Pennsylvania residents at a town hall meeting voiced strong opposition to the rapid growth of data centers, citing inadequate zoning, tax breaks, and lack of transparency. State legislators proposed a moratorium and reforms to give communities more control.
<p>The latest example of burgeoning opposition to rapid data-center development in Pennsylvania came at a town hall meeting overflowing with frustration about how the state is managing the surge.</p>
<p>As about 225 people watched, more than 20 speakers in the two-hour online forum late Wednesday spoke about resistance to an industry they blame for rising electricity prices, heavy water use, noise pollution and rural industrialization. Gov. Josh Shapiro, who has tried to thread the needle of welcoming data centers while proposing some guardrails, was a frequent target.</p>
<p>“This is a public trust and transparency issue,” said Jennifer Dusart, a small business owner and resident of Mechanicsburg, near the state capital. “Too many Americans are finding out about these projects after decisions have been made. We have been bulldozed over, and when citizens have raised concerns, they are often dismissed as uninformed, emotional or anti-progress.”</p><p><a href="https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/05/pennsylvanians-use-town-hall-meeting-to-rail-against-data-center-boom/">Read full article</a></p>
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# Pennsylvanians use town hall meeting to rail against data center boom
Source: [https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/05/pennsylvanians-use-town-hall-meeting-to-rail-against-data-center-boom/](https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/05/pennsylvanians-use-town-hall-meeting-to-rail-against-data-center-boom/)
“If you’ve got terrible ordinances in your township, and you add in bad zoning, guess what? You get a hyperscale data center,” she said\.
The surge in data center projects in Pennsylvania has been driven by tax breaks for developers, as allowed by a 2021 law that lawmakers should repeal, said Republican state Rep\. Jamie Walsh, who spoke at the town hall event\. In[Virginia](https://insideclimatenews.org/news/26102025/virginia-data-center-capital-ai-boom/), the state with the most data centers, developers have to pay a sales and use tax, but Pennsylvania doesn’t require that, he said\.
“That has made Pennsylvania a target\. In Virginia, they have to pay tax on the contents of those buildings\. Pennsylvania will never realize that\. That is why we’ve become ground zero,” said Walsh, who represents Luzerne County in northeast Pennsylvania\.
State Sen\. Katie Muth, a Democrat who represents part of the Philadelphia suburbs, plans to introduce a bill to place a three\-year moratorium on data center development so state and local governments can first study and plan for the industry\. She announced the bill in a legislative memo in February and expects to introduce it soon, a spokesman said\.
Muth told activists at the town hall that the data center industry has not done enough to fully disclose its plans to the public\. ”This has all been planned long before any of us had a clue, so don’t feel that you missed all these things,” she said\. “You were supposed to; no one wanted you to know about it\.”
Michael Sauers, a retired school teacher from Bloomsburg, southwest of Scranton, called on officials to amend the Pennsylvania Municipalities Planning Code, a regulation first published in 1970\.
“This has to be strengthened to empower communities to be able to say no to unwanted development that is being shoved down their throats,” he said\. “Communities must be empowered to reject top\-down development that gives them little or no voice in the future\.”
*This story originally appeared on[Inside Climate News\.](https://insideclimatenews.org/news/14052026/pennsylvania-residents-speak-against-data-center-growth/)*
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