Enticed by cheap land, abundant resources, and massive tax breaks, tech companies are gobbling up land in small, rural communities like never before for their inconvenient real-world infrastructure. One humble burg in Northeastern Pennsylvania is inundated with so many data center proposals, in fact, that the facilities could soon make up a staggering 14 percent of the town’s surface area.
In the borough of Archbald, Pennsylvania, incoming developers have threatened to erect six separate data center campuses to power the tech industry’s insatiable demand for AI computing power, the Washington Post reports.
A town of only 7,000 residents, Archbald is situated directly along a major regional transmission line which offers a direct connection to the Susquehanna nuclear power plant. With relatively cheap land just a two hour drive away from both Philadelphia and New York City, the town is a veritable fly trap for data center developers.
According to WaPo, the six campus proposals encompass 51 separate warehouses, each the size of a Walmart Supercenter at 4 to 6 acres a pop. Seven campus buildings, the paper reports, measure in at over a million square feet each, roughly the equivalent to 23 acres.
The payoff is dubious. As we’ve seen repeatedly, data centers don’t typically end up employing very many people, and place major strain on municipal resources, not to mention the local energy grid.
The citizens of Archbald haven’t taken it lying down. “THE PUBLIC TRUST HAS BEEN VIOLATED,” one anti-data center petition launched on March 18 declared. “Borough governance must be conducted in the interest of the public, not shaped in private by the interests of developers seeking approvals.”
According to local news station WNEP, Archbald borough council leadership went through a dramatic purge in March, when the president, vice president, and president pro tem were ousted by the remaining council members. That decision was met with a standing ovation from Archbald residents, who blame the politicians for allowing so many data center proposals into the burrough to begin with.
“You have presided over numerous meetings, scolding residents like children when they voiced their frustrations that were of your making,” Archbald resident Geralyn Esposito told local reporters. “You have wielded that gavel like a weapon to silence and stamp out opposition.”
Archbald Mayor Shirley Barrett, for her part, told WaPo that the “debate has destroyed this community.”
“We want answers, but we have no clue what is going on because this is all happening so quickly,” she continued.
With each of the six data center campuses at various stages of the planning process, it remains to be seen how successful residents are at keeping the tech industry at bay. If unruly borough meetings and a massive social media campaign are any indication, their fight is just getting started.
More on data centers: Tech Companies Are Using Insidious Tactics to Build Data Centers on Indigenous Lands, Activists Say
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