SOUTH WHITEHALL TWP., Pa. – On Wednesday night, Project Atlas is back on the table for the South Whitehall Township Planning Commission.<\/p>\n
The 410-acre project site would be built on land owned by the Jeras Corporation, which sits directly across the street from Parkland High School.<\/p>\n
Wednesday night, the data center developers will be giving a presentation for the commission and then answering questions.<\/p>\n
After that, public comment will open up to all residents who wish to share their thoughts and opinions on the land development.<\/p>\n
At the conclusion of the meeting, planning commission members could decide on the application.<\/p>\n
The project has faced a lot of public opposition since its proposal, as residents have concerns about the location, noise, and water usage.<\/p>\n
Republican State Sen. Jarrett Coleman says he’s heard concerns from his constituents and is working on laws to regulate data centers.<\/p>\n
“We were the first ones to really draft legislation that would empower our local municipalities to place a moratorium on data center development for up to 18 months so that the local municipalities can draft ordinances and regulations that meet the demands from the local municipalities,” said Coleman.<\/p>\n
Democratic State Rep. Mike Schlossberg says in the House, Legislation is also in progress trying to limit the scope, size, and impact of data centers.<\/p>\n
“In the House right now, we’ve passed nine pieces of legislation that would put guardrails around data center development,” Schlossberg said.<\/p>\n
A planning commission decision is on the agenda tonight, but the township board of commissioners has the final say.<\/p>\n
The current deadline for the board of commissioners to act on the project atlas plan is October 31st.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SOUTH WHITEHALL TWP., Pa. – On Wednesday night, Project Atlas is back on the table for the South…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[214,232,153,155,154],"class_list":["post-292575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-allentown-area","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292575","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=292575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}