RANSOM TWP. \u2014 Supervisors on Tuesday rejected an amendment to the township zoning ordinance that would have defined and regulated data centers.<\/p>\n
They voted, 2-1, to deny the amendment, which would have created a data center district and established standards and conditions for data center development.<\/p>\n
The district would have covered the property of Scranton Materials, which requested a zoning overlay to allow for a data center on its 251-acre property at 819 Newton Road. Without the amendment, the proposed data center cannot move forward.<\/p>\n
Supervisor Chairman David Bird voted for the amendment, and Supervisors Robert Wells and Gerald Scott voted against. Wells and Scott said before the vote Scranton Materials didn\u2019t provide enough information, including an environmental study, to support their application.<\/p>\n
People filled the township garage, where the supervisors met to accommodate the large crowd. Many stood along the side of the room. The crowd, which included Scranton Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti, Lackawanna County Controller Gary DiBileo, state Sen. Marty Flynn, D-22, Dunmore and State Rep. Jim Haddock, D-118, Pittston Twp.,\u00a0cheered after the vote was taken.<\/p>\n
Many of those in the crowd wore pins reading \u201cNo Data Center.\u201d<\/p>\n
Planning Commission Chairman James Murphy said Scranton Materials\u2019 data center plans called for six buildings, each 214 feet by 732 feet, each being no bigger than 120 feet, with two stormwater management ponds, one roughly 446,500 square feet, the other 737,697 square feet, each containing around 8 million gallons of water.<\/p>\n
Tuesday\u2019s hearing was a continuation of last week\u2019s meeting on Scranton Materials\u2019 zoning overlay request. Supervisors continued the hearing after Laura McGarry, a resident of the Fawnwood development in the Scranton\u2019s Keyser Valley section, objected to it. She said she did not believe the application was properly placed before the township, and it came to the supervisors as a zoning application and the meeting was advertised as a zoning hearing, but the application submitted was really a petition to the supervisors and should have been advertised that way. McGarry also said she and her neighbors did not receive information on the data center plans or the township\u2019s proposed zoning amendment and the people who attended weren\u2019t able to hear the proceedings.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Many people who attended last week\u2019s hearing filled out forms to object to the request. Around a dozen more people filled out objection forms Tuesday.<\/p>\n
During the hearing, McGarry, who represented her mother, Keyser Valley resident Susan Magnotta, raised objections about the legal notice for Tuesday\u2019s hearing not containing information about the ordinance and the lack of testimony and evidence from Scranton Materials related to the application.<\/p>\n
Following McGarry\u2019s objections, Solicitor Kevin Conaboy recommended the supervisors reject the amendment.<\/p>\n
Scranton Materials, headquartered in Meshoppen, Wyoming County, is a supplier of West Mountain stone and stone products. In February, the company published a blasting notice in The Times-Tribune for a noncoal surface mining operation. The U.S. Department of Labor\u2019s Mine Safety and Health Administration lists it as a surface mine.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Check back for updates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RANSOM TWP. \u2014 Supervisors on Tuesday rejected an amendment to the township zoning ordinance that would have defined…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92255,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[2116,201,182,139,28,4373,178,180,179,181],"class_list":["post-92254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-data-centers","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-ransom-township","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\/92254","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=92254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}