Monongahela Township residents seek more chances for input on data center project
Monongahela Township residents interested in making their voices heard about a proposed power center and data center complex being built at a former Robena Mine site showed up at an advocacy meeting in Greensboro Wednesday night.
Members of the crowd of about 25 called for the township board to move its regular meetings from its 9 a.m. start time, and to incorporate resident suggestions into its proposal for a community benefits agreement.
Announced last year, the Project Hummingbird complex would span 1,400 acres at the former Robena Mine site along the Monongahela River.
Pittsburgh-based International Electric Power plans to install two natural gas turbines at the site generating a combined 910 megawatts.
IEP has been in discussion with customers for hyperscale centers, which feature large server arrays for data-intensive operations like cloud computing or artificial intelligence.
Essential Utilities of Bryn Mawr also plans to building a facility to treat 18 million gallons a day from the Monongahela River that will be used for the power generation facilities and the cooling systems for the data center.
In December, the Greene County Planning Commission gave approval for the first phase of site reclamation work.
Since the Planning Commission meeting, Center for Coalfield Justice has been working with residents in Monongahela Township and the community of Alicia, adjacent to the proposed site, to attend the township meetings and make their voices heard, said CCJ community organizer Christina Blasinsky.
Alicia residents Kimberly Barton said she had presented a petition to the township board to temporarily hold the meetings at a later time.
People at Wednesday’s meeting said they would like to attend the monthly meetings, but found the 9 a.m. start times to be impractical.
“They have it at such an inconvenient time, where no one can put their word in,” said Tanner Barton of Alicia. “It’s hard to get a community together to come there on a work day.”
Kimberly Barton was also concerned about the process for a community benefits agreement, in which the township would enter into an agreement with the companies involved with a complex to provide improvements or services.
Township supervisors announced they were working with McNeese Consulting on the terms of the agreement. As of August, a draft had not been completed, Blasinsky said.
A five-person committee of township residents had been set up to provide input into the plan, but has held only one informational meeting, Kimberly Barton said.
“We have since then never had a further committee meeting to help with community input,” she said. “Yet they still push on with the consulting group in making decisions on our behalf without us having a voice at the table. So I truly appreciate everybody showing up tonight. I would love to take this back to them to say, ‘Hey, there’s people interested. They do want to have their voices heard.'”
At Tuesday’s meeting, residents could record a video statement to supervisors that CCJ would play at a future township meeting. They could also submit written messages where they outlined how they wanted the township to approach the project, and what they wanted included in a community benefits agreement.
Andrea Christopher of Greensboro joined others in filling out a form Wednesday. She wants any community benefits agreement to include road funding, school maintenance and ongoing testing for air and water quality.
Overall, she said, it seems like the project is moving too fast.
“It’s a lot of movement really quickly, and I think there needs to be a little more time to weigh the benefits and negatives,” she said.
Kimberly Barton would like to see a requirement for a nearby Hazmat response team, which could otherwise take an hour to arrive, she said.
Jon Ross of Alicia worried about the potential for toxic emissions once the complex is built.
“When I was younger, that was an active coal mine over there, and they shut it down, reclaimed it,” he said. “We just finally got away from all that industrialization. It’s been a quiet town my whole life down there. Now they’re just building a giant facility over there. I think it’s going to change everything.”
In a statement Thursday afternoon, the township reiterated comments made by officials at previous meetings that work on the site has not advanced since the Planning Commission approved preliminary work in December. Earthwork going on currently is part of the regular work done by site owners Core as part of its permitting requirements, the township said.
The township also said it would not finalize a community benefits agreement until there was a company in place with which it could make an agreement, the township said.
If the project does advance, the township said, they “would gladly make arrangements for a meeting where the subject matter experts and the project the project team would present the information.”