{"id":165089,"date":"2026-04-14T03:16:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T03:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/165089\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T03:16:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T03:16:07","slug":"data-center-battle-in-archbald-continues-after-months-of-frustration-and-fierce-opposition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/165089\/","title":{"rendered":"Data center battle in Archbald continues after months of frustration and fierce opposition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Another data center meeting in Archbald drew a full house of residents, with a majority of whom oppose the project. Newswatch 16&#8217;s Adi Iyer was on hand.<\/p>\n<p>ARCHBALD, Pa. \u2014 After months of frustration and fierce opposition, the fight against data centers continues to rage on within the borough of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wnep.com\/section\/lackawanna-county\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Archbald.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Folks at Monday night&#8217;s data center conditional use hearing were angry about a local ad agency, Ryan Leckey Media, sending out mailers on behalf of the developers of the proposed Wildcat Ridge data center.<\/p>\n<p>One of the developer&#8217;s mailers was called &#8220;Myth vs. Fact, revealing the truth and dispelling rumors about data centers.&#8221; Residents returned those mailers to the developers within the first 10 minutes of the meeting starting.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Since you&#8217;re so into myths vs. fact, I&#8217;ll tell you some facts: ten of my neighbors, ten, have either died from or are living with cancer, and you are going to introduce another carcinogen in my area,&#8221; says Mary Therese McKane of Archbald.<\/p>\n<p>The focus of the meeting was on the impact that the data center would have on traffic. The data center developer says the impact will be &#8220;negligible,&#8221; but some folks disagree.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I drove down the Wildcat in ice storms, and I have to two wheels in a ditch, that&#8217;s how dangerous it is, and you wanna put trucks down that road,&#8221; says McKane.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Current and former county officials also asked the borough council if it&#8217;s possible to have residents vote on whether Wildcat Ridge gets built by putting it on a ballot.<\/p>\n<p>Lackawanna County Controller Gary DiBileo says, &#8220;I believe the future of Archbald and its residents should be determined by the people of Archbald.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Unless you agree to a moratorium for a couple of years and let these people alone, or agree to put it on the ballot, pack your bags, pack your bags, get out of this place and don&#8217;t come back!&#8221; says Former Judge Thomas Munley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Another data center meeting in Archbald drew a full house of residents, with a majority of whom oppose&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165090,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":["post-165089","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\/165089","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=165089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}