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Pennsylvania township supervisors urge colleagues statewide to adopt data-center zoning before proposals land
PA
Data Centers
April 21, 2026
Source: Pennsylvania Capital-Star (States Newsroom), April 21, 2026
At its annual conference in Hershey Tuesday, the Pennsylvania Association of Township Supervisors (PSATS) convened a panel specifically to help township officials build data-center zoning ordinances before a developer proposal arrives. That's the shift worth naming: what has looked until now like a scattering of isolated township fights — Amwell, Covington, Montour, Upper Merion — is now a coordinated, association-facilitated export of a common playbook. PSATS Executive Director David Sanko framed it bluntly: townships are “already out front…way before Harrisburg wants to address it."
The cautionary tale came from Upper Merion Township Chairperson Tina Garzillo and Vice Chairperson Bill Jenaway. Their township (Montgomery County, anchored by the King of Prussia Mall, population swelling past 350,000 on peak shopping days) did everything right — consulted officials in Loudoun County, Virginia, hired a planner, listened to residents, and drafted what Jenaway called a “very solid ordinance.” Ten days before adoption, a developer filed nearly a dozen data-center proposals on office- and industrial-zoned parcels. Under Pennsylvania's Municipalities Planning Code, the new ordinance will not apply to those pre-filed proposals. “You want to be able to set the rules,” Garzillo said.
The supply-side signal came from Montour County. Planning Director Gregory Molter, who also supervises Derry Township, described Talen Energy quietly buying farmland around its Montour Steam Electric Station — the same company that sold Amazon Web Services a data-center development adjacent to its Susquehanna nuclear plant for a reported $650 million last year. Derry Township planning commission meetings went from five members of the public to more than 300 when the commission voted in February to deny Talen's rezoning request for 870 acres. Montour County's own data-center zoning amendment — drafted by a committee of county planners and municipal officials — was completed in under four months and adopted earlier this month. Molter noted that even with agricultural zoning in place, the AWS-style bundle could have been approved as a special exception, which is why the amendment was necessary.
The cost barrier to doing this work is the problem that rarely gets reported: Molter put professional assistance for a data-center zoning amendment at $30,000 to $150,000 — “out of reach for smaller municipalities.” The efficient fix is to borrow from neighbors who've already paid. Garzillo specifically cited a joint guide developed by Montgomery County and Chester County as “a resource available to municipalities across the commonwealth.” State Rep. Robert Matzie (D-Beaver) announced last month the passage of his House Bill 1834, which he describes as Pennsylvania's first regulatory framework for data centers — the state-level scaffolding under which township ordinances now sit.
What You Can Do
Request the Montgomery County / Chester County joint data-center guide. This is the single most replicable work product referenced at the panel. For any Pennsylvania municipality beginning to draft, it saves meaningful time and money.
Reach out to townships that already have ordinances. Molter's explicit recommendation. Upper Merion (Montgomery Co.), Covington (Lackawanna Co.), Amwell (Washington Co., hearing May 14), and Montour County (county-level amendment) are all current examples. Borrow the scaffolding; adjust to local conditions.
Move faster than the ordinary calendar allows. Upper Merion is the warning. If a township is drafting, push to hearing and adoption as fast as the MPC's procedural requirements permit — not on a comfortable six-to-nine-month cycle. Pennsylvania's pending-ordinance doctrine offers no coverage; other states vary, so verify locally.
Watch for adjacent-parcel land acquisition near existing power plants. The Talen / Susquehanna / Montour pattern is the early-warning indicator for a behind-the-meter data-center play. Any nuclear, large gas, or large coal plant in Pennsylvania is a candidate. Communities near such plants should treat quiet farmland purchases as a signal to begin zoning work immediately.
Track HB 1834 implementation. Ask your township solicitor or county planning commission how Rep. Matzie's new state framework interacts with local ordinances — specifically whether state-level preemption is triggered for data centers above any size threshold. That boundary defines what local tools remain.
Community Takeaway
The Upper Merion story is the procedural insight that deserves the most weight. A township that did the work still fell ten days short to a developer filing, and under Pennsylvania law, those filings lock in under existing zoning regardless of what comes next. The practical lesson: drafting speed matters more than drafting quality past a certain threshold of care. A merely good ordinance adopted before the filing is worth more than a perfect ordinance adopted after.
The cost-barrier story is the one the panel made explicit that should change how funders and county associations think about leverage. Thirty thousand dollars is a real line item for a rural Pennsylvania township. The fix — a Montgomery/Chester-style joint guide produced once and shared across hundreds of municipalities — is the kind of infrastructure that lives most naturally at the county-commission or state-association level. Township-by-township funding of ordinance drafting is the inefficient layer; model-ordinance work at the association level is where a modest investment produces the widest reach.
The Talen / AWS story is the supply-side question crystallized. A utility or generation owner with multiple plants and transmission assets can move farmland, package it with power, and sell the bundle to a hyperscaler for hundreds of millions without triggering state review, as long as local zoning allows it. The 870-acre denial in Derry Township proves the local layer can still stop it — but only if zoning is in place before the land changes hands. Ohio, West Virginia, and the rest of the Appalachian gas basin share the same structural setup.
Sanko's closing observation is the reason any of this matters politically: residents don't show up at the state capitol in numbers that move legislators. They show up at the township building. The most consequential public-participation venue on data-center policy in Pennsylvania right now is a Tuesday-night meeting of a seven-person board in an exurban county most Pennsylvanians couldn't find on a map — and that is equally true in Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina.
Source: Pennsylvania Capital-Star (States Newsroom), April 21, 2026, April 21, 2026.