.
“Also troubling, utility and power generation companies and even some utility regulators are proposing new gas fired power plants, large substations and new high voltage transmission lines in communities that were never meant to host this kind of industrial activity to support the for-profit goals of these big tech corporations, instead of ensuring public health and safety are not compromised,” wrote Muth.
“Data center proliferation is another boom-and-bust corporate strategy to exploit communities for profit, including passing off the costs for data center transmission infrastructure buildout onto consumers. In 2024 alone, Pennsylvania ratepayers paid $492 million in their monthly electric bills for data center transmission infrastructure, and faced increased monthly rates in 2025 and early 2026,” she wrote.
“By enacting a three-year moratorium, this legislation would require Pennsylvania decision makers to take time to do meaningful research and planning that should have been done before this data center development rush began. It is a pause to require state agencies to conduct real impact studies and put clear rules in place that are based on health and safety standards, not industry standards. The moratorium would also ensure that local governments and emergency response officials have the necessary time to fully assess the impacts of data center development and to enact protections to ensure the residents all across this state are protected from corporate exploitation and industrial health harm,” Muth wrote.
But her efforts are at cross purposes with the governor’s office.
Shapiro Backs Data Centers
Gov, Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, has actively courted data centers for Pennsylvania and put it into the context of the debate over artificial intelligence, or AI, when he addressed the full legislature last month.
“The United States is locked in a battle for AI supremacy against China.” Shapiro said during his budget address last month. “I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather the future be controlled by the United States of America, and not communist China.”
“Pennsylvania is well-positioned to play a leading role in that effort. We are the second largest energy producer in the country,” Shapiro said, adding “under my administration, we are delivering the speed and certainty in our permitting process these massive projects require.”
“It’s no wonder why, last summer, Amazon chose to invest $20 billion in our Commonwealth — the largest investment in our history. At the same time, we need to be selective about the projects that get built here. I know Pennsylvanians have real concerns about these data centers and the impact they could have on our communities, our utility bills, and our environment. And so do I,” Shapiro said.
He announced the formation of the Governor’s Responsible Infrastructure Development standards — GRID — “to hold data center developers accountable to strict standards if they want our full support. First, developers must commit to bringing their own power generation — or paying entirely for the new generation they’ll need and not saddling homeowners and businesses with added costs because of their development,” “Shapiro said.
“Second, developers must commit to strict transparency standards and direct community engagement. Too many of these projects have been shrouded in secrecy, with local communities left in the dark about who is coming in and what they’re building. That needs to change.,” he said during the address.
“Third, these projects need to hire and train local workers. They need to enter into community benefit agreements that fund important local priorities and support the towns that host them. And fourth, they must commit to the highest standards of environmental protection, especially water conservation. If companies adhere to these principles, they will unlock benefits from the Commonwealth, including speed and certainty in permitting and available tax credits,” Shapiro said.
“We can play a leading role in winning the battle for AI supremacy — but we have to do it in a way that puts the good people of Pennsylvania first,” he said.
