By Karen Melton, Southeastern Pennsylvania Group; Sylvanian Volunteer
Two aspects of giant data centers are regularly in the news – they use huge amounts of electricity and water. There are even more issues to be concerned about – noise, air pollution, light pollution, water pollution, land use and conflicted elected officials. Data centers are nothing new; it is the scale of these facilities, measured in hundreds of acres (thousands at the Homer City plant in Indiana County, Pennsylvania) and millions of square feet of built space, that turn routine aspects of a new development such as electricity and water use into cause for concern. According to an article in Livescience.com “By 2030, data centers could rise to sixth in the world for energy consumption, which would have a land footprint the size of Connecticut and release emissions comparable to those of the U.K. in 2025, depending on how much renewable energy is in the mix.”
Pennsylvania is the location for 66 of 1,500 data centers being developed around the country according to the Data Center Proposal Tracker. Undoubtedly there are many more being considered.
Cooling – Data centers must deal with the huge quantities of heat generated by chips and servers running around the clock. Cooling systems may be based on air, water or chemicals. Some water-based systems use fresh water while others pass it through a continuous loop. Regardless of the design, very large amounts of water are involved, and data centers are being built in many places that are already stressed for water. Some cooling systems discharge large amounts of water containing chemical residues.
Rooftop air-based condenser array cooling systems spew hot air and have been found to raise temperatures as much as 4 degrees Fahrenheit for a third of a mile or more, literally changing the local ecology, and adding to our already overheating planet. There have been multiple studies of this data center ‘heat island effect’.
Water- An article in the publication Space Daily included an estimate that a single 100-word AI generated email requires about a bottle of water. This number includes both the use of water in the data center itself, and the water involved in generating the electricity required to power it, with the latter number almost never considered when water use is reported. A large-scale AI data center can consume as much water as a community of 10,000 including agricultural uses.
The Environmental Health Project provided these examples of data centers sited in water stressed communities “. . . a 2025 report by SourceMaterial and The Guardian found that Google has seven active data centers in water-scarce areas of the U.S. and was planning to build six more. Prior to this, in 2023, the state of Arizona revoked construction permits for new homes due to a scarcity of groundwater in Maricopa County, where Meta has one data center, Microsoft has two data centers, and Google has one data center with a second in development.”
Power – 50,000 residents in Lake Tahoe have been told by NV Energy to find another source of electricity in 2027 when it will begin diverting power to several data centers instead. Most people assume that whatever alternative is found will be significantly more expensive. That may be a worst case scenario but with demand outpacing supply, consumer bills are rising. In Pennsylvania the Public Utility Commission has adopted a ‘framework’ requiring large users to pay for the new or upgraded infrastructure required to deliver their power. At the Homer City site currently under construction, transmission lines connecting the former coal-fired power plant to the grid are one of its biggest assets.
Pollution – Data Centers generate many different types of pollution. And again, the enormous size of these hyperscale facilities makes all the difference. In order to maintain operations in case of a power outage, a large number of diesel generators are typically part of the infrastructure. When running they are loud and produce significant air pollution. Even during normal operations large-scale HVAC systems can produce significant noise, enough to disrupt both humans and wildlife. And if a data center installs gas turbines to produce its own power, they generate both noise and emissions.
Data Centers typically surround themselves with bright outside lighting with no consideration for light pollution and no industry standards such as using shields and directing lights downward. Artificial nighttime light is a significant disrupter for many wildlife species.
Land Use – Hyperscale data centers are large campuses so there is nowhere for them to hide, although some are located on previous industrial sites. The Homer City site, being built on what was previously the largest coal-fired power plant in PA, will now be the largest gas-fired power plant in the country, supplying a 3,200-acre data center campus. When data centers are built based on proximity to power sources, they inevitably end up in the same environmental justice communities already impacted by fossil fuel-related pollution.
Conflicted Local Governments – With all the bad press and mounting public opposition, data center developers are looking to keep their plans quiet and have been pressuring local officials to sign non-disclosure agreements. Local governments can establish zoning regulations (and many are), but they cannot prohibit data centers. And the taxes that are paid by a data center compared to unused, agricultural, or former industrial land can be game-changing money for a local government.
Harrisburg – A number of bills have been introduced in both the House and Senate, dealing with specific aspects of data center policy -- some have already been passed by the House. You can read details about several of them here. An article in Spotlight PA quotes Senate Majority Leader Pittman as saying he doesn’t “think we should be looking at individual bills right now” on data centers. The article also provides the very disingenuous response from a trade group called the Data Center Coalition – that various proposed regulations would create a different set of rules for data centers than exist for any other business, as if a hyperscale data center consuming the same amount of power and water as an entire town is just another ordinary business.
This blog was included as part of the July 2026 Sylvanian newsletter. Please click here to check out more articles from this edition!