An open house for a 15-building data center campus in Luzerne County drew hundreds of residents and elected officials.
Florida-based Fit Energy purchased 2,700 acres of land that had been mined and quarried in Newport Twp. to construct the data center campus and on-site, non-combustion natural gas fuel cells. The township approved zoning for the campus in August, despite objections from residents.
The company held an open house on Wednesday to be “open and transparent,” said CEO Joel Leonoff.
"We're a partner here, and we want to be communicative. We want to be part of the community. This is a massive project, and we want to be able to calm the waters a little bit. So we thought it was important,” he said.
Investment in Newport Twp.
Right at 6 p.m. hundreds of residents packed into the hallway of the Greater Nanticoke Area High School. A semi-oval of display boards were propped up outside the school’s auditorium. They took turns at the boards and asking project officials questions.
The first board asked residents to press a push pin into a map of the area just south of Nanticoke to indicate where they live.
Brenda Grabowski lives in the Lee section of Newport Twp. and very close to where the campus is proposed. She’s worried about noise from the proposed campus.
"It's very quiet where we live. I hang out on my back porch, drink coffee with the deer. You know, the only thing we hear are our dogs barking back and forth,” she said.
Traffic also concerns her.
One of the displays said traffic volumes will vary by construction phase and activity and that long-term operational traffic is minimal and limited to site staff and routine deliveries.
Grabowski feels the township officials did everything related to the project behind closed doors. She said she wishes they asked the community for their input.
In a statement provided to press from Fit Energy, Newport Twp. Manager Joe Hillan said the supervisors have been “proactive in their response to promote development in appropriately zoned sections of the township that respects community input and promotes investments that create new jobs and new local tax revenue that enhance the quality of life for all residents.”
“We welcome this company’s investment in our community and appreciate Fit Energy’s willingness to work with the township to address any and all community concerns,” Hillan’s statement says.
Who is Fit Energy?
Leonoff said Fit Energy supplies energy for AI data centers or companies that have large computational needs, like Microsoft or Anthropic.
He said they look for land in places that are “data center friendly.”
"Pennsylvania is very data center friendly and believes in, I guess, in the oncoming momentum related to building data centers," he said.
He said Fit Energy doesn't build the data centers but rather partners with companies who do to build on land that they own.
For the Newport Twp. campus, Leonoff said they are working with Montreal-based, 5C, which describes itself as one of North America’s largest AI digital infrastructure providers.
He said the ownership group that owns Fit Energy also owns 5C.
The plans
The display boards dug into the company’s plans for the campus. It will be built-out over years on land off Main Road that borders the Susquehanna River. The project will restore the mine land, according to the displays.
"It's not land that is forest land with animals and wildlife, (it) is just land that ultimately has been idle for a while,” Leonoff said. "But it's very convenient in that it presents a great opportunity for us to leverage what we do and not disrupt nature."
The company expects the noise level to only reach around 40 dBa at the property line, which they describe as the sound of a small theater or large conference room.
As for power, the campus will use FuelCell Energy’s energy blocks, which convert fuels, like natural gas, into electricity and heat through a chemical process that includes no combustion.
For example, natural gas is pumped into an energy block. The gas reacts electrochemically with carbonate fuel cells. The cells carry a charge to create electricity, according to FuelCell Energy. The process is quiet, since there are no moving parts inside the stacks which make up the energy block.
Because of that, the process creates very little to no pollution, according to the company.
However, electric and natural-gas infrastructure will also be needed to support the campus’ power needs. And the campus will use diesel-powered backup generators in the case of an emergency.
Jobs and taxes
There will be a community benefits agreement with Newport Twp., Leonoff said, which will focus on “eight or nine categories of community-oriented contributions.”
"It's going to create a very significant amount of jobs, and it's going to create better education and better vocational opportunities," he said. "And I'd say that it's going to reinvigorate this economic community, and it's going to be significant.”
Fit Energy projects that the campus will create 96 permanent jobs per building, which pay $78,400 a year.
The company says one building will create around 8,600 construction jobs, 1,660 indirect jobs and 2,300 induced jobs, which are created in the broader community. They also anticipate the annual local tax revenue — again for one building — could be $6.4 million, with the Greater Nanticoke Area School District receiving $3.35 million a year.
"This is such a massive opportunity in a world that's changing, where AI is growing, and this community has the opportunity to embrace it and be a part of it and to reemerge as a leader," Leonoff said.
Congressman weighs in
State Rep. Alec Ryncavage, R-119, whose district covers Newport Twp., and Fern Leard, who is running for state representative in the 120th district, were at the open house.
So was U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan, who said he was at the open house on a fact-finding mission.
"Just like you know the hundreds of, maybe not thousands of people, that are here, because we have no idea who the principals of this development are," he said.
Bresnahan talked about his Local Control and Protections Act, which he introduced in the house in June.
The law would curb the ability of large corporations “to litigate and attempt to overturn local decisions regarding data centers and ensure approved developments maintain a benefit to the community,” according to his office.
“It has to come down to the community, the neighborhoods, the people who live there need to decide what they want to live next to, and how it's going to impact and affect their home," he said. "And that at the end of the day needs to be the finite decision.”
Questions left unanswered
Grabowski said the project officials who were available to chat with at the open house did not answer her questions.
"They'd say, ‘go ask somebody else’, or you know, ‘go to the next station, you'll get that answer,’ so basically, I found out nothing,” she said.
Her neighbor, Karen Samuels, felt the same way. Samuels, like Grabowski and most of the residents, use well water.
Samuels asked for a guarantee that their water would not be impacted by the campus. She said she was told they couldn’t guarantee that.
At the end of the series of displays highlighting different attributes of the planned campus, sat a comment box. She was told to fill out a paper and submit it in the box.
"I don't want a comment form. I want a person. I'm here tonight, and there is no person here to talk to," Samuels said.
Fit Energy has set up a website with information, visit https://newportdatacenter.com/
