Mar 7, 2026 By Jon Andreassi 4 min read

South Strabane Township’s planning commission again tabled a vote on an ordinance regulating data centers.

The seven-person commission, which only votes on whether or not to make recommendations to the board of supervisors, will meet again March 19. Solicitor Dennis Makel indicated at their Thursday meeting that the commission members should finally take the vote then.

“I think we need to move on this this month,” Makel said.

According to Makel, the most recent version of the ordinance has some spelling errors. Planning commission members also wish to be able to more thoroughly review the document and consider community feedback.

Supervisors had initially planned to hold a public hearing on the data center ordinance on March 19, but Makel said it will not be happening.

“If you haven’t reviewed it at length, I always tell people it’s best to just table it for a short period of time. Because right now we can’t do a public hearing this month, because we need a site to have a public hearing for the board of supervisors. There is an issue with that. We need to find a place to do it,” Makel said.

It is possible the supervisors will hold that public hearing on March 31, provided they can secure a venue.

Work toward regulating data centers came as a result of CNX Resources looking to sell a 1,400-acre tract of land off of Zediker Station Road. Real estate firm JLL has marketed the property specifically as being an ideal location for a data center powering artificial intelligence operations.

The land has not been sold, and there are no current plans to build a data center in South Strabane Township.

Several residents spoke at Thursday’s meeting, and reiterated many of the concerns voiced at a special hearing last week. Those who live in the township are concerned about energy usage and pollution, as well as the noise and light that a data center would produce.

One change made in the draft ordinance between last week’s meeting and Thursday was restoring the original setback requirements. The most recent version of the ordinance requires that buildings be 1,000 feet away from residential homes, up from 850 feet.

However, a letter from a lawyer representing CNX states that the company finds even 850 feet to be too stringent of a requirement.

Pittsburgh-based attorney Blaine Lucas sent the letter to the township late last month and raised several issues with the ordinance.

“Unfortunately, rather than temper the onerous requirements contained in previous drafts, the Draft Ordinance significantly expands them and places unjustifiably excessive burdens on data centers. Taken in the aggregate, the requirements of the Draft Ordinance, if adopted, would effectively ban data centers in the Township, in clear violation of long-established Pennsylvania land use law prohibiting exclusionary zoning ordinances,” Lucas wrote.

In addition to the setback requirements, Lucas also takes issue with requirements that electric and water providers are able to provide a letter stating they have the capacity to support a data center.

Lucas also writes that data buildings being limited to 90,000 square feet is exclusionary.

“Modern data center buildings typically are 200,000 to 350,000 square feet in size. In sharp contrast. The Township Zoning Ordinance places no building size restrictions on commercial or industrial buildings,” Lucas writes. “The Draft Ordinance is irrational and discriminatory, particularly in the context of CNX’s large Zediker Station property. Moreover, limiting the size of a building will result in more buildings and more required spacing between buildings, thus sterilizing and wasting more land.”

This week, the Pittsburgh-based Allegheny Conference on Community Development released an analysis of the potential economic impact of a data center at the Zediker Station property.

According to the Allegheny Conference, such a project would support 2,364 “full-time equivalent jobs,” including 1,686 construction jobs. Those critical of data center development have argued that construction jobs would be temporary.

The Allegheny Conference also claims that a data center would result in $67.5 million in tax revenue across all levels of government, including $4.3 million for Washington County.

South Strabane Township has the data center ordinance available on its website for public viewing.