Two Midvalley communities will hold public hearings in the next two weeks to weigh seven data centers on the outskirts of an Archbald quarry and one data center in Jessup’s portion of a business park.
Archbald council will meet for the fifth time as it considers Project Green Mountain’s conditional use application for a data center campus along the Casey Highway and Salem Road, near Stavola Quarry. Jessup council will hold its first conditional use hearing on DBT-Data’s application to build a single data center at the former TMG Health/Cognizant site in the Valley view Business Park.
Residents gather for a conditional use hearing on the proposed Project Green Mountain data center campus at the Valley View High School auditorium in Archbald on Thursday, June 18, 2026. (FRANK WILKES LESNEFSKY / STAFF PHOTO)
In two years, Lackawanna County has become a hotspot for data centers, with nearly 100 proposed across more than a dozen projects. Most fall into the Midvalley, where developers want to build at least 53 data centers in Archbald, eight in Jessup, seven in Olyphant and four in Dickson City.
Residents have advocated for municipal leaders to restrict data centers to industrial areas, specifically on land opposite the Casey Highway and away from their communities.
The Project Green Mountain hearing is Thursday at 5 p.m. The DBT hearing is Nov. 18 at 6 p.m. Both hearings will be in the Valley View High School auditorium, 1 Columbus Drive, Archbald, according to public notices published Oct. 28 and Nov. 5 in The Times-Tribune.
Project Green Mountain
Representatives with Green Mountain 6 LLC will return to Archbald after plans for their presentation changed at the last hearing Sept. 30.
Project Green Mountain had a witness lined up to present that night, but the witness was ill and couldn’t make it, attorney Rachel O’Neill of Reed Smith LLP in Pittsburgh said at the hearing.
The hearing instead focused on a video presentation. Project Green Mountain’s local counsel, attorney Raymond Rinaldi of Rinaldi & Poveromo in Scranton, discussed the site’s characteristics while drone footage of the property played on a large overhead screen in Valley View’s high school auditorium, according to a recording of the meeting on Archbald’s website. He described the site as a “heavily industrialized area” that was formerly deep mined with ongoing surface mining.
The company applied with Archbald in January to build seven two-story, 65-foot-tall data centers, each with a 138,000-square-foot footprint, across a nearly 271-acre L-shaped campus. Totaling more than 1.9 million square feet of data centers, Project Green Mountain would use a projected 525 megawatts of electricity while relying on 196 backup diesel generators. Each generator would store up to 10,000 gallons of fuel, amounting to 1.96 million gallons of diesel fuel on site.
Project Green Mountain would use up to 14,000 gallons of water daily for domestic purposes such as sinks and toilets. The campus would use a closed-loop cooling system that would be filled with a mixture of water and antifreeze.
During their first appearance before council March 19, Project Green Mountain representatives discussed the campus’s utility demands and potential economic incentives. At the second hearing May 11, the developer focused on air emissions from backup generators and the project’s traffic.
The June 18 hearing centered on the noise of data centers and diesel generators. Though Project Green Mountain’s sound study found that the campus would remain below Archbald’s 55-decibel residential daytime limit, even with all 196 backup generators running, it faced scrutiny during cross examination.
O’Neill said she was filling in for attorney Jeffrey Wilhelm during the Sept. 30 hearing. Wilhelm also represents DBT-Data in Jessup. Other Reed Smith attorneys represent the recently rejected Wildcat Ridge data center campus in Archbald, where they sought the recusal of all seven borough council members over allegations of bias. The firm’s attorneys also sent preservation notices to multiple Lackawanna County and Valley View School District officials.
DBT-Data
Although DBT-Data’s application is the eighth proposed data center in Jessup, it is the first data center to apply under the borough’s conditional use designation.
A Maryland-based data developer applied with Jessup to build a 200,000-square-foot data center at the former TMG Health site in the Valley View Business Park. (CHAD SEBRING/STAFF PHOTO)
Jessup conditionally allows data centers on land south of the Casey Highway in light industrial/business park and general industrial zones encompassing the Valley View Business Park and the land surrounding the Lackawanna Energy Center. Like Archbald, Jessup previously principally permitted data centers in zoning districts throughout the borough until council voted twice last year to amend its zoning to regulate data centers. Principal permitted uses only need land development approvals from the borough and don’t require public hearings. The Sunnyside Road and Breaker Street data centers applied under the principal permitted use designation.
Bethesda, Maryland-based DBT-Data filed a conditional use application dated Sept. 4 looking to build a one-story, 200,000-square-foot data center along Lakeview Drive and Archbald Heights Road in the upper section of the Valley View Business Park. The data center would use 60 megawatts of electricity and an average of 3,200 gallons of water daily, peaking at 6,400 gallons, according to its application.
It would have 26 backup generators, each producing 2.5 megawatts with estimated 3,000-gallon fuel tanks to provide roughly 48 hours of power, amounting to 78,000 gallons of diesel stored on site. The site would also have nearly 120,000 square feet of equipment yards and a 38,500-square-foot substation built across the 39-acre parcel. About 18 acres will not be used for data center development, according to the plans.
Attorney Neal M. Thatcher of Myers Brier Kelly LLP in Scranton represented DBT in its application along with Wilhelm of Reed Smith.
Although DBT has so far only applied for one data center, it has hundreds of additional acres under agreement to purchase from the Scranton Lackawanna Industrial Building Co., or SLIBCO.
SLIBCO, which is the industrial development arm of the Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce, developed the Valley View Business Park in 2003 and expanded it in 2007.
DBT established four limited liability companies to do business in Lackawanna County. It applied in Jessup as DBT-Data Lackawanna One LLC; its conditional use application cites multiple memorandums with SLIBCO.
In addition to the TMG Health site, DBT is under agreement with SLIBCO for:
DBT-Data Lackawanna Two: 56 acres along Archbald Heights Road west of Cardinal Glass and just over 49 acres north of the Chewy warehouse, totaling about 105 acres in Archbald and Jessup.
DBT-Data Lackawanna Three: 96 acres east of Chewy off Oak Ridge Way in Archbald.
DBT-Data Lackawanna Four: Nearly 154 acres east of the Casey Highway in Archbald and Jessup opposite the PEI Power Park.
DBT and SLIBCO recorded the memorandums with the county recorder of deeds between February and April.
Olyphant council to meet
Elsewhere in the Midvalley, Olyphant this week will hold its first council meeting since announcing its planned settlement agreement with ERCOR Triboro LLC over its proposal for seven data centers across nearly 471 acres off Marshwood Road and Route 247. As part of the settlement, council would allow the developer to move forward without requiring public hearings, in exchange for a community benefits agreement worth $101 million over 15 years. Council will meet at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Borough Building, 113 Willow Ave., Olyphant.