Finding the amount of water the proposed Homer City natural gas-fired power plant and hyperscale data centers will draw from Two Lick Creek remains an unanswered question as state officials prepare for a public hearing Tuesday.
During the past six months, the University of Pittsburgh’s Water Collaboratory has received numerous inquiries from community advocacy groups seeking the water requirements for the Center Township site. Jonathan Burgess, director of the Water Collaboratory, said those details are currently difficult to find because the paperwork is not yet publicly available.
“So much of this process is not yet reflected in public documentation, so towns are right to question it,” Burgess said.
The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has scheduled a hearing for 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Indiana Theatre, 637 Philadelphia St., Indiana. However, that session is limited to taking testimony on Homer City Generation L.P.’s application for a permit to discharge stormwater during the construction of a 5.8-mile natural gas pipeline that will serve the plant.
Thomas Decker, a spokesman for the DEP office in Meadville, said more specific information about water withdrawal from Two Lick Creek is expected when Homer City Generation applies for a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit.
The Central Indiana County Water Authority will supply the plant with water, according to the 552-page application submitted to environmental regulators in April 2025. Construction on the power plant has begun, and the company anticipates finishing the project by the third quarter of 2029.
Robert Nymick, water authority manager, could not be reached for comment Monday.
Homer City Generation’s application does not detail the specific amount of water the power plant is expected to use from the creek, which is fed by the Two Lick Reservoir. The 5-mile-long reservoir holds 5 billion gallons of water at capacity, according to the Two Lick Lake Recreation Association.
The company said in a statement that it is confident that the reservoir’s water supply will be more than adequate to meet its needs.
The natural gas-fired power plant will use roughly the same amount water as the former coal-fired plant on the site that closed in 2023, based on its analysis, Homer City Generation said Monday. It will be able to reuse the former coal plant’s water system in full compliance with permits and regulations, Homer City generation said.
Homer City Generation restated that the different hyperscale data centers have different water needs, so it cannot address questions on water usage for the future data center customers.
The water usage by data centers could be addressed by state General Assembly, where the Data Center Energy and Water Reporting Act would require annual reports of water usage in the previous year by data centers and estimates of water usage in the following year . The state House passed the bill last month and it was referred to the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee.
GE Vernova spokeswoman Laura Aresi could not be reached for comment regarding the amount of water the turbines will use to create steam.
While specific project numbers are unavailable, researchers have estimated that hyperscale data centers may use between 1 million and 5 million gallons a day for cooling. Landon Marston, an associate engineering professor at Virginia Tech University, said during a Penn State Extension webinar that some of that water evaporates in the process and is not available for reuse.
To put that use in perspective, Marston said hyperscale data centers can use the equivalent of the water needs of a town with a population between 10,000 and 50,000 residents.
Currently, the project is bound by a drought management plan.
“Homer City’s only requirement is dealing with the drought management plan where it has to release a minimum of 7.1 mgd (millions of gallons daily) from the reservoir,” Decker said.
That release amount is stipulated in a 2017 renewed limited power permit signed with the former Homer City Generating Station. By comparison, the Pennsylvania American Water Co. draws about 3.1 million gallons daily to fulfill its customers’ needs, according to Decker.