Last week, The Washington Post joined a growing number of national news outlets paying attention to the proposed annihilation of Archbald for the construction of \u201chyperscale\u201d data centers. The headline of the Post story wasn\u2019t shy about why a Washington, D.C., newspaper read around the world is interested in the zoning woes of a tiny Northeast Pennsylvania borough:<\/p>\n
\u201cA town of 7,000 planned so many data centers, it\u2019s like adding 51 Walmarts<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n I can\u2019t say for sure that the Post reporter cribbed the analogy from me, but he\u2019s welcome to it. So far, it\u2019s the best way to help people visualize the staggering scale of the proposed projects being piled on Archbald.<\/p>\n As \u201cDavid vs. Goliath\u201d stories go, this one rivals the original. Archbald and its neighboring communities in the Midvalley are epically archetypical of the underdog attacked by a pack of wolves. The same is true of communities throughout Lackawanna County, the region, the state and across the nation.<\/p>\n So far, a total of about 90 data centers have been proposed in Archbald, Dickson City, Jessup and Olyphant boroughs and Clifton, Covington, Newton and Ransom townships. More than half of these vampiric concrete mausoleums would be crammed into Archbald. The borough stands out due to the unique magnitude of the onslaught its citizens are standing up against.<\/p>\n Along with 51 Walmart Supercenter-sized buildings, the borough is being bullied into absorbing massive new infrastructure projects including a power plant and 12 miles of electrical lines on towering monopoles. The data centers come with hundreds of diesel generators, thousands of gallons of diesel fuel, toxic emissions and noise pollution linked to cancer and other diseases, and devastating declines in property values.<\/p>\n If even half of these projects are approved, what\u2019s left of Archbald won\u2019t be worth living in. The existential nature of the threat resonates with anyone anywhere who\u2019s sick of seeing Wall Street steamroll Main Street.<\/p>\n The Post is owned by Jeff Bezos, the billionaire tech \u201cbroligarch\u201d behind Amazon.com and Amazon Web Services (AWS). The Post published the story despite Amazon\u2019s position as the lead player pushing data centers in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n If the fight to save Archbald is too newsworthy for The Washington Post to ignore, it should be of urgent interest in Harrisburg, and particularly to Gov. Josh Shapiro. Usually, an infamously ambitious politician running for reelection can\u2019t afford to ignore the pleas of constituents under siege, but the incumbent governor seems confident he\u2019ll win in a walk.<\/p>\n History is on his side.<\/p>\n Shapiro is a \u201cpro-business Democrat\u201d in the tradition of former Gov. Ed Rendell. Republican \u201cleadership\u201d publicly opposed \u201cFast Eddie,\u201d but privately and passively supported his bid for a second term by nominating a ringer \u2014 retired NFL superstar Lynn Swann.<\/p>\n \u201cSwanny\u201d was a four-time Super Bowl champion and a Hall-of-Famer for my beloved Pittsburgh Steelers. He leapt tall cornerbacks in a single bound, but had zero qualifications to serve as governor. That was fine with \u201cRendell Republicans.\u201d Swann was drafted to run, not win.<\/p>\n Republican state Treasurer Stacy Garrity is this cycle\u2019s Lynn Swann. Her campaign is a theater production staged to promote the illusion of an appealing alternative. Garrity has little chance of beating Shapiro, whose only obvious vulnerability is his increasingly conspicuous disappearing act on invasive data center development.<\/p>\n Initially, Shapiro was lavishly \u201cgung-ho\u201d for bringing the data center \u201cgold rush\u201d to Pennsylvania, but the mushrooming opposition has noticeably dampened his enthusiasm \u2014 at least publicly.<\/p>\n Heat on Shapiro flared last week with the revelation of emails obtained by Concerned Citizens of Montour County<\/a> via a Right to Know Law request. The emails<\/a> between wealthy developers and Big Tech giants and Shapiro administration officials exposed the behind-the-scenes chumminess of voracious business leaders and starstruck government officials starved for economic investment in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n In one message, a wealthy data center developer suggests requiring opponents of data centers to post multimillion-dollar bonds, denying access to court challenges to anyone who can\u2019t buy it.<\/p>\n In another, an administration official assures Amazon executives that Shapiro\u2019s \u201cGRID Principles\u201d \u2014 guidelines \u201crequiring\u201d data center developers and end-users to meet economic, environmental and energy benchmarks \u2014 are entirely voluntary and shouldn\u2019t be interpreted as hurdles to data center development. Everything is negotiable if you invest your billions here!<\/p>\n A three-year statewide moratorium proposed by state Sen. Katie Muth \u2014 a Democrat who represents parts of Berks, Chester and Montgomery counties \u2014 and co-sponsored by state Sen. Rosemary Brown \u2014 a Republican who represents parts of Lackawanna and Wayne counties and all of Monroe \u2014 has widespread public support, but as of Friday, the legislation hadn\u2019t been introduced. Talk is cheap. In unprecedented numbers, voters are demanding urgent, accountable action.<\/p>\n To the extent that any movement can credibly be called \u201cnonpartisan,\u201d the opposition to invasive data center development is \u201cdeep purple.\u201d Everyday Democrats, Republicans and independents are fiercely united against a hostile corporate takeover of the state.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, support for the invasion seems just as uniform among elected officials of both major parties. From the Trump White House to MAGA Republican Sen. Dave McCormick, alleged Democratic Sen. John Fetterman, Shapiro and state officials in both parties, the welcome mat for developers was quietly laid out long before the public was even vaguely aware of data centers.<\/p>\n Archbald is the canary in the data center \u201ccoal mine.\u201d It\u2019s no longer just a tiny town in Northeast Pennsylvania. The borough has become a national symbol of community resilience and grassroots resistance to a culture of greed and waste that threatens to devour and discard anyone or anything in its path.<\/p>\n No town of 7,000 can reasonably be expected to absorb 51 data centers each the size of a Walmart Supercenter and all of the accompanying infrastructure and health and economic costs. Fifty-one lemonade stands would be too many, especially if the \u201crefreshments\u201d offered were laced with carcinogens and cost a fortune per serving.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a shame the Washington Post reporter and Gov. Shapiro weren\u2019t present at Valley View High School for last week\u2019s hearing<\/a> on the proposed 400-megawatt natural gas power plant next to Staback Park.<\/p>\n