{"id":286315,"date":"2026-09-15T06:44:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T06:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/286315\/"},"modified":"2026-09-15T06:44:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T06:44:09","slug":"philadelphia-advocacy-groups-call-for-citywide-moratorium-on-data-centers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/286315\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia advocacy groups call for citywide moratorium on data centers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Several Philadelphia-based advocacy groups gathered outside City Hall on Monday to advocate for a citywide moratorium on data centers.<\/p>\n

The Sept. 14 event launched a campaign<\/a> titled \u201cNo Data Centers in Philly,\u201d which urges the Philadelphia City Council to pause construction of hyperscale data centers for three years until protections are put in place. Campaign members cited pollution, economic disparities, and surveillance as concerns.<\/p>\n

Philly Thrive president Sonya Sanders argued that \u201ccity officials have the power to protect us before it\u2019s too late.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe city has no rules for how communities should be protected,\u201d Sanders said during the event. \u201cThere\u2019s way too much at stake to let data centers expand without guardrails.\u201d<\/p>\n

Philadelphia already houses eight data centers<\/a>, though none of them are the hyperscale developments needed for artificial intelligence. A Planning Commission meeting in July raised the possibility of constructing such data centers on two sites \u2014 the Bellwether District<\/a> in South Philadelphia and a city-owned plot near the Northeast Philadelphia Airport \u2014 but no specific proposals have been made.<\/p>\n

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Last month, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro signed<\/a> an executive order requiring local approval for new data center installations across the state.<\/p>\n

Still, the issue remains top of mind for activists who attended the event, including Senia Lopez, an organizer with 215 People\u2019s Alliance, a justice collaborative in the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During the event, Lopez said that \u201cPhiladelphia has no clear rules governing where data centers can be built and no meaningful process to ensure that people who are affected by these decisions \u2014 our neighbors, our families \u2014 have a say.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCity Council can either leave the door open for corporations to shape our neighborhoods around their interest,\u201d she added. \u201cOr it can establish rules to protect the people that live here.\u201d<\/p>\n

One major concern linked to data centers is air pollution, which Physicians for Social Responsibility member Daniel Wolk said could \u201cincrease rates of asthma in our children and death from cardiovascular disease, cancer, dementia, and lung disease in our elders.\u201d Wolk further pointed to concerns about \u201cforever chemicals\u201d entering the city\u2019s water supply.<\/p>\n

Activists also argued that those impacts might disproportionately affect Black, brown, and working-class communities.<\/p>\n

Nikki Grant, who serves as the co-executive director of Amistad Law Project, argued that data center construction empowers AI surveillance under a \u201cpolice state.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor people that are seeking reproductive healthcare, for immigrants looking for safety, or folks returning from incarceration, data centers are a real threat,\u201d Grant said. \u201cThey take that data, and they use it to train their tools used by private companies, by landlords, by cops, and by the courts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Staff reporter Cathy Sui covers politics and can be reached at sui@thedp.com<\/a>. At Penn, she studies finance and statistics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Several Philadelphia-based advocacy groups gathered outside City Hall on Monday to advocate for a citywide moratorium on data…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70],"class_list":["post-286315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286315","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=286315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}