Upper Burrell residents asked questions about environmental impacts, noise pollution, energy usage and health concerns about an incoming data center at a public meeting Tuesday and were told by the developer and township officials that the project would not pose risks.
TECfusions is in the process of building the data center at the former Alcoa/Arconic technology center in Upper Burrell. Once fully built out, the data center could use up to 3 gigawatts of power, though it will likely take about 20 years to complete the build-out, TECFusions founder Simon Tusha previously told TribLive.
“I will not hurt your community,” Tusha told the crowd at the Penn State New Kensington campus theater. “I will not hurt your environment.”
Resident Dan Myers said after the meeting that though he’s not against the data center, he feels like the township isn’t seriously considering resident opinions.
“What I don’t like is the supervisors kind of showed their cards,” Myers said. “They’ve made their mind up.”
The township is working on an ordinance, but has not yet passed one.
The ordinance will not stop the data center from being built and would not apply to any construction TECFusions has already done, but would impose guidelines for future work.
Township Supervisors Chairman Ross Walker said during the meeting much of the research for the ordinance has come from a trip last week to another TECFusions center in Clarksville, Va.
“We walked around their 150,000-square-foot facility, and my observation of it was it’s very clean, uncluttered, quiet and very well organized,” Walker said in response to residents’ questioning that the township had not commissioned any independent studies on the environmental impact.
The data center will draw natural gas from existing wells on the property, which Tusha said ensured the center will not increase air pollution and associated health risks.
“Natural gas engines are really clean,” he said. “The rest of the rest of the world is still using coal.”
Still, people in the crowd weren’t convinced that it will be a green project.
Tusha said the data center has to comply with regulations by the federal Environmental Protection Agency and that the center is subject to regular and random testing of its exhaust.
“I have to submit those reports every month, and it’s real time, and they can audit me at any point,” he said.
Myers asked Tusha whether the company planned on ever drilling more gas wells; Tusha said it did not.
He also said the company is designing its system to eventually put power back onto the interstate power grid.
It will employ a closed loop water cooling system that at first will pump water in from the Municipal Authority of the City of New Kensington, making it different to other data center designs.
From there, the water will stay in the system but may only need occasional topping off when some of it evaporates, Tusha said.
Audience members expressed noise concerns, especially from generators on the site.
Tusha said he didn’t have an exact number of how many generators there would be as it is dependent on client needs, but that they would generate somewhere between 25 and 85 megawatts of power.
He said that the generators would emit 85 decibels maximum at the enclosure, which is about 10 feet away from the generators.
“(It’s) roughly the sound of what you hear when you’re running your car,” he said.
Public comment was reserved only for residents and township taxpayers.
Several non-residents who tried to speak were asked by Walker to reserve their comments, to which the crowd erupted several times in opposition.
“Neighboring people will be affected by this company use of utilities,” Upper Burrell resident Rose Ann Dombroski said. “So why wouldn’t they be invited to the meeting.”
After the meeting, some residents said they felt the developers skirted questions, though they declined to share their names with TribLive.