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municipalauthorities.org │ 27 “Right now, there’s a real lack of regulation,” Fiedler told Spotlight PA. “So if we’re able to get any of these bills through … that would make a real difference.” Pushback from lawmakers Positions on data centers are not cleanly divided by party affiliation. Some of the most vocal legislative opponents represent districts where they will be located. State Representative Jamie Walsh (R., Luzerne) opposes a data center that is planned in his district, saying he’s seen “corporate bullying” on the part of developers. “The Pennsylvania taxpayer, quite frankly, has had enough,” Walsh told Spotlight PA. Walsh said that residents are concerned about water and electricity costs and closeness to residential housing. He said he’s not opposed to all data centers, but argued they need to respect the desires of the community. “If a municipality feels that it can support a data center with water [usage], electricity isn’t going to shoot through the roof … and the community is OK with the zone it’s going in, then it should be left up to that community,” Walsh said. Walsh intends to introduce legislation that would establish standards to ensure data center development in the state “occurs responsibly, transparently, and with real community involvement.” A memo seeking support for the proposal did not detail what those standards would look like, but Walsh told Spotlight PA there would be measures to protect consumers against AI deepfakes and prevent them from “footing the bill for these AI data centers.” State Senator Katie Muth (D., Montgomery) has also pushed back against data center development. Her district includes the planned data center that Hacker is concerned about. Muth told Spotlight PA that the bills to regulate costs for ratepayers are the bare minimum. Increased energy demand from data centers in other states connected to the same massive regional grid already affects costs in Pennsylvania, she said. She has criticized the lack of attention being paid to emergency planning and the long-term health impacts on residents. If a battery fire or other emergency broke out on the planned campus in her district, for example, Muth wants developers to have a plan to stop it from spreading to a nearby nuclear power plant. She says she plans to introduce another bill that would create a two-year moratorium on data center development. The hope, she says, is to give local officials enough time to Continued on page 54.