{"id":129809,"date":"2026-03-04T23:43:06","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T23:43:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/129809\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T23:43:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T23:43:06","slug":"former-bethlehem-mayor-john-callahan-defends-lower-mt-bethel-data-center-project-ahead-of-town-hall-slate-belt-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/129809\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Bethlehem Mayor John Callahan defends Lower Mt. Bethel data center project ahead of town hall | Slate Belt Area"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>LOWER MOUNT BETHEL TOWNSHIP, Pa. &#8211; A name you may know is defending a possible controversial future project.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>John Callahan, former Bethlehem mayor, is part of the development group hoping to put a data center in Northampton County.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think everybody understands that AI and the data centers that make AI possible are here to stay,&#8221; said former Bethlehem Mayor John Callahan.<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s now part of a development group wanting to put a data center on 450 acres in Lower Mount Bethel Township, a rural community where a petition against the project has more than 5,000 signatures.<\/p>\n<p>Callahan and his partners are hoping to sway naysayers in a highly anticipated April 6 town hall.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There have been data centers in other communities that have had very negative impacts, you know, on their host community, and so that&#8217;s part of this whole process. And we think we&#8217;ve got a site that makes sense,&#8221; Callahan said.<\/p>\n<p>Developers have launched <a href=\"https:\/\/lmbtechcenter.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">a website<\/a> with preliminary details.<\/p>\n<p>Callahan says details of the plan will be revealed at that town hall, but says they&#8217;ll build and pay for their own power plant to generate their own electricity to not add costs to consumers.<\/p>\n<p>They also plan to use state-of-the-art technology to reduce water consumption and provide sound suppression.<\/p>\n<p>Callahan says being a good, transparent community partner is key.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Is that something you could think could happen?&#8221; 69 News reporter Bo Koltnow asked.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said Karen Feridun,\u00a0co-founder of Better Path Coalition, a statewide coalition of 30 groups that, among other environmental issues, tracks data centers.<\/p>\n<p>As issues of natural resources, pollution, and quality of life are ingrained in data centers, according to Feridun. She says there are currently 52 in the planning stages statewide.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve been working on, you know, environmental issues for 18 years now, and I have never seen anything proposed that has brought communities out in opposition to a project like a data center proposal in a community,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>State Sen. Katie Muth plans to introduce legislation placing a three-year moratorium on data centers to allow communities to catch up.<\/p>\n<p>Callahan says that would set the state back.<\/p>\n<p>For many residents, it&#8217;s a case of when something &#8220;out of sight, out of mind&#8221; meets you head-on.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We understand their concerns. We&#8217;re early on in the process. We&#8217;re committed to being very transparent with the supervisors, very transparent with the community,&#8221; Callahan said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOWER MOUNT BETHEL TOWNSHIP, Pa. &#8211; A name you may know is defending a possible controversial future project.\u00a0&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129810,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[214,153,155,154,4958,12367,12874],"class_list":{"0":"post-129809","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bethlehem","8":"tag-_homepage_top_stories","9":"tag-bethlehem","10":"tag-bethlehem-headlines","11":"tag-bethlehem-news","12":"tag-city_township_county_councils","13":"tag-slate-belt","14":"tag-zoning_planning"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129809","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=129809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}