{"id":10586,"date":"2026-04-28T14:00:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T14:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/archbald-pennsylvania-data-centers\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T14:00:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T14:00:07","slug":"archbald-pennsylvania-data-centers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/archbald-pennsylvania-data-centers\/","title":{"rendered":"A Tiny Town Is Building So Many Data Centers That There\u2019ll Be Almost Nothing Else Left"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Enticed by cheap land, abundant resources, and massive tax breaks, tech companies are gobbling up land<\/a> in small, rural communities like never before for their inconvenient real-world infrastructure. One humble burg in Northeastern Pennsylvania is inundated with so many data center proposals, in fact, that the facilities could soon make up a staggering 14 percent of the town\u2019s surface area.<\/p>\n

In the borough of Archbald, Pennsylvania, incoming developers have threatened to erect six separate data center campuses to power the tech industry\u2019s insatiable demand for AI computing power, the Washington Post<\/em> reports<\/a>. <\/p>\n

A town of only 7,000 residents, Archbald is situated directly along a major regional transmission line which offers a direct connection<\/a> to the Susquehanna nuclear power plant. With relatively cheap land just a two hour drive away from both Philadelphia and New York City, the town is a veritable fly trap for data center developers.<\/p>\n

According to WaPo<\/em>, the six campus proposals encompass 51 separate warehouses, each the size of a Walmart Supercenter at 4 to 6 acres<\/a> a pop. Seven campus buildings, the paper reports, measure in at over a million square feet each, roughly the equivalent to 23 acres.<\/p>\n

The payoff is dubious. As we\u2019ve seen repeatedly, data centers don\u2019t typically end up employing very many people<\/a>, and place major strain on municipal resources<\/a>, not to mention the local energy grid<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The citizens of Archbald haven\u2019t taken it lying down. \u201cTHE PUBLIC TRUST HAS BEEN VIOLATED,\u201d one anti-data center petition launched on March 18 declared. \u201cBorough governance must be conducted in the interest of the public, not shaped in private by the interests of developers seeking approvals.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to local news station WNEP<\/em><\/a>, Archbald borough council leadership went through a dramatic purge in March, when the president, vice president, and president pro tem were ousted by the remaining council members. That decision was met with a standing ovation from Archbald residents, who blame the politicians for allowing so many data center proposals into the burrough to begin with.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have presided over numerous meetings, scolding residents like children when they voiced their frustrations that were of your making,\u201d Archbald resident Geralyn Esposito told local reporters. \u201cYou have wielded that gavel like a weapon to silence and stamp out opposition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Archbald Mayor Shirley Barrett, for her part, told WaPo<\/em> that the \u201cdebate has destroyed this community.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want answers, but we have no clue what is going on because this is all happening so quickly,\u201d she continued.<\/p>\n

With each of the six data center campuses at various stages of the planning process, it remains to be seen how successful residents are at keeping the tech industry at bay. If unruly borough meetings<\/a> and a massive social media campaign<\/a> are any indication, their fight is just getting started.<\/p>\n

More on data centers: <\/strong>Tech Companies Are Using Insidious Tactics to Build Data Centers on Indigenous Lands, Activists Say<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The post A Tiny Town Is Building So Many Data Centers That There\u2019ll Be Almost Nothing Else Left<\/a> appeared first on Futurism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Enticed by cheap land, abundant resources, and massive tax breaks, tech companies are gobbling up land in small, rural communities like never before for their inconvenient real-world infrastructure. One humble…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177,3841,3842],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-ethics","category-future-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10586\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}