Upper Burrell residents decry transparency as data center progresses despite moratorium and a lawsuit

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A yearslong effort to establish the Pittsburgh area’s largest hyperscale data center faces new hurdles — from the emergence of a data center moratorium and new zoning ordinance proposal to a lawsuit challenging the center’s current progress.

Heightened public concern has followed. More than 50 residents attended a meeting of Upper Burrell Township’s board of supervisors on Wednesday, most of whom opposed the data center.

“Alcoa brought a lot of good things to this community,” said Upper Burrell resident David Ostrosky, referring to the site’s former owner. “Bottom line is, I don’t get that vibe from these guys.”

Ostrosky and other public speakers pressed the board for more transparency about its approval processes for work permits and site plans. They also called for more answers about the current status of work there.

“It doesn’t look good when you don’t answer questions,” said Guy Fuller, a New Kensington resident who is a co-plaintiff in a lawsuit against the board.

Board Vice Chair Kenneth Slahtovsky defended the body, saying that they’re learning about data centers and how to regulate them at the same time as the rest of the community.

“I wake up in the middle of the night, turn my phone on and read data center material, because that’s all that’s on my phone these days,” he said. “I’m just telling you this board is putting the effort in.”

Data center developer TECfusions did not immediately return a call and email requesting comment.

Data center pushes past laws, residents contend

TECfusions began its expansion into Southwestern Pennsylvania in 2023, according to the Pennsylvania Department of State. Roughly a year later, TribLive reported that TECfusions had closed on several parcels located at the former Alcoa Technical Center in Upper Burrell, a Westmoreland County township of about 2,000.

Once fully operational, the sprawling, 1,400-acre campus known as TECfusions Keystone Connect could generate up to 3 gigawatts of computational power.

In May, the township established a 180-day moratorium on new data center development. The pause, however, does not apply to building permits the township already granted TECfusions for work related to Building J, which is already live and providing computational power to an unnamed tenant, according to TribLive’s reporting and a press release shared by the company. The permits allowed TECfusions to do work inside the building, as well as replace old generators and chillers housed in and around the building.

The moratorium also did not prevent the township’s supervisors from approving a land development plan for the building on Aug. 5. The approved plan allows TECfusions to make electrical and mechanical upgrades, as well as door and hallway alterations.

“They are not doing anything for the hyperscale data center,” Slahtovsky said. “They are not doing anything for that right now.” Still, the campus is already partly operational, according to reporting by TribLive.

Residents debated the township’s ability to approve the permits and land development plan at the meeting. To Fuller, the township effectively “grandfathered” TECfusions into the site instead of completing a formal zoning process first.

“Transparency is real big,” he said. “We ask a simple question. It would only require a simple answer. Everybody looked at each other. Nobody had an answer.”

That decision is the subject of a land use appeal submitted by Protect PT, an environmental advocacy organization, as well as Fuller and fellow New Kensington resident Allen Uhler, to the Westmoreland County Court of Common Pleas. The plaintiffs say the board of supervisors should’ve required TECfusions to go before the zoning hearing board, obtain a special exception to operate on the site, then proceed with the land development plan.

Rush to regulate

Pressured by residents, supervisors established the moratorium to buy time to develop a zoning ordinance to regulate future data center development. Much of that work took place over the summer with input from residents. The planning commission approved a draft of the ordinance that those residents said they were familiar with on July 21.

Since then, a new draft ordinance has populated on the township’s website, according to Protect-PT. The draft defines data centers and limits where they can be built. It also requires the developers of the new center to perform noise and vibration studies.

But the introduction of a power generation requirement opens up a whole new can of worms, residents said at the meeting. Now, data center developers would be required to provide their own “baseload generation power,” or “the constant floor of power usage that never goes away,” by building new power generation sites or repurposing existing ones.

Several public speakers urged the board to either include regulation of the power generation station into the data center ordinance, or pass a separate power generation station ordinance before the data center one. Slahtovsky said both should be separate, and that “my hands are full with what we have here.” The moratorium ends on Nov. 2.

Patricia Hagaman is a member of the volunteer group Save Allegheny Valley Environment, which formed around opposition to the nearby Springdale data center plans. She urged the body to combine power generation and data center regulation, noting that one can’t work without the other. Upper Burrell resident Beth Ostrosky questioned whether there’d be an established ordinance at all before time runs out.

“Are we gonna have the ordinance in place before they’re allowed to build this thing? Because I feel like we’re chasing their tails,” she said.

The township’s planning commission will meet on Sept. 15 to review the latest ordinance.

Mia Hollie is the economic development and housing reporter for Pittsburgh’s Public Source. She can be reached at mia@publicsource. org.