pursue an independent health-impact assessment<\/a> gauging the combined effects of proposed data center projects and related infrastructure on residents and sensitive community assets. The Democratic commissioner pointed at the time to a similar EmPower Analytics study that found fine particulate matter emissions from the permitted on-site power system at the Vantage Data Center in Loudoun County, Virginia, could result in between $53 million and $99 million in annual health-related damages.<\/p>\nWhile Gaughan continues to advocate for the local study and worked with county Chief Financial Officer David Bulzoni to find the funding for it, his press release notes the EmPower proposal \u201cdid not receive sufficient support\u201d from fellow commissioners at last week\u2019s work session to make it onto Wednesday\u2019s meeting agenda for a vote. Efforts to reach fellow Democratic Commissioner Thom Welby and Republican Commissioner Chris Chermak were not immediately successful.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe the public deserves an up-or-down vote on whether Lackawanna County will invest in understanding the cumulative health impacts of these proposals,\u201d Gaughan said in the release. \u201cThe question before us is straightforward: Do we want independent science before these projects move forward, or are we willing to make decisions without it? I believe the people of Lackawanna County already know the answer. There is nothing that is more important than the health of our residents.\u201d<\/p>\n
A project overview submitted by EmPower says the firm would build on its \u201crecent expert report on the Wildcat Ridge Data Center Campus\u201d and expand the analysis \u201cfrom a single facility to the full set of proposed developments under review.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMultiple large data center campuses have been proposed across Archbald, Jessup, Dickson City, and neighboring municipalities, several paired with on-site diesel backup-generator fleets, alongside newly proposed gas-fired power plants,\u201d the proposal notes. \u201cReviewing each project in isolation misses the bigger picture. This assessment evaluates them together \u2014 estimating how much air pollution these facilities would add across the region, how that pollution affects public health, and which communities carry the greatest share of the burden.\u201d<\/p>\n
If commissioners decide to move forward with it, the project would take about three to four months.<\/p>\n
To pay for it, Gaughan\u2019s release notes he and Bulzoni identified about $100,000 that had been budgeted for \u201ccapital asset profiling\u201d but that won\u2019t be needed until next year, as well as roughly $65,000 in \u201cunobligated funds\u201d that could be used for the data center assessment.<\/p>\n
While the proposal apparently won\u2019t appear on the agenda,\u00a0commissioners next meet Wednesday at 2 p.m. in the fifth-floor conference room of the county government center in downtown Scranton. The meetings usually take place at 10 a.m., but Wednesday\u2019s session was rescheduled because the commissioners are participating in a County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania event that morning.<\/p>\n
Check back for updates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lackawanna County received a proposal from a firm that would assess the cumulative air-quality and public-health impacts of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[201,182,139,28,178,180,179],"class_list":["post-258465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258465","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=258465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}