Chris Kelly Opinion: The data center invasion has no borders

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... I've heard the shared stakes in resisting invasive hyperscale data center development described countless times over the past year or so, but rarely as plainly as Valley View School Board Director Joseph Farrell put it on Wednesday evening. The occasion was a special meeting called to discuss whether the district should continue its participation in litigation against data centers and power plants proposed on the district's doorstep. The cash-strapped district has no money budgeted for what will likely be a protracted, costly legal battle. In an executive session that delayed the start of the open meeting by about 15 minutes, Solicitor Larry Moran Jr. expressed confidence the district and its allies will ultimately prevail, but counseled directors to consider the costs. The board privately decided to stay in the fight, which resulted in the withdrawal of a laughably vague public agenda item, which read: 'Motion to take any other action the board deems necessary and appropriate relating to litigation opposing nearby data center and power plant development.' I am not making that up. Farrell was much more direct, sharing that a concern raised in executive session was that if Archbald is ultimately successful in fending off invasive data center development, a neighboring community (he referenced Olyphant, which is in the Mid Valley School District) might end up stuck with them. In that scenario, Valley View would get a share of the pollution and other negative impacts, but none of the money paid in exchange. Farrell addressed the residents in the room, but his message was intended for a regional audience. 'I'm going to ask you people … Make this a community thing,' he said. 'Get behind Lackawanna County. Lackawanna County is doing a study now or they have a request for proposals for an air quality and public health impact assessment. Get behind them.' (Last week, the Mid Valley School District issued a request for proposals for a 'baseline environmental sound/noise study' of the school complex on Underwood Road in Throop.) 'This is not just an Archbald thing,' Farrell said. 'This is not just a Valley View thing. This is an entire Northeastern Pennsylvania thing.' Farrell's point, as I took it, is that none of the communities in Our Valley can afford to accept what developers are so sloppily selling. Hyperscale data centers and power plants built anywhere in the region will impact everyone in Northeast Pennsylvania. I'm one among many voices who have hammered on this obvious truth for months, but it was encouraging to hear it spoken by an elected official who'd rather not be in the spotlight or in the crosshairs of ruthless corporate invaders. Speaking of ruthless corporate invaders, the most noticed and least welcome presence at the special meeting was Edmund J. Campbell Jr., lead attorney for Brooklyn-based Cornell Realty Management LLC's Wildcat Ridge Data Center Campus, the most objectionable of the six data center proposals targeting Archbald. Of the 90-plus data centers proposed in Lackawanna County, 51 would be sited in Archbald, including 30 proposed along a roughly 1-mile stretch of Eynon Jermyn Road near Valley View's intermediate, middle and high schools. A developer also plans to build a 400-megawatt power plant on the road, about half a mile from the nearest school. Campbell sat in the back and appeared to take notes on his cellphone, but his presence sent a message some residents read as a threat: Big Data is watching. It's a natural interpretation, considering Campbell and the Cornell team recently dropped all pretense of goodwill and fair play in favor of shameless thuggery, demanding the recusals of six Archbald Borough Council members over their ' bias ' against the industrialized annihilation of their town. Campbell recently filed a motion for the recusal of the seventh council member. The strategy is clear: If you can't win on the merits, cheat. If you can't convince local control, remove it. It's a desperate, epically cynical 'hail Mary' meant to force the defilement of a community against its clearly stated will. I can't imagine it surviving court scrutiny, but the verdict on Campbell and Cornell is in: They are not our friends and never will be. Some lines between friend and foe are more blurry. Across the region, a handful of lawyers and paid consultants are representing local governments and data center developers simultaneously. During a public comment period Moran arbitrarily shortened to weed out 'cumulative' statements making the same point, Archbald resident Geralyn Esposito confronted the solicitor over his work on behalf of invasive data center developers. Moran and his firm also represent the developers behind Project Gold , an $18 billion data center campus that would consist of six one-story, 65-foot-tall data centers, an up to 900-megawatt battery storage yard and two switchyards/substations in Covington and Clifton townships. 'Should you not recuse yourself from litigation because you represented data centers and now you're trying to represent the school board and the school district?' Esposito asked. 'Isn't that a conflict of interest? And how do we know that you're going to do a job that is correct for the students and for the parents and for everybody that lives in this school district?' Moran took offense to being called out for working both sides of the divide. 'Your whole premise is flawed,' he said. 'It's an attack on me professionally … you have to trust that I don't want to be disbarred and that I can advocate and represent my clients with the fullest ability. 'I can make an argument that I'm probably the best lawyer to oppose data center developers because I've been a land-use lawyer for 20 years and I know the Municipal Planning Code like the back of my hand.' In legal terms, whether Moran's advocacy for conflicting interests constitutes a conflict of interest is a complicated question, but a simple one when judged through a practical lens. Legally, it is apparently permissible for Moran to represent a school district battling invasive developers and invasive developers targeting another community. As always, 'legally permissible' is the lowest acceptable standard. 'Legal' and 'moral' are not synonymous. Citizens naturally have a hard time trusting an advocate for both sides. Moran chose both roles and the scrutiny and suspicion that came with them. Moran told the audience stopping data center development is actually 'easy' compared to getting them approved. 'I'm here saying we're in this fight and we're winning this fight,' he said. 'We can continue to do this, see it through and we'll fulfill our professional obligation and represent this board and we will be successful. But it's expensive, and we don't have it budgeted. 'And does the community still support that fight knowing that –' The rest of Moran's statement was cut off by the crowd spontaneously voicing its support for staying in the fight at any cost, because nothing could be more expensive than losing. A few noted that citizen-driven grassroots groups like Stop Archbald Data Centers are funding their fight through donations. Crying poverty does not absolve school directors from their obligations to the citizens they swore oaths to serve. Cornell and other developers know the district is broke, which makes the board vulnerable to being bought off — not necessarily for individual enrichment, but because they are charged with keeping the district financially viable. Armed with virtually unlimited money, developers are free to make small towns and school districts offers they can't afford to refuse. The cumulative effects of any small town or school district accepting such an offer reach far beyond their borders, condemning their neighbors to consequences no amount of money can justify. Joseph Farrell is right. The fight against invasive hyperscale data center development is a Northeast Pennsylvania thing. It's a Pennsylvania thing. It's an American thing. It's a human thing. NOTE: The Lower Lackawanna Valley Citizens Alliance ( LLVCA ) will host a public information open house today from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Old Forge Fire Department, 375 Milwaukee Ave. CHRIS KELLY, The Times-Tribune columnist, will see you there. Contact the writer: ckelly@scrantontimes.com; @cjkink on X; Chris Kelly, The Times-Tribune on Facebook; and @chriskellyink on Bluesky.