Opinion & Analysis · Wayne County, PA
Charles Keppler and Matt Long Close the Door on Data Centers — Are Your Officials Leaving It Open?
If your elected officials were serious about signaling to data centers they aren’t welcome, they would be following Pocono Township’s lead.
A developer already showed up in Wayne County.
On April 30, the Linde Corporation submitted an application to Clinton Township’s Planning Commission to build a data center on 743 acres of forested wetland feeding directly into the Lackawanna River — less than a mile from Forest City. Residents packed two straight public meetings. Township supervisors are now scrambling to draft an ordinance and weigh a six-month moratorium on development while they figure out what to do.
The application was already on the table before the ordinance existed. That’s not bad luck. That’s what unpreparedness looks like from the other side of the negotiating table.
What Pocono Township Actually Did
Thirty miles south, Pocono Township didn’t wait. Commissioner Matt Long introduced a motion to draft a data center ordinance at his first meeting in office. It passed unanimously, with bipartisan support. Commissioner Charles Keppler then pushed to tighten it — stripping overlay zones that would have allowed data centers near the old Summit Resort and Core 5 Warehouse sites, confining any future development to industrial zones only. The ordinance also requires developers to fund decommissioning before they ever break ground.
No developer blindsided them. No crowd had to plead with their government to pay attention. They identified the threat, acted on it, and kept tightening until the protections held.
Pocono Township acted in weeks. Not years. Weeks. Two commissioners decided it was their job and got it done.
Wayne County’s Three Commissioners
Wayne County’s three commissioners — Brian Smith, James Shook, and Jocelyn Cramer — have made no public statements on data centers. Nothing in the meeting minutes. No directive to municipalities. Their March 2026 meeting covered routine county business while a developer was quietly walking an application into a township one county road away.
Of Wayne County’s 28 municipalities, 14 have no zoning ordinance at all. Not a weak one. None. That means half of Wayne County cannot legally restrict where a data center goes, how big it gets, how loud it runs, or what happens when it shuts down. A site selector with a map and an attorney can see exactly what that means.
The legal trap is already sprung somewhere nearby. In Clifton Township in Lackawanna County, a developer filed a legal challenge to the township’s zoning ordinance hours before the township announced it was updating that same ordinance. By filing first, the developer argued the new rules shouldn’t apply to their project. That case is still in court. Clinton Township residents raised the same concern about the Linde application in May — that the April 30 submission date wasn’t coincidental.
Developers know municipal law. They track planning commission agendas. When there’s nothing on the books, they move.
Harrisburg Isn’t Coming to Save You
State Sen. Rosemary Brown, who represents Wayne, Monroe, and Lackawanna counties, co-sponsored legislation in February requiring developers to meet with local officials before submitting applications. It’s a reasonable idea sitting in Harrisburg while applications hit township planning commissions today.
One Clinton Township resident at the May meeting called what’s spreading across northeastern Pennsylvania “a sadness.” People who moved to Wayne County to get away from overdevelopment are being told by their own government, through its inaction, that it might happen anyway.
A Question Worth Asking
Some people are starting to ask a harder question.
Not whether local officials were slow. Not whether they were caught off guard. But whether some of them were never really trying to stop it in the first place.
It’s a fair thing to wonder. The money attached to data center development is real — construction contracts, tax revenue, utility infrastructure upgrades, land deals. That money flows somewhere. And the politicians who control zoning, permitting, and development agreements are not invisible to the people writing the checks.
Nobody is accusing anyone of anything. But when half a county has no zoning ordinance after months of watching neighboring municipalities get overrun, and the commissioners haven’t said a word publicly, and a developer shows up with a 743-acre application already prepared — people start doing the math.
If the will is there, the timeline is short. Pocono Township proved that. Which means a long timeline tells you something too.
The residents who packed those Clinton Township meetings didn’t move to Wayne County for industrial development. They’re watching what happened in Lackawanna County. They’re watching Clifton Township fight a developer in court because it moved one day too slow. They’re paying attention in a way that some of their elected officials, apparently, have not been.
Or have been. Just not on the same side.
Your local officials represent you. Ask them where they stand on data center development — and what they’ve put in writing to prove it. If they claim to be against it, ask them when they plan to follow Pocono Township’s lead. And ask them what’s stopping them from acting right now.