PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 A pair of bills aimed at giving municipalities more time to come up with rules for data center development took key steps in the Pennsylvania Senate on Tuesday, with both receiving bipartisan support.<\/p>\n
The bills would allow municipalities to put a moratorium on data center development and create policies addressing water and energy use, noise, and other issues. The moratorium would be allowed for up to a year and a half. <\/p>\n
\u201cData centers themselves aren’t new. What’s new is the scale. Projects of this size demand real time and attention to make sure everything from emergency service capacity to infrastructure adequacy is considered thoughtfully, not after the fact,\u201d said Northeastern Pennsylvania Republican Senator Jarrett Coleman.<\/p>\n
Fellow Northeastern Pennsylvania Republican Rosemary Brown argued that\u2019s not enough. She offered an amendment that would apply to data center development across Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis amendment would establish a true three-year moratorium \u2014 statewide moratorium \u2014 providing the Commonwealth and our municipalities the necessary time to develop comprehensive, enforceable protections before additional hyperscale data center projects move forward,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n
Brown\u2019s amendment failed on a 2-to-9 vote amid questions about its constitutionality and stripping local decision-making.<\/p>\n
Coleman\u2019s bill advanced on a 10-to-1 vote.<\/p>\n
The committee also unanimously advanced Chester County State Rep. Paul Friel\u2019s bill that would allow municipal governments to implement a 180-day moratorium. Both bills now head to the state Senate floor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 A pair of bills aimed at giving municipalities more time to come up with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232580,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3069,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-232579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-data-center","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232579","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=232579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}