The proposal from Dr. Michael Cork of EmPower Analytics Group would be the second health study on data centers his group would have conducted in Lackawanna County. Last month, his group authored a report that estimated Archbald’s proposed Wildcat Ridge data center campus may have a roughly $100 million impact on the community’s health.<\/p>\n
\n ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.wnep.com\/assets\/shared-images\/icons\/arrow-circle-down.svg\"){kind=icon}
<\/p>\n
\n This story continues below.
<\/p>\n
This study would be far broader. It would examine the combined impact of the county’s more than one dozen proposals, about half of which are planned for Archbald, as well as the proposed power plants needed to fuel them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was unclear, however, if the proposal would come up for a vote soon at a county commissioner’s meeting.<\/p>\n
“We need to do this and we need to do this now,” Commissioner Bill Gaughan said. “These people are under the gun. These developers have a lot of money, they got big pockets and they really don’t care, in my opinion, about the people who live here. We need to step up as leaders in Lackawanna County and put this…proposal on the agenda and get it moving because the time to do it is now, we can’t wait any longer.”<\/p>\n
According to EmPower’s proposal, the study would estimate annual emissions of fine particulate matter and other pollutants from each facility under different types of generator technologies. From there, the study would model how that pollution would disperse, and then estimate its impact on public health.<\/p>\n
“It estimates, for each scenario, the expected number of additional premature deaths, hospital and ER visits, asthma attacks, lost work and school days and the dollar value of those health impacts,” according to the proposal’s scope of work.<\/p>\n
It remained to be seen if the EmPower’s proposal would come up for a vote at Wednesday’s commissioner’s meeting. Gaughan said the other commissioners seemed wary during discussions at a work session last week.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Commissioner Thom Welby told Newswatch 16 that he supported commissioning a study of the cumulative health impacts of the county’s proposed data centers but he hoped to see other municipalities, or the state, help share the cost of the study’s production. Commissioner Chris Chermak could not be reached for comment Monday.<\/p>\n
The study would cost approximately $165,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gaughan said that $100,000 can be drawn from a plan to inventory county assets that was budgeted for this year but pushed back to 2027. The remaining funds can be drawn from a buffer that county had saved in the event that the state did not reimburse them in a timely manner. Last month’s passage of a state budget freed up that money, Gaughan said.<\/p>\n
“Together, those funds cover the full cost of this proposal without requiring additional appropriations,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Commissioner Bill Gaughan says study would look at cumulative impact on county’s numerous proposed facilities. It’s unclear, however,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":["post-258668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258668","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=258668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}