Activists Campaign Against Data Centers In Plymouth Twp. Ahead Of Thursday Meeting

PLYMOUTH TOWNSHIP, PA — Activists in Plymouth Township sent out billboard trucks around the region this week to advertise the social and environmental damages of artificial intelligence data centers.

The campaign comes ahead of Thursday night's hearing on the second proposal to redevelop the former Cleveland Cliffs steel plant into a hyperscale data center on 900 Conshocken Road. The meeting will be held at 7 p.m. Colonial Middle School.

National grassroots organizations like Make Big Tech Pay have coordinated with major bipartisan community efforts in Plymouth Township to fight back against the center.

The truck advertising the date and time of the data center hearing Thursday night was parked in the local Wawa and drove around the Plymouth and Whitemarsh areas on Wednesday and Thursday.

Activists say that families on the grid that serves the greater Conshohocken area could ultimately pay $70 more per month.

Plymouth Township's municipal council, which advised the zoning hearing board to reject the proposal, said they are more immediately concerned with health and safety impacts.

"Council believes protections are reasonable and necessary for a project of this magnitude," the council said in a statement. "Unless and until sufficient safeguards are incorporated into an enforceable agreement acceptable to the township, council intends to continue its opposition to the application before the Zoning Hearing Board."

Thousands of signatures have been added to petition to stop the development.

Developer Brian O'Neill, who is also behind the massive data center cluster proposal in nearby Upper Merion, has been in close contact with Gov. Shapiro's administration about loosening rules against data center zoning and even urging the right to appeal be stripped from residents, according to emails obtained in a Right to Know request by the advocacy group Concerned Citizens of Montour County.

Activists say that tech giants like Amazon and Google, who are the "secret" forces behind many data centers, have already taken in some $30 million in subsidies from Pennsylvania taxpayers due to Gov. Shapiro's data center-friendly policies.

While data centers have always existed in some form to power the Internet, the massive and controversial projects of the past few years drain resources and have social, environmental, and infrastructure consequences at a scale far beyond that of their predecessors. Some 70 percent of Pennsylvania residents in a recent Emerson College poll said they were opposed to the construction of more data centers.

Colonial Middle School is located on 716 Belvoir Road in Plymouth Meeting.