The solicitor who replaced the old one is the developer’s personal friend. His family’s lawsuits were still in court nine months before the application. The county planning director’s wife worked for the commissioner who sits on the same board as her husband. And a company with no discoverable legal existence holds an option on the power plant site.
Clinton Township, Wayne County, Pennsylvania. Population 2,040. No zoning ordinance. One land development ordinance, last updated in 2008.
On April 30, 2026, Linde Corporation — a Pittston-based pipeline and infrastructure construction firm with roots in Marcellus Shale gas work — filed plans to build twenty data center buildings on 682 acres of forested wetland near the village of Browndale. Two on-site natural gas power plants. Two substations. A water treatment facility. Peak water demand approaching a million gallons a day, drawn not from the wells the rest of the township depends on but from Pennsylvania American Water. The parcel sits within one of only two areas in Wayne County designated as exceptional value waters. Roger’s Creek runs through it to the Lackawanna River, then the Susquehanna, then the Chesapeake Bay. Every surrounding household is on a private well.
The explosion that followed got covered — partially. The River Reporter published Scott Linde’s offer to pay for a new bridge at a February 2020 board meeting, on the road his development plans now label as the primary entrance. The Center Square obtained a conflict-of-interest waiver showing the township’s new interim solicitor, Ronald Bugaj, went to Honesdale High School with Linde, is described as his personal friend, and served for years as his legal counsel. WVIA reported the July 17 resignation of chairman Mark Lopatofsky after residents confronted him about his son’s ownership of the engineering firm seeking the township contract — a connection he had not publicly disclosed.
Every one of those stories stopped at the township line. None of them looked at the county planning director, the economic development board, the developer’s own membership in that organization, the fossil fuel consultant advising the township, or the court records showing the solicitor’s relationship with the developer was far deeper than the waiver disclosed.
What follows is what none of them reported.
About Bugaj’s Waiver
The Center Square published the waiver’s language — “previously represented Linde in various matters unrelated to the subject of this waiver” — and left it there. The paper didn’t identify the matters. Nobody did.
They’re in the public record.
The Wayne County Legal Journal for July 19, 2013 lists Ronald M. Bugaj as defense attorney for Scott Linde in case numbers 27-1999-Equity and 208-1999-Civil — a shareholder derivative lawsuit among the Linde siblings over control of Linde Enterprises, Inc., the family construction business. That case started in 1999. It didn’t end there.
The Linde family litigation was still producing appellate decisions nine months before the data center application was filed. A Pennsylvania Superior Court memorandum decision dated April 8, 2025 — Linde, S. v. Linde Enterprises, Inc., No. 1045 EDA 2024 — lays out the full arc. Scott Linde and his brother Eric have been in court, on and off, since 1999. A settlement reached on the eve of trial in 2014 required Scott to pay Eric $2 million and transfer interests in other entities and land. Scott didn’t pay. The trial court found he “never intended to purchase Eric’s stock” and that his “deceptive conduct was a pretext to avoid Eric’s 1999 derivative action.” He was ordered to pay $1.4 million immediately. He appealed. Lost. Appealed to the state Supreme Court. Lost. Filed a new lawsuit in 2019 — unjust enrichment, breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, conversion. Went to trial in 2021 and 2022. Lost on compulsory nonsuit. Appealed. Got a remand. Lost again. Appealed again. On April 8, 2025, the Superior Court affirmed. Nine months later, Scott Linde filed to build a data center.
The waiver calls Bugaj’s prior work for this man “various matters unrelated to the subject.” What it was: years of courtroom representation in a fight over Wayne County construction companies.
Bugaj/Fischer PC also operates Wayne County Abstract, a title insurance company at the same address, 308 9th Street, Honesdale. The firm’s website says so. Bugaj has personally handled over 1,000 closings as both attorney and title agent. In a county where the pool of abstractors handling large-acreage transfers is small, whether his own title company touched any deed or mortgage on the Linde parcels is a fair question. One records request to the Wayne County Recorder of Deeds would answer it.
At Bugaj’s first board meeting on May 29, he told supervisors the moratorium they’d passed the same day Linde filed probably wouldn’t survive a legal challenge. He went further: once the application is accepted as complete, he said, the township has 90 days to act or the project is automatically approved. Within one meeting, the developer’s former lawyer had cast doubt on the township’s only protective measure and put a deadline on the review process.
What the board used to know how to do
WVIA and the River Reporter covered the Lopatofsky resignation — his son’s ownership of Kiley Associates, wife Lisa holding two township roles, resident Linda Zefran testifying that Linde Corporation itself had recommended Kiley to her years earlier for the Browndale Sidewalk Project. They covered the scene. They didn’t cover the pattern.
This board used to catch conflicts on its own.
At a September 2018 meeting, the supervisors were weighing paving bids. Wayco came in lowest — cheaper, and offering 2.5 inches of paving against Linde’s 2. But Supervisor Russell Curtis said he wouldn’t vote for Wayco, because the township’s own engineer, Jeff Weinberger, worked for the company. Weinberger, sitting in the audience, said the issue had come up when he was hired and he’d been assured there was no conflict as long as he didn’t help formulate the bid. A resident asked whether the board could check with the township solicitor. The supervisors moved to award Wayco the contract only if Attorney Treat and PSATS — the state township association — confirmed it was clean, with E.R. Linde Construction, Gary Linde’s company, as the fallback bid. Weinberger stood up: “I officially resign right now.” Chairman Coles asked him to hold off until the board had accurate information. Weinberger: “No, I’m out.”
That’s the standard this board once held. A resident raises a conflict question about a paving contract, and the supervisors run it past the solicitor and the state township association before voting — the award written into the motion as conditional. The engineer would rather quit than have his name near it.
Eight years later, the same board took the developer’s personal friend as solicitor without a public vote, let the chairman’s son’s firm seek the engineer contract without disclosure, and had E.R. Linde’s brother company doing township road work the whole time. The conflict machinery that stopped to vet a paving bid in 2018 didn’t stop for any of it. Residents did the catching, in 2026.
Wayne County Level
When the planning commission sent its proposed data center ordinance to the Wayne County Planning Commission for mandatory review in May 2026, the referral went to Craig Rickard — county planning director since 1991, and a board member of the Wayne Economic Development Corporation. WEDCO’s stated mission: create jobs and attract industrial investment to Wayne County.
The rest of WEDCO’s board is where the picture fills in. Alana Roberts, Regional Affairs Director for PPL Electric — the power provider in Linde’s development plans, the same PPL that appears in Clinton Township minutes back to December 2018 in connection with Flat Rock Road wind energy easements. Michael Wood of Woodland Design Associates — the firm Clinton Township hired in June 2020 for $7,500 to update the 2008 land development ordinance after Wood himself told the board it “no doubt needs updating.” The update was never completed. The 2008 ordinance was the only regulatory tool the township had when Linde filed six years later. Commissioner Brian Smith, Republican, serving since 2008, who told the February 2025 commissioners meeting: “If we had been able to drill for gas in Wayne County, we would have millions of dollars available for these sorts of recreational projects.”
There’s more.
Linde Corporation is itself a WEDCO Sustaining Member. The WEDCO member directory page at wayneeconomic.com lists the company at 118 Armstrong Road, Pittston. The listed contact: Bob Hessling, the company’s treasurer per state filings, with the email address of VP Christopher Langel. Langel is the same officer who identified a ghost company in Houston as holding an option on the adjacent 811 acres for a power plant. And UGI Utilities, the gas provider in Linde’s plans, is a WEDCO Promoter’s Club Member — a company Linde is certified to build for, sponsoring the same board.
The developer seeking approval from a township whose ordinance review feeds to the county planning director is a dues-paying member of that planning director’s economic development organization — on a board that also includes PPL’s government affairs officer, the firm that was paid to update the township’s regulations and didn’t, the commissioner who controls planning commission appointments, and the gas utility written into the development plans.
And the family ties run deeper than anyone has printed. An older version of Craig Rickard’s county staff biography, published by his own department, states he resides in Texas Township “with his wife Kim.” Kim Rickard served as the Wayne Tomorrow! Community Network Specialist, a county government position administering the economic development initiative Commissioner Smith founded. The county planning director’s wife was employed in a role created by the same commissioner who sits beside her husband on WEDCO’s board. Smith married the former Amy Rickard in 1985. Whether that makes Smith and Craig Rickard in-laws is a question nobody has asked out loud. Kim Rickard working for Smith while her husband Craig sits on Smith’s board is documented in the county’s own staff biographies. A reader has messaged us stating they are no longer married.
Tom Shepstone
The January 5, 2026 reorganization agenda lists Tom Shepstone of Shepstone Management Company, Honesdale, as Clinton Township’s “Consultant.” His public-facing operation is NaturalGasNow.org. When DeSmog asked who funds him, he said: “I’m funded by various members of the industry.” He wouldn’t name them. He’s a former staffer of Energy in Depth, a fossil fuel industry front group created by the Independent Petroleum Association of America. His firm has prepared land development ordinance documents for other Wayne County townships and consulted directly for the county commissioners.
This was the township’s planning consultant at the moment it was deciding whether to pursue zoning, complete the SALDO update, or do nothing.
The township did nothing.
And the timeline makes it worse. On November 13, 2019 — three months before Scott Linde walked into his first Clinton Township meeting — the full board voted unanimously to begin implementing zoning. Chairman Coles made the motion after the alternate solicitor warned that a company wanting to build 500-foot windmills “cannot be stopped” without it. All three supervisors said yes.
No subsequent minutes reference the initiative. It vanished.
Forest City Energy Center LLC?
Forest City Energy Center LLC is named in a February 4, 2026 email from Linde VP Langel as the company holding an option on the 811-acre parcel east of Route 247 to build a power plant. Listed address: 800 Town and Country Boulevard, Suite 500, Houston, Texas 77024. That’s Spaces CityCentre One — a coworking facility that rents desks and meeting rooms on flexible leases. The address has 248 companies registered to it.
Forest City Energy Center LLC does not appear in business registries in Texas, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Wyoming, or Nevada. No PJM Interconnection queue entry exists for a gas generation project in Wayne County. No FERC filing references the entity.
A company with no discoverable legal existence holds a financial interest in an 811-acre power plant option on exceptional value watershed, next to a billion-dollar data center proposed by a firm that has been building gas infrastructure in this region for decades.
Who stands behind it is the single most consequential undisclosed fact in this story.
SALDO Hearing
The public hearing on the SALDO amendment is July 30. Linde’s land development plan hearings are August 3 and 17. The vote on new meeting rules — including a 3-minute cap on public comment — is August 4, the day after the first hearing on the development plan itself. Every prior meeting has drawn 150 to 200 residents to a township of 2,040.
If the ordinance amendment is adopted before Linde’s application is accepted as complete, the project must comply with the new data center regulations. If the application goes first, it proceeds under the 2008 SALDO — which says nothing about data centers.
The man advising the board on which document governs went to high school with the developer, is described as his personal friend, and spent years as his lawyer. His first act as solicitor was to tell the board their moratorium might not hold — and that the clock runs 90 days.
The full documented timeline, corporate map, and source index are published in the accompanying investigative report.
This investigation was conducted using exclusively open-source, publicly available records. Every fact cited is traceable to a named public record.
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