Delco Municipalities Are in a Race to Write Data Center Ordinances

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First off, shout out to David Director for making me aware of this meeting. I could only make part of it but the part I could make they discussed the first data center ordinance to come before them.

So every data center ordinance that a Delco municipality writes goes to the Delaware County Planning Commission for review before it can be adopted.

To be clear…they have not seen a single data center proposal come in. Only ordinance updates.

Zero applications countywide, and municipalities are racing to write rules before the parasites shows up. Luckily everything is paused until municipalities can figure it out.

The ordinance review I sat through was Newtown Township’s. They set data centers as a conditional use rather than by right. 35 foot height cap, 300 feet from homes and sensitive receptors (which are churches, hospitals, schools), 150 feet from other nonresidential. Requiring heat, water and energy impact studies, etc.

County staff recommended adoption with four specific changes…require closed loop cooling, add a utility curtailment agreement, require a site commissioning plan, and fix a conflict where the accessory use definition and the substation definition set different standards.

A Newtown Square resident, John Butler, had a fantastic point and asked whether anything sets noise levels.

The ordinance requires a full sound study, but no limit.

The residents’ point is that the problem isn’t peak decibels, it’s the constant hum, 24/7. He said residents in central PA drove to Virginia and slept in their car at a facility’s property line taking decibel readings.

A planning commissioner backed him hard. Asking, what about somebody walking their dog, or trying to sleep? Staff ended up offering something stronger than a decibel cap. They recommended the ordinance require no sound or hum impact on any sensitive receptor.

Great example of public comment actually working. It also shows how flimsy this all is…Newtown requires a study of the noise and says nothing about what happens if the study comes back bad..

The county’s own guidance says 500 feet. Newtown proposed 300. Asked why 500, staff said theres no case law and 500 seemed middle of the road.

then: “case law will clear this up pretty quick, but we need the cases to get to the court.”

A commissioner said…so we’re voting to approve or disapprove things that are being tried right now.

Yes..forty nine municipalities guessing at what’s defensible against a multibillion dollar industry.

And “we need the cases to get to the court” just means that we need guinea pigs.

• Full disclosure: I spent longer than I’d like to admit figuring out how to spell “guinea pigs.”

It definitely won’t be Radnor. It’ll be a borough of 3000 people in a working class neighborhood with a part time solicitor, because that is who these companies seem to pick on. Same reason Blackstone’s lawyers wrote to Lower Chichester.

Josh Shapiro handed the industry a sales tax exemption on computing equipment, told everyone Pennsylvania is open for business, and then left all municipalities to negotiate one by one.

Show up at your township or borough’s next meeting…ask them if their zoning code address data centers, and who’s working on it.