When the Server Farm Comes to Town: Pennsylvania Municipalities and the Data Center Challenge
Perhaps five years ago, a township supervisor in rural Pennsylvania could be forgiven for never having heard the phrase “hyperscale data center.” Not anymore. Driven by the explosion of artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and digital infrastructure, data center developers have turned their attention to Pennsylvania and have caught many communities off guard. Pennsylvania offers an attractive combination: relatively affordable land, access to power grids, abundant water, and proximity to major East Coast markets. Now it’s municipalities must also offer clear sets of rules for what happens when a facility the size of several football fields, drawing hundreds of megawatts of electricity and millions of gallons of water per day, wants to move in.
What are Data Centers
A data center is a dedicated facility housing computing infrastructure which includes servers, storage systems, and networking equipment used to process, store, and distribute data. They range from small enterprise rooms to small to mid-sized facilities, and up to the massive hyperscale facilities spanning hundreds of thousands of square feet, operated by companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. While small and mid-sized data centers can consume 18,000 gallons of water per day, hyperscale facilities can consume upwards of 550,000 gallons per day. Hyperscale data centers can also consume tens to hundreds of megawatts of power and support millions of servers, designed to scale rapidly in response to surging demand for cloud computing and digital services.
Why Municipalities Cannot Just Say No
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has held that the Pennsylvania constitution requires municipalities to permit every legitimate land use somewhere within their borders. Data centers are a legitimate land use. A municipality that fails to address them in its zoning ordinance does not keep them out, and worse, it loses the power to control where they go and under what conditions they operate.
Clifton Township in Monroe County learned this lesson the hard way. A data center developer filed a legal challenge to the township’s existing ordinance mere hours before officials publicly announced their intention to adopt a new one. Because the developer “beat the clock,” the township now faces litigation that could force it to allow development regardless of what any new ordinance says. It is a cautionary tale that has spread quickly through Pennsylvania’s municipal planning community.
What a Model Ordinance Looks Like
Municipalities have begun drafting detailed responses to this challenge yet seen in south-central Pennsylvania. When proposed as an amendment to the municipality’s existing Zoning Ordinance that classifies data centers as a “special exception” use, no facility can be built without Zoning Hearing Board approval on a case-by-case basis. That single requirement gives the public and the municipality meaningful leverage at the front end of any proposal.
A draft ordinance’s protections should be substantive. For example, a municipality can require all structures must sit at least 200 feet from property lines, with a greater setback from sensitive receptors such as schools, hospitals, daycare centers, places of worship, and residences. Maximum building height can be capped at 60 feet.. For larger facilities, landscaped buffer yards of up to 500 feet, which can be planted with evergreen trees, canopy trees, and shrubs atop earthen berms, can be required along all road frontages and residential boundaries.
Noise should be addressed with exacting specificity. The Community Noise Equivalent Level, a 24-hour weighted average that penalizes nighttime sound, may not exceed 58 decibels at the boundary of any sensitive receptor, and 70 decibels elsewhere. (58 decibels is about the equivalent of normal conversation or light traffic.) Pre-construction, interim, and post-construction sound studies conducted by Institute of Noise Control Engineering board-certified engineers should be required and additional annual monitoring once the facility is operational. The municipality’s engineer can review and approve those studies independently.
Water and Environment
Water is arguably the issue that most inflames public concern. A large hyperscale facility can consume up to five million gallons per day for cooling, roughly the same as the entire city of Harrisburg. A data center ordinance can require a Water Feasibility Study before a special exception hearing can even begin, with review by the Susquehanna River Basin Commission for withdrawals exceeding 100,000 gallons per day. Connection to public water and sewer should be mandatory to reduce impact on aquifer and private wells, though stresses on the local water utility should be considered. Reclamation, recycling, and reuse processes must be encouraged and documented.
A full Environmental Impact Assessment must be required that addresses impact on: air quality, stormwater, wetlands, riparian buffers of at least 100 feet, threatened and endangered species (via Pennsylvania Natural Diversity Inventory review), and consistency with the county comprehensive plan. No more than half of any existing tree mass on the property may be removed. The draft should also incorporate solar-readiness requirements for all rooftops and mandate the “best available cooling technology” as determined at the time of site plan approval.
With a long-term perspective, Municipalities should also require developers to submit a decommissioning plan backed by a performance bond equal to 110% of estimated removal costs, updated every five years for the life of the facility as they grow and develop.
The Statewide Debate
Across Pennsylvania, communities from the Poconos to Cumberland County are racing to get zoning ordinances in place before developers arrive. In Cumberland County alone, Hampden, North Middleton, West Pennsboro, and Middlesex townships have all been engaged in the process and not always smoothly. In September 2025, Hampden Township commissioners voted 5–0 to reject their draft ordinance after two hours of public testimony, with residents concluding that the proposed protections did not go far enough.
At the state level, legislators have proposed a wave of measures: House Bill 2151 would require municipalities to adopt data center ordinances and direct the Center for Local Government Services to produce a model ordinance for municipal use; House Bill 2650 codified the Governor’s Responsible Infrastructure Development Standards; House Bill 2496 allows for municipalities to enact a 180-day moratorium; House Bill 1834 directs the PUC to develop rules and regulations on data center energy use. However, none of these are currently law and municipalities are left filling the gap in legislative guidance from Harrisburg.
The Public Process
Perhaps most importantly, the Special Exception process is only as effective as the community’s willingness to use it. Every special exception application triggers a public hearing. Residents who want their voices heard on noise limits, water use, visual impact, or any other related concern have a legal right to appear, submit testimony, and make the record. Hampden Township’s unanimous board vote, driven entirely by public comment, demonstrates that people show up and expect results. Municipalities can seek to preempt those concerns with detailed and comprehensive data center regulations.
The data center boom is not going to pause while Pennsylvania figures out its rules. But municipalities that act now by drafting careful, comprehensive ordinances before any application lands on the zoning officer’s desk are in a far stronger position than those that do not. The question is not whether data centers will come to Pennsylvania. It is who gets to decide the terms.
