The Valley View School District officially entered the fight against data centers \u201cdangerously close\u201d to its schools.<\/p>\n
Just over a week after the district\u2019s board of education voted<\/a> to join the battles against data centers in Archbald, the district\u2019s solicitor formalized that fight Wednesday with two petitions filed in the Lackawanna County Court of Commons Pleas and a letter Thursday to Archbald Council President Louis Rapoch. The district is now opposing the two largest data center campuses proposed near its schools in Archbald \u2014 the 18-data-center Project Scott and the seven-data-center Project Gravity \u2014 while joining residents in their challenge to the validity of Archbald\u2019s controversial data center zoning regulations, which council adopted in November.\n<\/p>\n Valley View\u2019s actions coincide with a new land-use appeal filed Tuesday by the same group of residents challenging borough zoning. Those residents\u00a0are now challenging the developer of Project Scott\u2019s contention that its 400-acre data center campus is automatically approved due to a procedural issue. Valley View intends to file its own land-use appeal against the project Monday, Solicitor Larry Moran Jr. said in a text.\n<\/p>\n Archbald has the highest concentration of proposed data centers in Lackawanna County, accounting for 51 of the 90-plus proposed facilities. Of those 51 data centers, 30 are proposed along a roughly 1-mile stretch of Eynon Jermyn Road near Valley View\u2019s intermediate, middle and high schools on Columbus Drive. A data center developer also wants to build a 400-megawatt power plant<\/a> on the road, about half a mile from the nearest school.<\/p>\n The cluster of data centers on Eynon Jermyn Road has been one of the most hotly contested issues in the local data center debate because they are directly next to Archbald\u2019s popular Staback Park; near residents in the Highlands Archbald housing development, the Valley View Estates mobile home park and homes in Jermyn; and their proximity to the Valley View School District\u2019s campuses on Columbus Drive where 2,000 students go school everyday.\n<\/p>\n Zoning challenge<\/p>\n The overall zoning issues in Archbald are two-fold. The borough\u2019s initial March 2023 zoning ordinance that did not define data centers but allowed them as permitted uses in commercial zoning districts throughout the borough laid the groundwork for developers to rush in early applications before Archbald could amend its zoning to regulate the industry, giving developers a more direct path from applying to breaking ground, with the borough unable to impose conditions on developments.\n<\/p>\n Then, in November, council adopted<\/a> a controversial data center zoning ordinance during a meeting overflowing with residents. While the ordinance limited where developers could build them while applying a slew of restrictions and conditions, residents overwhelmingly opposed<\/a> the legislation, urging council to further limit where they allowed data centers and apply additional restrictions. Council\u2019s initial attempt to adopt the ordinance in October failed<\/a> when a motion to consider it did not muster a second, preventing it from even coming to a vote. The ordinance designated data centers as conditional uses in several overlay districts, requiring developers to testify at public hearings about their plans and abide by conditions imposed by the borough. The designation gives council the power to approve or deny a conditional use application.<\/p>\n Every member of council who voted in favor of that ordinance has since either left office or resigned<\/a>.<\/p>\n Archbald residents Phillip Sardo, Jack and Amy Swingle, Marilyn Jones, Robert and Phyliss Paone, Joseph Sabia and Justin Healey filed a December land-use appeal<\/a> against the borough, asking the court to invalidate it due to alleged procedural issues. Their attorney, Justin Richards of Elliott Greenleaf PC, is an objector on their behalf at every public hearin<\/a>g on data centers and a related power plant in Archbald.<\/p>\n In its petition to join the appeal with residents against Archbald, Valley View, through the law firm Joyce, Carmody & Moran PC, argues that the district, which has four schools serving about 2,400 students, has legally enforceable interests in the operations of its schools, safety of students, ingress and egress for school busses and emergency vehicles, noise levels at school property lines, sewer and water capacity serving its schools, electrical service reliability, and air and water quality.\n<\/p>\n \u201cThe data center projects at issue are sited in dangerously close proximity to Valley View School District\u2019s campuses, where the District is responsible each day for the care, supervision and safety of approximately 2,400 students and staff,\u201d attorneys Brendan N. Fitzgerald, Larry Moran Jr. and Kyle Callejas wrote in the filing. \u201cThe projects anticipated impacts \u2014 including industrial-scale electrical loads and substation infrastructure, sustained low-frequency noise and vibration, diesel backup generation and associated air emissions, high-volume water and evaporative cooling demand, heavy construction and operational truck traffic on roadways used by school buses and pedestrian students, and the cumulative effect of these conditions on emergency egress, shelter-in-place planning, and first-responder access \u2014 fall squarely within the zone of harm the School District is statutorily obligated to anticipate and mitigate.\u201d<\/p>\n Project Scott<\/p>\n Valley View also petitioned the court to join Archbald in its defense against Archbald I LLC\u2019s contention that its 18-data-center Project Scott campus, which would be next to Staback Park on Eynon Jermyn Road, should be automatically approved due to a procedural issue that prevented the borough from holding a hearing within a legally allotted timeframe.<\/p>\n Archbald received a conditional use application for the data center campus Dec. 16 when Provident Realty Advisors of Dallas, Texas, which operates as Provident Data Centers, applied for 18 data centers, each up to 90 feet tall with a 154,850-square-foot footprint across about 400 acres.\n<\/p>\n State law requires municipalities to hold its first hearing on a conditional use application within 60 days and subsequent hearings within 45 days. Failing to meet those deadlines results in deemed approval of an application.<\/p>\n Council met the deadline by holding its first hearing Feb. 11, but due to time constrains, the borough only heard testimony from two of Archbald I\u2019s five planned witnesses. The borough and developer then agreed to reconvene the following month.\n<\/p>\n At the end of the Feb. 11 meeting, Archbald Solicitor Jay O\u2019Connor announced the next hearing would be March 19 \u2014 satisfying the state\u2019s requirements for public notices by announcing it on the record during the hearing. The following day, attorney Jeffrey Esch McCombie of Harrisburg-based McNees Wallace & Nurick LLC, who represents Archbald I, emailed O\u2019Connor that project manager Nick Farris, the director of acquisitions and director of data center development at Provident who testified in February, had a planned family vacation the week of March 19 that he could not reschedule.\n<\/p>\n \u201cI understand that this creates some procedural due process and planning hurdles for you,\u201d Esch McCombie wrote.<\/p>\n Archbald accommodated the request by rescheduling the hearing to March 23, but it required the borough to run public notices in the newspaper of general circulation \u2014 in this case, The Times-Tribune \u2014 for two consecutive weeks announcing the new date. O\u2019Connor\u2019s law office submitted notices to run March 8 and 15, but the day of the hearing, the borough discovered that due to a clerical error at the newspaper, the notices were not published, preventing them from holding the hearing.\n<\/p>\n Amid several procedural moves, Archbald I filed a mandamus complaint May 12 asking county court to order Archbald to recognize its deemed approval.\n<\/p>\n Both Valley View and the same group of residents appealing Archbald\u2019s data center zoning are now challenging that deemed approval contention.<\/p>\n In Valley View\u2019s petition to intervene, which joins Archbald and its borough council as defendants against Archbald I, district attorneys note the proximity of the data centers to its intermediate, middle and high schools, encompassing grades 3-12 and about 2,000 students. Direct impacts from the \u201cdangerously close\u201d data centers will include noise levels, construction and operational vehicle traffic on school transportation routes, lighting, air emissions from emergency generators, water and sewer demands, demand on public water supplies serving the district, and emergency egress, according to the filing.<\/p>\n The day before Valley View filed its petition to intervene, Archbald residents, through their attorney, filed a land-use appeal Tuesday against Archbald I LLC, the borough and its council.<\/p>\n Their appeal alleges that there was no deemed approval. Richards, their attorney, wrote in the Tuesday filling that the borough acted in good faith to honor Archbald I\u2019s request for a rescheduled hearing, but the developer failed to act in good faith by denying the extension due to a failure of notice caused by the publishing newspaper.<\/p>\n It demonstrates Archbald I\u2019s intent to have its conditional use application decided based on a timing issue rather than substantive grounds, Richards wrote.<\/p>\n The residents\u2019 appeal further asks the court to reject the deemed approval because the developer failed to satisfy the standards and criteria in Archbald\u2019s zoning, calling the use \u201csubstantially detrimental to the public health, safety and general welfare of the community.\u201d<\/p>\n Valley View intends to file its own land-use appeal Monday, according to its solicitor.<\/p>\n Esch McCombie declined to comment because it is active litigation.<\/p>\n Project Gravity<\/p>\n Project Gravity was one of Lackawanna County\u2019s earliest data center proposals when developers submitted plans<\/a> to Archbald on April 2, 2025, to build seven data centers with 138,000-square-foot footprints across 186 acres between Eynon Jermyn Road and Business Route 6. The campus would be next to Project Scott.\n<\/p>\n Because the campus applied before Archbald amended its zoning, it received a principal permitted use designation, which means council cannot regulate or deny the project like a conditional use designation.<\/p>\n Valley View\u2019s attorneys disagree with that long-standing characterization.<\/p>\n In a letter Thursday to Archbald Council President Louis Rapoch, the district asks council to reject the campus and instead schedule a conditional use hearing for it, essentially contending the data center campus lost out on its claim to operate under Archbald\u2019s original, more permissive data center zoning.<\/p>\n Rapoch declined to comment.<\/p>\n