The Allegheny County Council Committee on Sustainability and Green Initiatives voted unanimously Tuesday to advance an amended measure that would prohibit data centers with 25 megawatts or more of capacity from using county-owned buildings or property.<\/p>\n
If adopted, the ordinance would prohibit the construction, operation or establishment of large-scale data centers \u2014 as well as infrastructure built specifically to support them \u2014 on county-owned property.<\/p>\n
The measure would not create a countywide ban on data centers. Instead, it would prohibit \u201cmassive hyperscale\u201d data centers from being built on county-owned land while avoiding language broad enough to affect routine server infrastructure.<\/p>\n
The amendment, introduced by Councilman Dan Grzybek, D-Bethel Park, closes loopholes in the original draft while avoiding unintended impacts on facilities such as existing county server operations and the 911 center.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis would, I think, fall in on the low end of things and really capture everything that we would want to prevent from being built on Allegheny County property, while simultaneously not limiting things like maybe some existing IT server buildings that we have right now in the county,\u201d Grzybek said.<\/p>\n
The ordinance also includes the prohibition of county property for data center ancillary use or secondary structures such as administrative, logistical, fiber optic, storage and security buildings or structures.<\/p>\n
The proposal also would prohibit infrastructure associated with data centers, including generators, utility lines, cooling water and wastewater treatment facilities, water-holding facilities, pump stations, water towers and other environmental controls.<\/p>\n
The proposal was introduced in a regularly scheduled council meeting on Aug. 25, and has since gained broad support with eight council members having signed on as co-sponsors. A majority of the entire 15-member body \u2014 eight votes \u2014 would be needed to win legislation approved by council.<\/p>\n
Sponsors of the measure include Grzybek, President Michelle Naccarati-Chapkis, D-Plum; Kathleen Madonna-Emmerling, D-Moon; Lissa Geiger Shulman, D-Hampton; Pat Catena, D-Carnegie; Paul Klein, D-Pittsburgh; Jordan Botta, D-Bloomfield; and at-large members Bethany Hallam, D-North Side, and Alex Rose, I-Squirrel Hill.<\/p>\n
Rose chairs the county\u2019s Committee on Sustainability and Green Initiatives, while Grzybek, Madonna-Emmerling, Geiger Shulman, Catena, Botta and Klein are all members. <\/p>\n
The measure points to the Pennsylvania Constitution\u2019s Environmental Rights Amendment, which guarantees citizens the right to clean air, pure water and the preservation of natural, scenic, historic and aesthetic environments.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough interpretation of Article I, \u00a727 is very much still a work in progress by the Commonwealth\u2019s various courts, the provision at its core attributes a value to the community for pure water and environmental preservation,\u201d the measure said.<\/p>\n
The council opted not to impose a countywide land-use ban because, under Pennsylvania law, zoning and land-use decisions involving private property are made by individual municipalities rather than the county.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is the judgment of council that those municipalities are best situated to evaluate the benefits and detriments of land usage proposals within their borders for themselves,\u201d the measure states.<\/p>\n
Several boroughs and townships, including East Deer, Oakmont, Tarentum, Upper Burrell, Murrysville and Gilpin, have adopted similar ordinances to regulate data center development.<\/p>\n
Featured Local Businesses<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Allegheny County Council Committee on Sustainability and Green Initiatives voted unanimously Tuesday to advance an amended measure…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287020,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,75,74],"class_list":["post-287019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287019","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=287019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}