Lackawanna County received a proposal from a firm that would assess the cumulative air-quality and public-health impacts of proposed data center and power plant developments here, though it’s unclear if commissioners will pursue the project.

Commissioner Bill Gaughan, a chief elected critic of data centers who called for the study, announced the $165,000 proposal by EmPower Analytics Group in a press release Monday. The firm’s founder and CEO, environmental health scientist and biostatistician Michael Cork, Ph.D., testified last month at a hearing on the controversial Wildcat Ridge Data Center Campus proposed in Archbald, warning the development’s nearly 600 diesel generators could emit hundreds of thousands of pounds of air pollutants and cause millions of dollars in estimated local health damages annually if plans for the campus come to fruition.

Cork’s local testimony came after Gaughan called in early June for the county to pursue an independent health-impact assessment gauging the combined effects of proposed data center projects and related infrastructure on residents and sensitive community assets. The Democratic commissioner pointed at the time to a similar EmPower Analytics study that found fine particulate matter emissions from the permitted on-site power system at the Vantage Data Center in Loudoun County, Virginia, could result in between $53 million and $99 million in annual health-related damages.

While Gaughan continues to advocate for the local study and worked with county Chief Financial Officer David Bulzoni to find the funding for it, his press release notes the EmPower proposal “did not receive sufficient support” from fellow commissioners at last week’s work session to make it onto Wednesday’s meeting agenda for a vote. Efforts to reach fellow Democratic Commissioner Thom Welby and Republican Commissioner Chris Chermak were not immediately successful.

“I believe the public deserves an up-or-down vote on whether Lackawanna County will invest in understanding the cumulative health impacts of these proposals,” Gaughan said in the release. “The question before us is straightforward: Do we want independent science before these projects move forward, or are we willing to make decisions without it? I believe the people of Lackawanna County already know the answer. There is nothing that is more important than the health of our residents.”

A project overview submitted by EmPower says the firm would build on its “recent expert report on the Wildcat Ridge Data Center Campus” and expand the analysis “from a single facility to the full set of proposed developments under review.”

“Multiple large data center campuses have been proposed across Archbald, Jessup, Dickson City, and neighboring municipalities, several paired with on-site diesel backup-generator fleets, alongside newly proposed gas-fired power plants,” the proposal notes. “Reviewing each project in isolation misses the bigger picture. This assessment evaluates them together — estimating how much air pollution these facilities would add across the region, how that pollution affects public health, and which communities carry the greatest share of the burden.”

If commissioners decide to move forward with it, the project would take about three to four months.

To pay for it, Gaughan’s release notes he and Bulzoni identified about $100,000 that had been budgeted for “capital asset profiling” but that won’t be needed until next year, as well as roughly $65,000 in “unobligated funds” that could be used for the data center assessment.

While the proposal apparently won’t appear on the agenda, commissioners next meet Wednesday at 2 p.m. in the fifth-floor conference room of the county government center in downtown Scranton. The meetings usually take place at 10 a.m., but Wednesday’s session was rescheduled because the commissioners are participating in a County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania event that morning.

Check back for updates.