7,500 Residents, 6 Planned Data Centers, 14% Of Town 2B Erased, At Least 450 Diesel Generators - Welcome To Archbald, PA

[hatrack]

“I don’t like to see anyone upset,” said Nick Farris of Provident Real Estate Advisors. He was sitting in the front of a crowd of roughly 150 inside Valley View High School’s auditorium in Archbald, a town of about 7,500, huddled between two mountain ranges in Pennsylvania’s Lackawanna Valley. Farris was there to represent the developer for Project Scott, one of many data center campuses coming to town. “However,” he said. “I think that this is the best data center site in this area of the country, by far.” The audience had been fairly quiet, bundled in thick coats against the late January cold. But as Farris spoke about data centers as a boon for communities, they began to laugh, drawing a rebuke from town officials.

“What about the children?” someone shouted from the crowd. The children were watching from the walls; long banners of Valley View Performing Arts students hanging around the auditorium like championship pennants. Project Scott and four other data facilities will sit just a few thousand feet from the middle and high schools. “Isn’t there a missile plant next door?” Farris said, getting aggravated. He was referring to Lockheed Martin’s 350,000-square-foot Missiles and Fire Control facility directly next to the high school, parts of which are highly contaminated. “That sucks too!” another attendee yelled back. This was nothing to worry about, Farris tried to convince the audience. This would bring in tax revenue, he said. It was just an office park, albeit one with roughly 450 diesel backup generators. “It’s going to be away from everyone,” Farris kept repeating, to rising jeers. He was wearing a knit turtleneck with a large American flag emblazoned across the chest. “It’s not going to bother anyone.”

The specifications say something different: Five developers are planning to build six data center campuses in Archbald, which will cover a full 14 percent of the town, evict a trailer park, and border many residential properties. One campus alone, as The Scranton Times-Tribune reporter Frank Lefneskey pointed out, is expected to use more power than the region’s largest power plant is able to produce. Despite the public outcry, it has been surprisingly difficult to learn what Archbald’s elected officials think of the massive industry moving in.

None of the town’s seven council members responded to my emails, so I stopped by the borough administration building in person a few weeks before Christmas, and was told to wait in the lobby while they held an informal closed meeting in council chambers. When the door opened, it was clear that anyone who actually had the power to make or break the data center plans had quietly filed out the back, leaving me with Archbald’s unelected borough manager, Dan Markey, who essentially runs the town, but cannot vote for or against development.

EDIT

https://grist.org/energy/the-ai-boom-has-plunged-a-small-pennsylvania-town-into-chaos/

[mwmisses4289]

1. Some questions that need to be asked or investigated:

How much are these data centers reps paying the council members?
Why do the dc reps feel the need to tear down already established areas of the town to put in their centers?
If the lockheed martin plant is anything like the schlumberger plant near where i live, much of it is underground is probably undeground and was built to withstand a nuclear disaster.

[NoMoreRepugs]

2. This is America, now controlled by the Oligarchs.