This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment.

Plans to build more than 50 data centers in Pennsylvania face opposition from a growing network of community groups, environmental activists and state lawmakers from both major parties.

Driven by concerns about the industry’s huge electricity demands, heavy water consumption, use of polluting diesel generators for backup power and industrialization of rural areas, an increasing number of grassroots groups are mobilizing in an attempt to stop or at least delay the massive buildout.

The opponents say the popular outcry against data centers is stronger than previous community campaigns against the resource-rich state’s extractive industries, which include coal and natural gas.

“It’s been unbelievable,” said Karen Feridun, co-founder of Better Path Coalition, a nonprofit that advocates for clean energy and protests against data centers and other sources of climate pollution. “Having done this for 19 years, and worked on fracking, I have never seen the kind of response where everybody is opposed.”

Feridun said the growing number of critics has been driven in part by a public perception that the government is encouraging the industry to move into the state while paying little attention to the impact on people who live near the planned data centers. A Facebook group she set up Jan. 9 to help Pennsylvanians organizing against data centers quickly topped 500 members.

“These people are seeing firsthand what happens when government comes in and makes deals with these big companies and really not consult the public to find out if they are really OK with it, or to find out what they would need to see happen for them to be OK with it,” Feridun said. “It’s just been sort of dumped on everybody.”

According to Data Center Proposal Tracker, a website that tracks public plans for data centers, 52 projects are in the early planning stages, officially proposed or under construction throughout the state. They include an Amazon Web Services data center in Salem Township, for which the company would pay $18 billion to Talen Energy to supply up to 1.92 gigawatts of nuclear power from an adjacent plant through 2042; a plan to construct 22 buildings on two campuses covering more than 470 acres at Archbald borough in northeast Pennsylvania; and the Aliquippa Data Center Campus in western Pennsylvania’s Beaver County on the site of a former steel mill.

Neither the Data Center Coalition, an industry group, nor Pennsylvania Data Center Partners, a developer of large data centers, responded to requests for comment about local pushback. Industry supporters have said that the growth brings jobs and significant tax revenue.

Data center opponents scored a notable victory in February when commissioners in Montour County in central Pennsylvania denied a proposed rezoning that would have allowed construction of a data center.

Sam Burleigh, a resident who helped to lead public opposition to the plan, attributed the commission’s ruling to the strength of that opposition. Although his pressure group, Concerned Citizens of Montour County, started in August 2025 with only four members, it soon gathered hundreds of supporters across the county.

Four days after the group formed, its first town hall meeting drew some 120 people, Burleigh said. A petition to commissioners the group organized was signed by about 3,000 people, or about twice the total population of the township where the land in question is located.

How lawmakers are responding

Democratic state Sen. Katie Muth said in a February memo to fellow senators that she will soon propose a three-year moratorium on data center construction to give local governments—which make land-use decisions—time to evaluate risk, enact protective ordinances and update zoning.

“A three-year moratorium is a measured, responsible and necessary step to protect public health, safety, fiscal stability and environmental integrity while ensuring that future decisions are informed, coordinated and equitable,” Muth’s memo said.

Across the aisle, state Rep. Jamie Walsh, a Republican representing parts of Luzerne County, said he too will soon introduce a package of bills to regulate the development of data centers. “These proposals are not anti-technology,” Walsh wrote in a memo. “They are pro-community and pro-taxpayers, grounded in the simple idea that long-term development must serve the public interest and provide real benefits to local communities.”

Pennsylvania’s House Energy Committee on Monday narrowly approved a bill that would direct state officials to write a model ordinance for municipalities faced with data center applications. HB 2151, which passed 14-12 and is supported by Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, was also amended to clarify that towns would not be required to use the ordinance if the measure becomes law. The bill is opposed by environmental groups, which say it would encourage towns to allow data centers.

“We are concerned that municipalities will feel the need to use the ordinance as written and that the industry could cite it in legal challenges to more strongly worded ordinances,” said the environmental group Better Path Coalition, after the committee vote. It said the bill sets a “dangerous precedent.”

Foes of data centers also oppose HB 502, which would establish a statewide board for siting major energy projects, removing that power from towns. The bill’s supporters, including Shapiro, say a central board would speed the addition of energy resources.

Shapiro has said he wants new data centers to locate in Pennsylvania but only if they bring their own power or pay for the extra power they would take from the grid. In a speech supporting his proposed budget for fiscal 2026-27, Shapiro also said data center developers should be transparent with the communities where they hope to operate, and must hire and train local workers. Those who meet those demands will get the state’s “full support,” the governor said.

His spokesperson did not respond to a request for further comment.

Two weeks ago, Lackawanna County commissioner Bill Gaughan urged Shapiro in an open letter to support calls such as Muth’s for a three-year moratorium on data-center construction. Gaughan, a Democrat, called the planned centers “facilities of extraordinary size and unprecedented infrastructure demand” that promise advances in technology and potentially extra tax revenue, but also raise unresolved questions about energy and water use, environmental impact and strain on housing and local infrastructure.

“The intensity and consistency of public concern have been unmistakable,” Gaughan wrote.

He urged the governor and the legislature to pause approvals for new large-scale data centers to allow time to study their environmental and resource impacts and develop statewide standards.

“A temporary moratorium is not an act of hostility toward innovation,” he wrote. “It is an act of prudence.”

“A lot of emotion, a lot of concern”

Opposition to the Montour County data center rezoning was driven by specific local factors, including its proposed siting next to a nature preserve and a residential area, but it was particularly motivated by fear that big business, aided by state government, would build the project regardless of local concerns, said Burleigh, 67, the Concerned Citizens of Montour County co-founder.

“When you get out in the country like this, everybody knows someone,” said Burleigh, who works in a poultry hatchery. “Some farms have been owned by the same family for six or seven generations. There’s a lot of emotion, a lot of concern, and that really drove this thing hard.”

Burleigh said his group’s success was based in part on a statewide culture of resistance to extractive industries.

“Here in Pennsylvania, history has been repeating itself, and everybody has pretty much had enough of it,” he said. “First, the timber industry stripped the hills of the trees; nobody liked that but it provided jobs and incomes. Then coal mines, then fracking, then we had solar panels. And everybody said, ‘Enough is enough.’ People say, ‘Last time they came in, yes, they gave us jobs, but now look at the mess we have.’”

Past resistance efforts meant that residents already knew how to file public information requests and take other actions to push back, Burleigh said.

But he fears that the local battle isn’t over. Although critics were elated by the commission’s vote, they may in the future have to fight plans for data centers on land that’s already zoned for industrial use, a harder argument to win.

In Mifflinville in central Pennsylvania, there’s no current plan for a data center but local officials are considering a new zoning ordinance that would enable the town to reject those or other industrial projects without fear of being sued by a developer.

Mark Ryman, who owns a commercial roofing company and belongs to a group called Mifflinville Pa Concerned Citizens Network, said local people aren’t necessarily opposed to data centers but believe their developers should pay attention to local concerns.

“The impetus for the ordinance is to be ready for industrial applications in general and data centers in particular,” he said. “There would be no other impetus for it otherwise.”