{"id":125089,"date":"2026-02-27T13:23:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T13:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/125089\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T13:23:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T13:23:14","slug":"data-centers-land-in-lehigh-valley-the-lafayette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/125089\/","title":{"rendered":"Data centers land in Lehigh Valley \u2013 The Lafayette"},"content":{"rendered":"

Data centers aren\u2019t always ginormous: Lafayette College has its own in the basement of Pardee Hall<\/a>. But proposals for hyperscale data centers<\/a> \u2014 the massive campuses used to support artificial intelligence, data storage and more \u2014 are emerging in the Lehigh Valley.<\/p>\n

Where are data centers being proposed?<\/p>\n

Hyperscale data center proposals in Lehigh County are slogging along through local legislation and have received concerns<\/a> and recommendations<\/a> from the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Lehigh Valley is surfacing as an attractive area for data centers thanks to strong energy and transmission infrastructure, nearby major population centers and space available for development,\u201d the commission\u2019s Chief Community and Regional Planner Jill Seitz told Lehigh Valley Live<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"The approximate site location of the proposed South Whitehall data center. (Photo courtesy of Lehigh Valley Planning Commission)<\/p>\n

A proposed 5-million-square-foot data center in South Whitehall, to be built on undeveloped agricultural land across the street from a high school, has been met with local resistance<\/a>. South Whitehall\u2019s planning commission intended to review the proposal<\/a> during its Feb. 12 meeting, which was cancelled; the next scheduled meeting is on March 12<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"The approximate site location of the proposed Upper Macungie data center. (Photo courtesy of Lehigh Valley Planning Commission)<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, a 2.6-million-square-foot proposal at the former site of an Air Products corporate headquarters is under review in Upper Macungie. The plan, adapted from a previously-approved warehouse proposal<\/a>, was slated for the Upper Macungie zoning board on Wednesday, but deliberation was postponed to May<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, Lower Mount Bethel also received a data center proposal<\/a>, drawing community backlash<\/a> despite no formal plan released<\/a>. Upper Mount Bethel was also the site of a failed Amazon data center deal<\/a> last spring.<\/p>\n

There are approximately 54 active data centers and another 52 proposed in Pennsylvania, according to one citizen-run data center proposal tracker<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince doing the other states now, I realized that Pennsylvania is especially getting hit with these proposals,\u201d said the developer of the tracker, Emilia Doda. Her project shows New York, New Jersey, Maryland and West Virginia with just a combined 26 active and proposed centers. Virginia, meanwhile \u2014 the data center capital of the world<\/a> \u2014\u00a0has a whopping 570<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"A map of data centers in Pennsylvania using data from https:\/\/www.padatacenterproposals.com\/state\/pennsylvania. (Graphic courtesy of Selma O\u2019Malley \u201926)
\nWhat about Easton?<\/p>\n

Easton has yet to announce any formal data center proposals, but the city is working to be prepared.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to take the right approach,\u201d said the city\u2019s planning commission chairman Ken Greene.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The commission has discussed the topic in its past few meetings, as members consult regional recommendations and examples from surrounding townships. Councilwoman Rose Crystal is working on proper language to draft an ordinance to regulate data center development.<\/p>\n

The term \u201cdata center\u201d is not presently found in city legislation<\/a>, but Greene highlighted that \u201cit\u2019s not just data centers\u201d that the city has to consider with modern land use.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to be prepared for any type of land use, and knowing that these are hot commodities, developers are going to get creative about how to find ways to build them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The city is still dealing with<\/a> its most recent large industrial proposal after prospective warehouse developers<\/a> sued. Despite the city\u2019s urban nature, there are still opportunities for developers to propose centers in Easton that could put pressure on utility usage, according to Greene.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it wouldn\u2019t be the wide, spread-out mega centers that you see in other places,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Planning commissioner Hubert Etchinson wrote in a message that the group will likely formalize its recommendations on data centers at its meeting next Wednesday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"The Easton Planning Commission cannot codify city laws, but can make recommendations to city council. (Photo by Clara Witmer<\/a>)
\nWhat\u2019s the potential impact?<\/p>\n

As hyperscale data centers pop up around the country, the nation is grappling with both the costs and the benefits of the infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Data centers can contribute to increased electricity demand in their surrounding areas, driving up energy costs<\/a>. In Pennsylvania, the average price of electricity has risen by 7.4% since 2019<\/a>, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they are maintaining the current level of supply and just the demand increases, then that could increase the price of electricity that we use,\u201d explained environmental economist and economics professor Hongxing Liu. She said that improving infrastructure to generate more electricity can boost supply and prevent rising costs.<\/p>\n

In President Donald Trump\u2019s State of the Union speech earlier this week, he pledged to work with tech companies<\/a> for lower energy costs for households.<\/p>\n

PJM Interconnection, which oversees the regional electric grid, has been working<\/a> to accommodate<\/a> data centers across its region as it faces pressure from state<\/a> legislatures<\/a> on rising energy costs and increased electricity demand<\/a>. Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission announced<\/a> proposed guidelines<\/a> in November<\/a> to protect customers from data center energy costs.<\/p>\n

The environmental cost of massive data centers has also been widely panned, with metaphors for AI utility usage abound: One conversation with ChatGPT uses approximately one plastic bottle of water<\/a> and enough electricity to power a light bulb for 20 minutes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to the International Energy Agency<\/a>, data centers are responsible for just<\/a> 1% of current electricity use and 0.5% of carbon dioxide emissions globally. But researchers at Cornell University also hypothesized<\/a> that the current growth rate of AI would annually release the carbon dioxide emissions equal to that of 5-10 million more cars on the road and the water usage of about 6-10 million Americans.<\/p>\n

Suggestions for cutting<\/a> resource<\/a> costs of data centers are widespread<\/a>, but whether tech companies will follow is another question. To explain why data centers can be so resource-intensive, computer science professor Sofia Serrano, who researches AI, likened them to a massive calculator.<\/p>\n

\"\"Lafayette College has its own small-scale data center in the basement of Pardee Hall. (Photo by Selma O\u2019Malley<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Small handheld calculators, which do simple math, are powered by a battery or a small solar panel. AI chatbots, on the other hand, are essentially a \u201cgiant mathematical function\u201d used to convert text queries to numbers that a computer can understand, Serrano said, which requires a whole lot more energy and electricity.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat doesn\u2019t just happen by magic,\u201d Serrano said. \u201cIt\u2019s a machine doing billions of calculations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last year, the electricity demand of only data centers in the U.S. was comparable to that of the entire country of Pakistan, according to the Pew Research Center<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Water, meanwhile, is used in massive amounts to keep machinery cool, as heat does not naturally dissipate fast enough to avoid damage.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you run any kind of serious machine\u201d \u2014\u00a0for example, a car, or even your laptop \u2014\u00a0\u201cit gets hot,\u201d Serrano said. This water is drawn directly from its surrounding region, putting pressure on local communities<\/a> and aggravating pollution<\/a> in some cases.<\/p>\n

Aside from electricity and water, other environmental considerations with large data centers are rare element mining<\/a>, noise pollution<\/a>, traffic during construction<\/a> and land permeability.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a question that data centers hold up digital infrastructure and the ever-booming tech industry<\/a>, but economic benefits for their surrounding local communities \u2014 often in rural and suburban areas<\/a> \u2014 are a different story.<\/p>\n

Data centers have the potential to bring in lots of revenue in property taxes from tech giants<\/a>, improving property values<\/a> in surrounding neighborhoods. They can also produce<\/a> a large workforce<\/a> in tech, construction and operations, but that doesn\u2019t always materialize<\/a>. The job opportunities of a \u201ctypical large data center\u201d are much larger in the construction phase than in its annual operation, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce<\/a>. Still, there are plenty of avenues <\/a>for tech companies to improve their economic benefits to the communities from which they purchase land.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not really understanding the whole tech company or tech trend right now, so we don\u2019t know how AI is gonna change, not even in the next year,\u201d Liu said. \u201cThat raises the question of whether this could actually realize all these benefits of attracting tech companies.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Data centers aren\u2019t always ginormous: Lafayette College has its own in the basement of Pardee Hall. But proposals…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111878,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120],"class_list":["post-125089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125089","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=125089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}