I’ve spent so much time in the Valley View High School auditorium over the past six months, it’s beginning to feel like my alma mater.
While other venues have hosted marathon hearings and municipal meetings addressing the most pressing threat to our way of life in decades, most of the local drama inspired by the AI data center invasion has played out on the Valley View auditorium stage with Archbald as the shanghaied star.
None of the roughly 7,000 residents of the 17-square-mile borough auditioned for a leading role in this national tragedy, but many have risen in resistance against the bad actors who plot to profit from paving over their lives and livelihoods. With a staggering 51 data centers poised to erase the borough as its residents treasure it, Archbald has been nationally recognized as “ground zero” of the data center invasion in Pennsylvania.
Over the next two weeks, residents, homeowners, taxpayers and elected officials who want to keep their cushy jobs will finally have opportunities to seize the spotlight at three hearings that could decide the future of the 150-year-old borough and forecast the fates of other communities under attack.
On Monday at 5 p.m., Archbald Borough Council will hold its fifth hearing on the wildly unpopular, obscenely invasive Wildcat Ridge Data Center “Campus.” Developers plan to defile almost 575 mountainside acres above Business Route 6 with 14 data centers each the size of a Walmart Supercenter.
Oh, and somewhere down the line, they might throw in a Trader Joe’s.
Residents sat through grinding hours of “expert” testimony of dubious value and credibility with no forum for rebuttal. On Monday, they have a chance to stand up and speak out against the hostile corporate takeover of their hometown and the Midvalley around it.
On Thursday at 5 p.m., council will hold its third hearing on Project Green Mountain’s plans to build seven data centers on 271 acres east of the Casey Highway. Of the six data center projects proposed in Archbald, Green Mountain is the least objectionable site-wise, which is like saying it’s the best blight in the bucket.
On Monday, June 22 at 5 p.m., council will hold its third hearing on Essential Energy LLC’s proposal to build a 400-megawatt natural gas power plant on Eynon Jermyn Road next to Staback Park. After a recent visit to the community jewel, Gov. Josh Shapiro (who wants data centers and to be President of the United States) waxed poetic about the preservation of public parks.
“I was standing in left field by that baseball field there … just thinking about what my life has been like as a dad over many, many years, standing on the sidelines of my kids’ baseball games and imagining what it would be like if our kids were trying to play their baseball game in the shadow of a massive data center complex that, quite literally, was just in left field as proposed here,” the governor said.
“It is clear to me that there are real concerns in the communities all across Pennsylvania, especially here in Archbald, and I want you to know that I have real concerns as well.”
If Staback Park ends up a casualty of the data center invasion, Shapiro will wish he idled his abbreviated motorcade anywhere else.
All three hearings will play out on the stage of the Valley View High School auditorium. Over the past six months, the audience for these tedious procedurals has grown exponentially. I predict large crowds ready to release six months of “real concerns” and pent-up frustration.
The data center drama isn’t a theatrical production, and Archbald is no prototypical damsel in distress. She played softball, field hockey and soccer in high school and now balances a demanding career with a family, a mortgage and a cat with asthma.
Archbald is not waiting helplessly for rescue. She’s been swimming against the tide for 150 years and isn’t afraid to make waves when corporate sharks circle around her and her neighbors.
Archbald didn’t ask to be cast as a diva under duress, but give her a microphone and pack her alma mater’s auditorium and she’ll bring the house down.
CHRIS KELLY, The Times-Tribune columnist, will see you there. Contact the writer: ckelly@scrantontimes.com; @cjkink on X; Chris Kelly, The Times-Tribune on Facebook; and @chriskellyink on Bluesky.