SCRANTON — Capping months of sometimes contentious discussion over how to best approach the project, Lackawanna County commissioners awarded a contract Wednesday for a data center health impact study and could have the final report in hand by Christmas.
The pending assessment by Massachusetts-based EmPower Analytics Group will attempt to quantify the potential cumulative impacts of controversial data centers, power plants and related infrastructure proposed in the county on air quality and public health. The firm is behind a similar but more limited scope study of the proposed Wildcat Ridge Data Center Campus in Archbald.
The study in Lackawanna County, a hotbed for the data center industry, may be the first of its kind in Pennsylvania and possibly the nation, Commissioner Bill Gaughan said Wednesday.
Lackawanna County Commissioner Thom Welby speaks during the commissioners’ meeting at the county government center in Scranton Wednesday, September 16, 2026. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
Gaughan, an outspoken data center critic who raised the prospect of such a project in June, effusively thanked fellow Commissioners Thom Welby and Chris Chermak for supporting the initiative. Despite sparring last month over Welby’s and Chermak’s decision to solicit additional proposals for the study — Gaughan wanted to move forward with EmPower immediately — all three commissioners support the project’s goals.
It should provide an empirical, scientifically backed understanding of how emissions from and related to data center development might impact the area and the health of its people. Commissioners and members of a large and growing local data center opposition movement also see the study as potentially invaluable evidence in future legal battles over data center proposals galvanizing opponents from across the political spectrum.
Lackawanna County 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. Those controversial proposals complement others in neighboring Luzerne County and elsewhere in the broader region.
EmPower’s study will attempt to gauge the air quality and public health impact of all data centers, power plants and ancillary infrastructure proposed in Lackawanna County collectively and, where feasible, by facility. Assessing source-level emissions under typical and worst-case operating scenarios, the firm will create an inventory of proposed facilities, quantify how much pollution they would add, explore how that pollution would be dispersed and calculate its impact on health, with the cost of health outcomes “monetized using EPA’s economic valuation methods,” per its proposal.
Lackawanna County Commissioner Bill Gaughan holds up a map that shows thousands of acres where a PPL Corp. joint venture entered into memorandums of sale to acquire property from Dominick DeNaples to explore developing power plants that could fuel data centers. He showed the map during a commissioners meeting at the county government center in Scranton Wednesday, September 16, 2026. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
Lackawanna County Commissioners Bill Gaughan, Thom Welby and Chris Chermak are seated during the commissioners’ meeting at the county government center in Scranton Wednesday, September 16, 2026. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
Lackawanna County Commissioner Bill Gaughan speaks during the commissioners’ meeting at the county government center in Scranton Wednesday, September 16, 2026. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
Lackawanna County Commissioner Bill Gaughan holds up a map that shows thousands of acres where a PPL Corp. joint venture entered into memorandums of sale to acquire property from Dominick DeNaples to explore developing power plants that could fuel data centers. He showed the map during a commissioners meeting at the county government center in Scranton Wednesday, September 16, 2026. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
Lackawanna County Commissioner Bill Gaughan holds up a map Wednesday that shows thousands of acres where a PPL Corp. joint venture entered into memorandums of sale to acquire property from Dominick DeNaples to explore developing power plants that could fuel data centers. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
Lackawanna County Commissioner Thom Welby speaks during the commissioners’ meeting at the county government center in Scranton Wednesday, September 16, 2026. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
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Lackawanna County Commissioner Bill Gaughan holds up a map that shows thousands of acres where a PPL Corp. joint venture entered into memorandums of sale to acquire property from Dominick DeNaples to explore developing power plants that could fuel data centers. He showed the map during a commissioners meeting at the county government center in Scranton Wednesday, September 16, 2026. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
“I believe what is happening across parts of this county represents one of the most aggressive attempts at exploitation we have seen in generations,” Gaughan said. “There are enormously powerful financial interests involved here. There are developers and corporations with armies of lawyers, consultants and lobbyists who can afford to sit in hearing rooms for months and try to essentially drag this thing out and make people wait and wait and wait.”
“The average resident obviously cannot compete with that, but government can and should,” he continued. “Government can give ordinary people something that money and public relations campaigns cannot manufacture: independent facts, science, evidence and the truth.”
During his remarks, Gaughan pointed to an American Lung Association report released in April that identified data centers as an increasing source of air pollution in the United States and warned that “communities located near large data center clusters often experience higher localized pollution burdens than regional averages.” He also referenced the EPA’s Monday announcement that it finalized the repeal of Biden-era regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions by fossil fuel-fired power plants.
Data center opponents anxious about the impact proposed data center and power plant developments could have on their health and that of their children packed a commissioners meeting early last month and implored commissioners to move forward with the health study. Several data center opponents thanked commissioners Wednesday for taking action.
Welby emphasized that commissioners share the public’s concern about the potential health effects of data centers and power-generation facilities, noting his own “very strong feelings” about dubious safety claims that can later prove to be false. He used the example of Agent Orange exposure during the Vietnam War and mentioned the recent death of his nephew, Paul Welby, a Pennsylvania Army National Guard master sergeant who was exposed to toxic smoke from burn pits in Kuwait and passed away last month after a battle with esophageal cancer.
Predicting frightening findings from the data center health impact study, Welby said it will nonetheless provide “information that’s fair and honest and true.”
Chermak said he’s “hopeful that this (study) is going to be helpful in setting up guardrails for this industry in Lackawanna County.”
The county will pay EmPower a flat fee of $165,000 for the study. The firm’s proposal said it will provide a final report within 90 days of the project’s commencement.
Gaughan credited members of the local data center opposition movement for the county’s action on the impact study.
“Government did not lead you here; in many ways you led government here,” he said. “Today is not the end of this fight, but it is a really important day, because from this point forward when somebody tells the people of our county that there’s nothing to worry about we will be able to say ‘don’t tell us, show us.’ And this time we will have the science, in 90 days, to decide for ourselves.”