Rolling brownouts, mini nuclear reactors. Topics in Harrisburg being discussed in relation to data centers.<\/p>\n
This as the Lehigh Valley’s first hyper scale data center was recently approved.<\/p>\n
“This property here is a 100-year preservation,” Suzanne Lee said.<\/p>\n
While a horse farm sits on one of side of her Allen Township, Northampton County property, a nearby hyperscale data center is set on the other.<\/p>\n
“I am concerned about the use of water, the pressure on our well, the ability to grow my own food, if there’s no water available,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Allen Township supervisors recently approved a warehouse to be the Lehigh Valley’s first data center of 1 million square feet.<\/p>\n
The Valley has two other large scale data center proposals in South Whitehall and Upper Macungie, with a Lower Mt. Bethel development an expected third.<\/p>\n
Developer Lou Pektor also hopes to put one in his Upper Mt. Bethel River Pointe development in 2028.<\/p>\n
“They’re coming, and they are not meant to be everywhere,” PA State Rep Democrat Tarah Probst said.<\/p>\n
Statewide there are 57 data centers proposals. As projects get approved, guardrails are playing catchup.<\/p>\n
Probst recently co-sponsored a bill protecting ratepayers’ electricity costs that passed the House.<\/p>\n
“This has been a flood of bills for sure,” Republican State Rep. Ann Flood said.<\/p>\n
Flood, who voted against Probst bill, says between the House and Senate 26 Data Center bills are being circulated.<\/p>\n
This as she says the PUC recently warned Legislators of possible rolling statewide brown outs starting this year due to lack of power capacity.<\/p>\n
To avoid any temporary power outages, Flood says using mini nuclear power plants are being discussed.<\/p>\n
“These are ideas that would allow data centers to be able to power themselves,” she said. “If that comes down to a matter of permit, can you get a permit to do that?”<\/p>\n
While there is no timeline on any state laws, Flood and Probst say its up to local governments to set guardrails.<\/p>\n
So far, 17 municipalities in the Lehigh Valley either have ordinances or those in the works to manage potential data centers.<\/p>\n
For those like Lee who’s lived on her site for decades.<\/p>\n
“Did you think you’d be living close to one?” asked 69 News reporter Bo Koltnow.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I had no idea I would be next to one,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rolling brownouts, mini nuclear reactors. Topics in Harrisburg being discussed in relation to data centers. This as the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[214,119,121,120,279,805,43471,434,28,7445,7446],"class_list":["post-150492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-berks","tag-lehighvalley","tag-local_government","tag-northampton-county","tag-pennsylvania","tag-poconos-coal","tag-southeastern-pa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150492","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=150492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}