In almost any setting, I find the presence of Frank Scavo intolerably toxic. I was happy to see him on Sunday afternoon at Old Forge Fire Department Headquarters.
A crowd of about 50 citizens gathered for an informational open house hosted by the Lower Lackawanna Valley Citizens Alliance, a new nonprofit mobilized by everyday Americans who live in Old Forge, Taylor, Moosic, Duryea, Ransom and Newton townships and other neighboring communities.
For the Sunday of a Labor Day weekend, it was an encouraging turnout. LLVCA vice chairwoman Michelle Wadika walked neighbors through a proposed pumped storage hydroelectric power plant project obviously intended to power AI hyperscale data centers in the near future.
The pumped storage project has been in the works for a while, but became instantly controversial in July when Times-Tribune Staff Writer Frank Wilkes Lesnefsky broke the news that a developer intended to build a data center campus across hundreds of acres on Bald Mountain in Ransom Twp. Part of the land purchased for the project — which would sprawl to less than half a mile from Austin Heights and about a mile from the Old Forge School District — would host the pumped storage power plant.
Soon after the story was published, the developer’s websites detailing the data center plans disappeared. As of Tuesday, no applications for a data center project on the property were filed.
The 1,300-acre pumped storage power plant project, however, is still in the federal pipeline. Renewable Energy Aggregators Inc. of Pittston and Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina, applied for a permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). If the permit is granted, the LLVCA fears the developer could force the project’s construction through eminent domain.
“None of us are engineers,” Wadika said of the LLVCA, beginning a presentation that nonetheless offered more detailed information and easily understood illustrations than any testimony delivered over the past year and a half by a small army of alleged experts representing data center and power plant developers.
Using the project’s “Pre-Application Document” (PAD) as a primary source, Wadika explored potential impacts no developer would dare discuss in public, including slope instability, mine subsidence, deforestation, flooding, water contamination and plummeting property values.
Her presentation was packed with gasp-inducing comparisons designed to provide crucial context.
“According to the PAD, the applicant expects that construction of the upper reservoir would require quote, ‘preliminary grading with quantities on the order of 5.5 million cubic yards of soil and rock excavated,’ end quote,” Wadika said.
“This is equivalent to the amount excavated to construct the Hoover Dam, or 1.6 Great Pyramids of Giza. If you piled all that earth onto a football field, the pile would be as tall as two Empire State Buildings stacked on top of one another.
“It would take 360,000 to 450,000 standard dump truck loads to haul it all out. If you lined up the trucks bumper to bumper, they would reach from Old Forge to Salt Lake City. Imagine the impact on our roads.”
Ruined roads are a common concern anywhere in Pennsylvania. The uncommonly dire potential impacts of mountaintop reservoirs of acid mine water laced with heavy metals pumped from the Old Forge Borehole were enough for most in the room to reject the project.
“So all that gets pumped to the top of that mountain… that will itself become a Superfund site because all those metals will precipitate out and gather at the bottom,” Scavo said.
“And if the project goes through, in 20 years or 10 or whatever the life of the project is, that will be so toxic that you won’t even be able to remove it.”
“Very good (point),” a woman seated behind me said. I had to agree, even though Frank was the one who made it. He’s nowhere near as toxic as a hyperscale data center or a power plant. That alone made his presence not just tolerable, but welcome.
For the record, I don’t hate Frank Scavo — or anyone else. Hate is like drinking poison and hoping the other guy dies. I hate what Frank did, and that he lied about it in a pathetic attempt to escape the punishment he earned through his poor choices. The president who conned Frank and his fellow domestic terrorists into an attempted coup pardoned the miserable lot of them, but I will never forgive nor forget what they did on Jan. 6, 2021.
Sunday was Sept. 6, 2026, and America is once again facing an attempted coup, this time perpetrated by narcissistic billionaire broligarchs, bottom-feeding sharks and the bootlickers who worship them like gods.
The same president who conned the Jan. 6 rioters and enough Americans to win a second term is openly, enthusiastically siding with the broligarchs and sharks. More and more former bootlickers are waking up to the fact that their “sainted” hero is a tainted heel happy to help burn down the world on his way out of it.
I don’t have to like Frank Scavo to love him as a fellow child of God and stand alongside him as an American answering the call to defend himself, his family, his neighbors and his nation from industrialized annihilation.
Frank doesn’t have to like me, either. We just have to set aside our countless differences and get along long enough to get through what we both see coming — a long, lopsided fight everyday Americans can’t afford to lose.
Information is the best weapon. A wealth of it can be found at www.llvca.org, including how citizens can comment on the pumped storage project for the official FERC record. LLVCA volunteers did the homework. All the general public has to do is pass the test armed with the answers in advance.
The main reason Wadika’s presentation at the firehouse on Sunday was so informative and effective can be chalked up to a glaring difference in goals. LLVCA volunteers seek to educate and empower. Developers’ “experts” are paid to obfuscate and undermine. One has an interest in promoting an informed and engaged public. The other banks on the willful ignorance and obedient apathy of committed bystanders.
The more the informed, engaged public learns about the data center invasion and its immediate and long-term impacts and implications, the more the rage and resolve of the resistance intensifies and spreads. According to a growing host of polls, about 75% of Americans — including two thirds of Republicans — oppose the construction of data centers in their communities.
Frank Scavo and I are living proof that these numbers are legit. If we can put aside our countless differences and find common cause against a common threat, anyone can.
That’s as frank as I can be.
CHRIS KELLY, The Times-Tribune columnist, is intolerably toxic to committed bystanders. Contact the writer: ckelly@scrantontimes.com; @cjkink on X; Chris Kelly, The Times-Tribune on Facebook; and @chriskellyink on Bluesky