Pennsylvania planners rush to ready townships for data center proposals: "We're nonstop"

Becky Bradley says she and her team at the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission don't take sides in the data center fight. Their job is to help make sure municipalities in Lehigh and Northampton counties in Pennsylvania are ready when the proposals come.

And it's been busy work.

"We're nonstop. Three nights a week, all day in the office," Bradley, the LVPC's executive director, said. "Just trying to get the word out on how to manage these in a logical way."

Data centers have sparked national controversy, but Pennsylvania has been a particular focal point.

Getting an exact number on proposals across the commonwealth isn't easy, but Gov. Josh Shapiro's office said that over the last year, the people behind at least 58 plans engaged with the state to discuss some form of permitting.

Bradley and the LVPC say they're tracking at least seven proposals in the Lehigh Valley alone.

Pennsylvania could be a target for a number of reasons, Bradley says. The state has a lot of land and a long history of energy production, something data centers need.

She also pointed to state laws that currently limit how individual municipalities can respond when a proposal comes in: the Pennsylvania Municipalities Planning Code.

"Pennsylvania has a land-use law that's applicable to all local governments that requires them to accommodate every possible land use you could think of," Bradley said. "So, because of that law, which was written in 1968 and enacted in '69, every local government has to plan for a data center whether it makes sense there or not. They have some flexibility, but they don't have the ability to say 'no' in a way that I know a number of them actually need to, because it's not necessarily practical or feasible for that use to go into that place."

Data centers themselves are not a new phenomenon. Experts say they've been around for at least 20 years. But artificial intelligence has changed the game, ramping up demand and scale, and moving them into locations they previously hadn't been.

"These buildings used to be tucked away in industrial parks," Eliezer Fich, a finance professor at Drexel University, said. "Now they're much bigger. They're being proposed near neighborhoods."

The controversy has also become a political flashpoint, reaching every level of government. Last week, President Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, "A.I. and data centers will be the greatest economic development engine in history."

Others have pushed back, though. Shapiro, in August, signed an executive order bringing new regulations on the facilities. And in Philadelphia last week, Mayor Cherelle Parker authorized a data center task force.

"We want to make sure we're fully prepared to know what the impact on Philadelphians would be," Parker said in a social media video announcing the task force.

Bradley, though, believes the Lehigh Valley is ahead of the curve in this fight. She says they went through a warehouse boom over the last few years and learned a lot from that, including that they should try to get ahead of this.

The planning commission has focused on reviewing possible impacts on utilities, water, the environment, and any surrounding communities. She also said a big issue is finding out whether a proposal is speculative, or if a project will actually happen in a certain place.

Because of that, Bradley says 57 of the Lehigh Valley's 62 municipalities have adopted at least some form of data center regulations. But even that can be hard to keep up with.

"Governments that passed laws in, like, January or February, they're already revising some of their data center regulations," Bradley said. "Because things are changing that fast."

Officials say they really need to see action at the state level. Lawmakers from both parties and both chambers have proposed forms of regulations for the projects. But so far, nothing has passed.

"Some enhanced provisions at the state level," is what South Whitehall Township manager Tom Petrucci says he'd like to see as his community deals with a feud over the massive Project Atlas proposal.

"Absolutely, the Pennsylvania Municipalities Code, in the framework of that, needs to be refined," Petrucci said.

State lawmakers are slated to return to Harrisburg on Monday. Leaders expect data centers to be a big topic during this session because this issue likely isn't going away anytime soon.

"In five years, will it be the issue of five years from now? You and I don't know that," Bradley said. "But there will be impacts based on the decisions we make today."