Data centers in Lackawanna County that would tap Lake Scranton, the city\u2019s source of drinking water, for cooling would have to pay for the infrastructure needed to pump and pipe water out of that reservoir, a Pennsylvania American Water official told Scranton City Council.<\/p>\n
The water company, which owns and operates Lake Scranton, also would ensure the reservoir had the capacity to handle any data center requests for water service, said Jeremy Eden, PAW\u2019s senior director of operations in Northeast Pennsylvania, according to an Electric City Television simulcast and video of the council meeting posted on YouTube.<\/p>\n
Council had water company representatives attend an informal council caucus meeting Tuesday night to provide updates and information on various water and wastewater services, projects and issues.<\/p>\n
Council President Tom Schuster noted a data center proposal in Archbald plans to use water from Lake Scranton.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome information came out about how many gallons would be used from Lake Scranton, if in fact there was a data center to be built in Archbald. Can you just give us a rundown on what kind of water do you have on hand if this thing is to be built? What does it look like for Lake Scranton and the city of Scranton\u2019s water supply?\u201d Schuster asked.<\/p>\n
Eden replied the company is in early stages of discussions with data centers.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur stance is \u2018do no harm to existing customers,\u2019\u201d Eden said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been very clear that currently our stance is any improvements to the infrastructure that would be needed to supply these data centers would be at the cost of those developers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last month, The Times-Tribune reported Project Gravity wants to draw water from Lake Scranton to cool nearly 2 million square feet of data centers in Archbald. Representatives from Archbald 25 Developer LLC gave a presentation Jan. 6 at Valley View High School about their plans to build seven data centers across 180-plus acres between Eynon Jermyn Road and Business Route 6 in Archbald. The developers said they requested and received a will-serve letter from Pennsylvania American Water for approximately 360,000 gallons per day from Lake Scranton to cool the computer hardware that would fill their data centers. If drawing its maximum volume of water daily, Project Gravity would use enough water to fill a 660,000-gallon Olympic-sized pool about every other day.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\u201cI know that a lot of the numbers are quite extreme that are out there,\u201d Eden told Scranton City Council. \u201cThose are usually just short periods of time, very hot days in the summer where they would use a lot of that water. The majority of a lot of times of year, especially cold winter times like now, it\u2019s basically nothing, zero or not much. Just what you would see in an office building.\u201d<\/p>\n
The water company reviews requests for water service based on three parameters \u2014 a water source\u2019s supply availability, treatment capacity and distribution capacity \u2014 and would review and evaluate whatever upgrades or infrastructure would be needed to provide the water service, such as pump stations, tanks and treatment, Eden said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter those designs get looked at and permitted by our engineering folks, they (developers) would then get that package of (costs of) \u2018this is what you need to invest for us to serve it,\u2019\u2009\u201d Eden said.<\/p>\n
Councilman Patrick Flynn asked if there are other PAW reservoirs currently being tapped for data center cooling. Eden said he was not sure statewide, but a proposal in Salem Twp. near Berwick would use water from PAW\u2019s Berwick system, which is not in the water company\u2019s northeast operational area.<\/p>\n
Calling the advent of data centers a \u201chot-button issue\u201d in Lackawanna County, Flynn said concerns involve potential droughts or other issues that could impact water levels, such as water-main breaks.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre there any guardrails that American Water would put in place to make sure that the small businesses and ratepayers are coming before a data center, in regards to water intake?\u201d Flynn asked.<\/p>\n
Eden replied, \u201cAbsolutely. As I said, there would be no harm to existing customers. And we understand those concerns and a very hard look would be taken from a source\u2019s supply position to ensure that all modeling has been done prior to committing any sort of capacity to data centers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Flynn continued, \u201cWould American Water be open, before any sort of deal is made with any of these data centers, to having public input from residents, of Lackawanna County or Scranton municipal officials, to have a seat at the table? Or is this just private business and if it happens, it happens?\u201d<\/p>\n
Eden said, \u201cJust like we are having conversations tonight, that\u2019s our intention and we want our communities to be informed of ongoing relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, water company spokeswoman Alana Roberts said PAW has had many preliminary\/informal requests for water service for data centers, \u201cbut no formal applications or agreements are in place.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other topics of discussion during the hourlong council caucus Tuesday involved: how the company implements water and sewer line construction projects and coordinates with other utilities on excavations and paving of streets; the amounts of PAW investments made in recent years in the city; fire hydrants and water pressure; financial assistance programs available to ratepayers; and maintenance of stormwater catch basins.<\/p>\n
Councilman Sean McAndrew asked how often the water company cleans out storm drains. PAW Superintendent of Operations Nick Wartella said there are over 14,000 catch basins in the city and the water company is required under a federal \u201cconsent decree\u201d mandate to clean out 2,000 of them per year. Most of the 14,000 basins are owed by PAW and the rest are owned by the city, Wartella said. But nearly a decade after PAW acquired in December 2016 the Scranton Sewer Authority\u2019s sewer system serving Scranton and Dunmore, it\u2019s still not clear which entity \u2014 PAW or the city \u2014 owns which basins.<\/p>\n
Councilman Mark McAndrew asked if the basins are mapped, saying it appears many are neglected because \u201cit\u2019s never clear who is responsible for what drains.\u201d Wartella said, \u201cI don\u2019t know if there\u2019s truly an actual list\u201d of catch basins, but he would try to find out.<\/p>\n
Councilwoman Jessica Rothchild said, \u201cThose maps should be created.\u201d Wartella said, \u201cA good majority (of the catch basins) are ours. To know which is ours and yours would be good.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Data centers in Lackawanna County that would tap Lake Scranton, the city\u2019s source of drinking water, for cooling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[201,182,139,28,178,180,179,181],"class_list":["post-111369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-top-stories-stt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}