Jermyn council President Frank Kulick worries his town will feel the full effects of nearly three dozen data centers proposed in Archbald near Jermyn’s border, despite having no control over the facilities and receiving no financial benefits.
To discuss the situation with residents, Jermyn will hold a town hall on Feb. 5 at 7 p.m. at the Jermyn Community Center, 440 Jefferson Ave., Kulick said. The borough is increasingly receiving questions from residents, and to address those concerns, officials will use the town hall to share Jermyn’s position and explain what they have done to try to help the borough, he said.
“We really have no influence over Archbald, but we want to make Archbald aware that it’s affecting us,” Kulick said. “If, in fact, it goes through, we hope to be able to get some kind of financial gain from it, but to be honest, we’re hoping it doesn’t go through.”
Jermyn sent Archbald a letter in August regarding data centers but never received a response, he said.
There are currently 30 proposed data centers across four campuses within just over a mile of Jermyn’s border, and two of the campuses border the town. Archbald I LLC proposes building 18 data centers just north of Staback Park in Archbald between Eynon Jermyn Road and Business Route 6. The same developer proposes a second, smaller campus consisting of four more data centers near Gibson and Lackawanna streets in Jermyn, including an access road onto Lackawanna Street. The seven-data-center Project Gravity would also partially border Jermyn; plans for the project show two data centers in the vicinity of Gibson Street.
Plans for the Project Gravity data center campus depict data centers near the Jermyn border. (SCREENSHOT VIA PROJECT GRAVITY’s DEP WATER OBSTRUCTION AND ENCROACHMENT JOINT PERMIT)
Additionally, the nearly 620,000-square-foot Project Boson data center will be on Eynon Jermyn Road at the site of the Highway Auto Parts junkyard.
Kulick said he’s worried about the proximity to Jermyn and the potential noise, water and electricity problems associated with data centers.
“The more and more I read about it … it’s frightening,” he said. “It makes me wonder about the water issues, the power issues, how those are going to affect our residents, not to mention the property value decreases and all the things that go along with it.”
To offset those concerns, data centers often tout their economic benefits, notably large amounts of tax revenue for their host communities, along with temporary construction jobs and some high-paying permanent jobs, but Jermyn won’t receive any of that tax revenue.
Jermyn officials initially heard questions from residents who live near the proposed data centers, but those concerns have now spread throughout the community, Kulick said.
“That’s why I decided the best thing we could do is hold a town hall kind of meeting and just try to explain to them what’s going on, to the best of our knowledge, what we’re trying to do, and, quite frankly, to tell them the best thing they can do is join up with the (Stop Archbald Data Centers) group,” he said.
Archbald council President Dave Moran said in a phone interview Thursday, “We’re always open to dialogue.”
Moran didn’t recall receiving a letter from Jermyn in August, and he only learned of the town hall on Thursday.
He said he’s worried about Archbald residents, but that the borough will be a good neighbor to Jermyn.
“We can only do what we can do for Archbald,” he said. “We can’t do an agreement for anyone else.”
Asked about pursuing a host agreement tying in Jermyn, Moran pointed to Jessup’s host agreement with Invenergy’s Lackawanna Energy Center natural gas-fired power plant, which did not include Archbald.
“Jessup didn’t get us anything from the power plant,” Moran said.
Kulick invited state Rep. Kyle Mullins, D-112, Blakely; state Sen. Rosemary Brown, R-40, Middle Smithfield Twp.; and Archbald resident Justin Healey, who co-founded the Stop Archbald Data Centers group with his wife.
“That’s why I invited Justin, so he could try to recruit some members from Jermyn,” Kulick said.
Jermyn plans to hold the meeting in its council chambers, though they will have the community center’s gym available if needed, Kulick said.