South Strabane planners recommend supervisors approve data center ordinance
An ordinance regulating data centers in South Strabane Township is now in the hands of the board of supervisors.
The township planning commission voted Thursday to recommend the supervisors adopt the ordinance, with the caveat that further changes may be made based on public comments.
Township officials have been revising the document for several months. In that time, they have heard from numerous residents concerned about what the development of a data center would mean for the community.
At Thursday’s special planning commission meeting, East Washington resident Mumbi Mundia-Howe provided several suggestions to strengthen the ordinance. One aspect she pointed to was a recently added provision that calls for a developer to enter into a “community benefit agreement.”
The developer would be required to pay an unspecified amount of money to the township that would be used for police and fire protection, public safety or infrastructure.
Mundia-Howe suggested it should set a minimum amount.
“I think this is the most consequential financial decision this township makes in a generation. The current draft requires an agreement, but there is no minimum payment, and the township walks into negotiations with no floor, and a developer with experienced attorneys walks in knowing that,” Mundia-Howe said. “Once an agreement is signed, this community lives with it for decades.”
CNX Resources, however, has voiced opposition to many aspects of the ordinance, including the community benefit agreement language.
In a letter to the township dated March 19, attorney Blaine Lucas of the Pittsburgh law firm Babst Calland wrote that such an agreement runs foul of Pennsylvania’s municipal code.
“A data center will pay local taxes to the Township, Trinity Area School District, and Washington County. All taxes must be uniform, and requiring a property owner to separately pay for police, fire, and public safety is illegal,” Lucas wrote.
At Thursday’s meeting, Babst Calland attorney Robert Max Junker argued the ordinance is exclusionary and would be a “death by a thousand cuts” for any developer looking to build a data center.
“We know (South Strabane Township solicitor Dennis Makel) is smart enough to know that you can’t put in something that says data centers are not allowed anywhere, or anything like that, but the death by a thousand cuts, and the number of provisions here just make it that a data center going through a conditional use process cannot meet these requirements within the township,” Junker said.
Some of the other requirements in the current ordinance include a setback of 500 feet from the property line and 1,000 feet from any residential property line.
Lucas argued in his letter that these setbacks “eliminate most portions of CNX’s Zediker Station property from development.”
Work on the ordinance came about when real estate firm JLL began marketing a 1,400-acre tract of land owned by CNX Resources as suitable for a data center last fall.
Data centers typically consist of several large warehouses containing servers and other computing equipment. The CNX property, located off of Zediker Station Road, has been touted by JLL as being suitable for a data center that would power artificial intelligence.
The land has not been sold, and there are currently no plans for a data center to be built.
The next step for the data center ordinance will be a public hearing before the board of supervisors scheduled for 6:30 p.m. March 31 at the South Strabane Township Fire Department, 172 Oak Spring Road.