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East Manchester Township, PA Passes Data Center Ordinance After Nine Months and Four Public Drafts

PA Local Zoning / Ordinance Template April 20, 2026 Source: York Daily Record

While Ohio communities are pausing to write zoning they don't yet have, East Manchester Township in York County, Pennsylvania took the opposite path and got somewhere. The township supervisors approved a data center ordinance last Tuesday that took nine months to write and went through four public drafts.

The ordinance sets setback distances from residential property lines, requires noise studies at three specified points along the property boundary, caps lot coverage, and requires the developer to pay for an independent traffic study before any construction permit issues. The noise-study provision in particular is worth studying — rather than accepting developer-supplied modeling, it requires measurement at fixed monitoring points, which shifts the evidentiary burden of compliance onto the facility rather than the neighbors.

Supervisor Daniel Naylor, who chaired the working group, told the York Daily Record: “We tried to address every concern residents expressed to us. I feel we did that. I'm proud of the result.” That's a rare tone in data center coverage right now. It wasn't achieved by opposition and it wasn't achieved by accommodation — it was achieved by nine months of drafting.

A nearby jurisdiction, Manchester Township, is in the middle of the same process. Township manager Tim James was candid about what they're actually doing: “Unfortunately, we don't believe we can stop data centers entirely, but we want to prepare ourselves."

That posture — preparation, not opposition — is the posture most communities in the country are going to end up in. The Portage County, Ohio moratoriums are a preparation posture. Lebanon County, PA residents pushing back on a $1.7 billion proposal are effectively asking for preparation posture. The question is whether the preparation happens before the proposal arrives or after.

What You Can Do

If you live in East Manchester Township or Manchester Township: - East Manchester Township supervisors meet at 8100 Susquehanna Trail. Schedule at eastmanchestertownship.com. - Manchester Township supervisors' meetings at 1000 Board Road. Schedule at manchestertwp.com. - The adopted ordinance text should be available through the East Manchester Township clerk. Residents in neighboring jurisdictions — and beyond — should request it, read it, and bring it to their own zoning boards as a model.

If you live somewhere that doesn't yet have data center zoning: - This is the drafting window that matters. Request the East Manchester ordinance as a starting template. Bring it to your township supervisors or planning commission before a specific proposal is on the table — amendments to zoning while a proposal is pending are harder to defend legally than amendments made in the absence of a particular applicant. - The four-draft public process East Manchester ran is itself part of the template: noise at three boundary points, independent traffic study, setback and coverage caps, all argued through in open sessions.

Community Takeaway

The East Manchester story is the Docket's reference case for the proposition that preparation beats opposition and beats accommodation. A township that believed it could not say no spent nine months getting the yes on its own terms. The ordinance is the terms. Every community in the buildout corridor should ask their own zoning boards: are we preparing, or are we waiting? And if preparing — on whose template?

Source: York Daily Record, April 20, 2026.

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