ARCHBALD, LACKAWANNA CO. (WOLF) \u2014 Frustration in Archbald Monday night, after a highly anticipated public hearing on a proposed data center campus was abruptly canceled, just minutes before it was set to begin. But despite that, more than 100 people still showed up, highlighting growing community concern over the massive project.<\/p>\n
More than 100 residents filled the auditorium Monday evening for what was supposed to be the second conditional use hearing for the proposed Archbald I LLC Data Center Campus.<\/p>\n
But just before the meeting, the borough announced it had to be postponed.<\/p>\n
Officials say the required public notice was not properly advertised in the Scranton Times, even though the borough says it submitted the notice earlier this month and received confirmation it had been acknowledged.<\/p>\n
\u201cPublic notice of tonight\u2019s hearing has not been properly effectuated so we will have to reschedule tonight\u2019s hearing,” said Archbald Solicitor James O’Connor.<\/p>\n
The hearing is a key step in the approval process as borough council reviews an application from a Texas-based developer proposing a massive data center campus in Archbald.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what we know about the project so far.<\/p>\n
The proposal calls for as many as 18 two-story data center buildings, each up to about 90 feet tall, with a footprint of more than 150-thousand square feet per building, all spread across roughly 400 acres between Business Route 6 and Eynon-Jermyn Road near Staback Park.<\/p>\n
Each building could include nearly 30 emergency diesel generators to power operations during outages.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s not the only one, there are currently six proposed data center campuses in Archbald, totaling more than 50 buildings.<\/p>\n
Some residents say the scale of the development and its proximity to the park are raising serious concerns.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe frequent the Staback Park ever since my children were babies. We would go to the park and play and go to the park to run, so it\u2019s just disgraceful that the level of danger that this would pose\u2014and it\u2019s already a recovering area from the damage from the coal mine, so it\u2019s just not appropriate at all and it does not have anything to do with the community-first mindset,” said Archbald resident Letizia Cwikla, with her son.<\/p>\n
Even with the meeting canceled, residents stayed to listen and share concerns, and some were frustrated by how the situation unfolded.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s concerning a little bit. This was not expected. I was hoping that it would be watched on the borough side as well to make sure that it actually did get posted. We\u2019re doing a lot of work to get people to come out here. The times are already inconvenient for 5 o\u2019clock for people to try and get here and now we have to mass inform people and tell them as they\u2019re walking in, so it\u2019s just upsetting. I also want to make clear that this wasn\u2019t the council\u2019s fault. I know they get a lot of flak for this,” said Janessa Bednash, Jermyn resident with ‘Stop Archbald Data Centers’ group.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, grassroots opposition continues to build.<\/p>\n
The group Stop Archbald Data Centers says it\u2019s raising money for a legal fund, collecting signatures, and has sold more than 700 yard signs as residents push for more oversight of the proposal and borough leadership involved in the process.<\/p>\n
And many say they plan to keep showing up when the hearing is rescheduled.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know I\u2019m going to stay vigilant as I hope other people will so that we can be here in person and they can see firsthand the community members that feel very passionately and should be heard,” said Cwikla.<\/p>\n
Again, borough officials say the hearing will be rescheduled once proper public notice is advertised, but as of now, there is no date set for Archbald I LLC Data Center.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ARCHBALD, LACKAWANNA CO. (WOLF) \u2014 Frustration in Archbald Monday night, after a highly anticipated public hearing on a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146600,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":["post-146599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146599","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=146599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}