May 21<\/a>, was not present Tuesday.<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s hard for me to think of another question because, basically, there\u2019s not an answer anyway,\u201d Timmons said.<\/p>\n
At the May hearing, Wilson was asked whether they assessed how air emissions or noise would be affected by the valley.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, we didn\u2019t do any air modeling, and typically that wouldn\u2019t be required by the (Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection),\u201d Wilson said at the time.<\/p>\n
Valley View School District Solicitor Kyle Callejas inquired whether the safety report evaluated impacts on any Valley View school, including the intermediate school, which is about half a mile from the site. He asked whether the analysis included emergency response or evacuation considerations specific to any school building; if it evaluated construction, traffic, blasting or vibration impacts on schools; and whether Deller could identify where any natural gas pipelines would be located in relation to the intermediate school.<\/p>\n
Deller deferred to subsequent reports and testimony, while acknowledging they have not determined where the natural gas pipeline would be located to fuel the power plant.<\/p>\n
After Deller\u2019s cross-examination, KCI Technology\u2019s technical lead of power generation, Andrew Markle, spoke broadly about the operations and safety features designed into power plants. Markle touted his experience in the power generation industry both domestically and abroad, including overseeing 180 different natural gas units representing 5% of the entire United States\u2019 electric grid, providing technical direction to the board of directors of the largest thermal power plant in Colombia, developing three 1,000-megawatt units in Turkey, and saying he \u201cjust worked on a plant for xAI,\u201d Elon Musk\u2019s artificial intelligence company.\n<\/p>\n
Markle provided an overview of how a natural gas power plant like Essential Energy would operate and the safety features employed at the facilities. Essential Energy attorney Frank Hoegen of Hoegen & Associates in Wilkes-Barre guided Markle\u2019s testimony through questions.\n<\/p>\n
The power plant would be air-cooled and provide power to the grid, Markle said. The industry gives power plants a 30-year operating life based on the lifespan of their equipment, though they can be worked on indefinitely to continue, he said.<\/p>\n
Markle contended he has seen power plants less than 100 feet from residences, saying, \u201cWe have the ability to change the design to meet the environment,\u201d like putting the turbines on rubber mountings to reduce their sound.<\/p>\n
He spoke about safety features including how the power plant would use piped-in natural gas, air pollution and the use of ammonia to reduce pollution, protections for electrical hazards, the use of a 200,000-gallon water tank for fire protection, building the facility to withstand weather hazards like wind and heavy snow, and backup and redundant systems.\n<\/p>\n
Elicited through a question from Hoegen, Markle agreed the power plant can be constructed \u201cso as not to create a significant hazard to public health and safety.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been done hundreds of times around the United States,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The hearing concluded before cross-examination of Markle occurred. The next hearing will resume Sept. 29 at 5 p.m. at the Valley View High School auditorium, 1 Columbus Drive, Archbald.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ARCHBALD \u2014 The debate over whether a conceptual plan is enough to ensure a facility will protect public…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[2117,2116,201,182,139,28,178,180,179,181],"class_list":["post-268415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-archbald","tag-data-centers","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-top-stories-stt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268415","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=268415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Archbald\u2019s](\"https:\/\/www.thetimes-tribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/STT-L-ESSENTIAL-0820-1-rotated-1.jpg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n![\"Archbald](\"https:\/\/www.thetimes-tribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/STT-L-ESSENTIAL-0820-6-rotated-1.jpg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n![\"KCI](\"https:\/\/www.thetimes-tribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/STT-L-ESSENTIAL-0820-5-rotated-1.jpg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.thetimes-tribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/STT-L-ESSENTIAL-0820-2-rotated-1.jpg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n