The Most Industrialized Borough in Delco Just Wrote a Data Center Ordinance

Absentees from the meeting: President Cheryl Everngham, Solicitor Mark Much, Councilman John Johnson, Councilwoman Josephine Laird

Marcus Hook introduced a data center ordinance

“Personally, you can throw me under the bus because I do support data centers.”

VP Michael Manerchia continued, “as long as they’re controlled, it’s inevitable. What we’re trying to do and what you’re trying to do, not stopping them, but we have to control…you’re not going to stop them. One way or another, they’re going to go someplace. What we have to come up with is rules to control how they’re built, where they’re built, and why they’re built.”

What the ordinance does

The first draft was posted online today.

Closed loop cooling is required. Facilities have to use a closed loop system, air cooled, reclaimed water, treated wastewater or stormwater, specifically to “minimize reliance on potable water supplied by Chester Water Authority or other public water source.”

Ratepayers are protected in writing. Any rate increase or expenditure tied to capacity the applicant needs “will be the sole responsibility of the applicant and not passed onto existing ratepayers.” And electric rates “shall be noted and fully absorbed by the applicant.”

That matters more than anything else in the document to be honest. The whole mechanism by which data centers raise your bill is that grid usage get socialized across every ratepayer.

You cant sneak in a power plant. Any energy generation system supplying a data center during normal operations…solar, wind, fossil fuel or nuclear…is explicitly not part of the data center use and has to be separately approved under its own zoning.

Another important loophole closed…where a facility gets approved and then builds its own gas turbines next door as an “accessory use.”

A sound study six months after opening the facility needs to meet a standard. Then a compliance report to the borough every three years.

This reads as a report requirement for existing data centers…like a report card that they owe the township with no teeth.

The rest: Twenty acre minimum tract. 250k square foot building max, 60 feet tall. 500 feet from residential, meeting sound maximums. 1000 feet from another data center. 50 foot riparian buffers from any stream, wetland or 100 year floodplain.

Generator testing restrictions, a water supply feasibility study, and more. And applicants have to pursue a Community Benefits Agreement in good faith, covering local hiring, emergency services engagement, and contributions to a community support fund.

Where it falls behind…

The 500 foot setback is the countys floor. At the first county planning meeting where they reviewed data center ordinances…staff recommended 500 feet to Newtown and admitted (on the record) they picked it because it “seemed middle of the road.”

Concord’s draft requires 900 feet from schools, churches, hospitals and similar.

Marple requires 1000 feet from residential uses or districts or any sensitive receptor, and another 1000 feet from all other property and roads.

There’s also no utility curtailment agreement. The county recommended one to Newtown and Concords draft has one written out. When there’s a grid emergency the facility auto drops to “maintenance only,” capped at 10% of capacity. The same happens if a water provider declares an emergency.

So…Marcus Hook’s ratepayer language protects your bill, but doesn’t stop a facility from competing with your air conditioner on a HOT summer July afternoon.

And the noise standard defers entirely to Section 196-162 E. The draft requires a study by someone with data center noise expertise, accounting for cumulative sound from all equipment running at once, and compliance with that existing section.

The entire qualification is that the study “shall be conducted by someone with a relevant background in data center noise emissions.”

Concord and Marple set specific decibel levels, while Marcus Hook’s ordinance is only as protective as whatever the expert deems is sufficient.

Council is sending this to the borough planning commission and the Delaware County Planning Commission for comment. Once those come back there’s a public hearing, and…then council can vote to adopt it.

Which means there’s still time to borrow from the neighbors.

Trainer is next door

Background: In April, lawyers for Link Logistics, a company founded by Blackstone, asked Lower Chichester to confirm a data center was permitted by right on a 24 acre parcel at the old Congoleum site, on the basis that the township’s code never defines one. Lower Chi said they needed more information.

About 90% of that parcel is in Trainer. Trainer’s zoning officer issued a favorable opinion, advertised Sept 12th and again Sept 18th, which started a 30 day appeal clock.

Trainer council has repeatedly told residents it won’t discuss data centers…

A resident said last night that she emailed John Gasparo, president of Trainer council, after the Oct 1st EAC meeting and asked whether he supports data centers. He said that there is no plan, and not much else...

Trainer’s council president is still saying there’s “no plan,” but Trainer’s zoning officer already said yes in writing and advertised it twice.

So literally within about two miles from Marcus Hook, you have a borough that got a proposal and issued an opinion without discussing it in public.

Borough can’t regulate air quality

The borough already has a noise ordinance. So it can regulate noise and stormwater…but air quality is decided by the STATE, its not a borough function.

Marcus Hook is a borough that already hosts the Marcus Hook Industrial Complex and sits next to Trainer’s refinery. It’s one of the most industrially burdened square miles in Pennsylvania…and it has no capacity to measure its own air.

The thing that would actually protect residents here, enforceable limits on what backup generators emit, is held hostage in Harrisburg. The same Harrisburg that created this gold rush with a 6% sales tax exemption on computing equipment and then left every single municipality left to scramble.

Where this leaves this part of Delco

Marcus Hook, Trainer, Lower Chichester, Linwood. This area has absorbed a ton of everything the region didn’t want in their backyards. Refineries, tank farms, pipelines, a shuttered Congoleum plant (where the new data center is being proposed)…

Now it’s data centers…for the same exact reason. Already industrial land, and small governments without the resources or political capital to push back.

Check the ordinance draft on their website.

Then watch for the public hearing date after the planning commissions comment.