Lower Macungie Township\u2019s board of commissioners Thursday approved what it hopes are the strictest rules for operating a data center in the Lehigh Valley.<\/p>\n
Following a brief public hearing that no members of the public attended, the board unanimously approved an amendment of its data center ordinance to better define which businesses should be considered data centers, and set rules for how they can be designed and operated.<\/p>\n
Board President Ron R. Beitler said he was pleased with how strict the ordinance is, noting that it was crafted with \u201cthe safety, health and welfare\u201d of Lower Macungie residents in mind.<\/p>\n
There are no data centers proposed for Lower Macungie at this time, although two projects are under way in nearby Upper Macungie<\/a> and South Whitehall townships<\/a>.<\/p>\n Among the key points of the revised Lower Macungie ordinance are:<\/p>\n \u2022 Data center developers must submit an environmental impact study to the township with their application, and the township may require a supplemental study. The study must address the expected impact on public water and sewer services, specifically the amount of wastewater discharged and estimated number of gallons of water the data center will use each day.<\/p>\n The study must also say how much energy the data center will draw from the power grid in a 24-hour period, and include a study of expected noise output for the entire data center use during all operations, including emergency operations when back-up power facilities are running.<\/p>\n \u2022 Data center operators will be required to pay for and submit an annual report to the township\u2019s Department of Community Development providing detailed metrics on the center\u2019s water use and sewer output, electric use and noise level.<\/p>\n \u2022 All data centers must be connected to the public water system and obtain their water from a public utility water service provider. They must not adversely impact the availability of water or water pressure to residences, farms and businesses within a two-mile radius of the center\u2019s site.<\/p>\n \u2022 No data center shall be located within 1,000 feet of any residence, school, place of worship, life care facility or daycare.<\/p>\n The ordinance also set strict parameters for the way data centers can be built:<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0 They must be hidden from street view by a 50-foot buffer, trees and berms. The trees must be species selected to be resistant to diesel exhaust, and the berms must be at least 10 feet high and covered in well-maintained grass.<\/p>\n \u2022 They must have a closed-loop cooling system that conserves water.<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0 They must be constructed with sound dampening materials and may not \u201cemit excessive noise that would be deemed a nuisance to a reasonable person standing at 500 feet from the site\u2019s property line.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0 They shall be secured with adequate fencing, walls, gates, and any other security measures deemed reasonable and necessary by the township, including but not limited to, security guards, the ordinance reads.<\/p>\n The ordinance defines data centers as \u201ca building or group of buildings used primarily to house and operate computers, servers, telecommunications equipment, or supporting equipment, or any combination thereof, for the purpose of processing, transferring or storing data and information, or any combination thereof, which may include, but is not limited to, cryptocurrency mining, artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, and server farms. Such a use shall be considered a data center regardless of its size, if it is the primary use in the building in which it is located.\u201d<\/p>\n Swimming pool opening delayed<\/p>\n In other business, township manager Bruce Beitel noted that the township swimming pool will not be open Saturday and Sunday due to the expected cooler weather, but will be open on Memorial Day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lower Macungie Township\u2019s board of commissioners Thursday approved what it hopes are the strictest rules for operating a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,60,433,182,2754,139,28,50,432],"class_list":["post-199445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-business","tag-lehigh-county","tag-local-news","tag-lower-macungie-township","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-politics","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199445","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=199445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}