More than a month after a standing-room-only crowd of exasperated residents implored Lackawanna County commissioners to move forward with the project, commissioners are expected to award a contract Wednesday to Massachusetts-based EmPower Analytics Group for a data center health impact study.

EmPower, the firm behind a similar study of the proposed Wildcat Ridge Data Center Campus in Archbald, will attempt to quantify the potential cumulative impact of data centers, power plants and related infrastructure proposed in the county on residents’ health and the air they breathe.

Members of a broad bipartisan opposition movement fighting data centers proposed in Archbald and elsewhere see the study as a resource that could serve as evidence in future legal battles over the controversial developments they hope to keep from coming to fruition.

Lackawanna is currently home to more than a dozen proposed data center projects, with multiple proposals tied up in litigation, and several proposals to build power plants to accommodate the industry.

Commissioner Bill Gaughan, a chief elected critic of that industry locally, first called for the impact study in June and subsequently secured a $165,000 proposal from EmPower to conduct the health and air quality assessment. Anti-data center activists demanding action on the proposal packed an animated commissioners meeting in early August, but left frustrated after Commissioners Thom Welby and Chris Chermak declined to immediately award a contract for the project.

Welby and Chermak endorsed the project’s goals but opted to first solicit additional proposals, with the county receiving three as of Friday’s submission deadline, including an updated proposal from EmPower. The other submissions came from the Pennsylvania Economy League and Spheros Environmental, respectively.

The agenda for Wednesday’s meeting, scheduled for 10 a.m. at the county government center in downtown Scranton, includes a motion to award the study to EmPower for a $165,000 fixed fee. The firm’s updated proposal says it will furnish the county with a final report within 90 days of the project’s commencement.

EmPower’s proposal is slightly more expensive than those submitted by Spheros Environmental, $150,774, and the Pennsylvania Economy League, $160,000.

But EmPower’s recent work in the area served as the foundation of the grassroots Stop Archbald Data Centers movement’s case against the massive Wildcat Ridge Data Center Campus proposed on hundreds of mountainside acres above Eynon and Sturges. Highly controversial due to its size, location and utility demands, the campus would rely on nearly 600 bus-sized diesel generators to power its data centers during a potential outage.

An Empower air quality and public health assessment of that project estimated Wildcat Ridge’s backup generators would cause anywhere from $3.3 million to $124 million in annual health damages across the county, though an engineer consulting for the developer disputed the assessment’s findings.

The county-commissioned project would be similar but broader in scope, exploring the would-be impact of all data centers, power plants and related infrastructure proposed in the county collectively and, where feasible, by facility.

EmPower, which would assess source-level emissions under typical and worst-case operating scenarios, would create an inventory of proposed facilities and quantify how much pollution they would add, per its proposal. It would also explore how that pollution would be dispersed, its impact on health and what that impact might cost, with health outcomes “monetized using EPA’s economic valuation methods,” as well as who would be most affected.

A copy of EmPower’s proposal is available online at lackawannacounty.org, via the agenda for Wednesday’s meeting. Commissioners meetings are open to the public and broadcast live on ECTV’s YouTube channel.