SOUTH WHITEHALL TOWNSHIP, Pa. – A group of township residents opposing a hyperscale data center proposal is demanding an opportunity to question those behind the plans.
Jason Ulrich, an attorney for the South Whitehall Civic Alliance, urged representatives of Edged Data Centers to agree to a public hearing during last week's South Whitehall Township Planning Commission meeting.
Residents want to challenge the developer on its proposal and provide testimony from their own witnesses, Ulrich said after Edged US officials explained their new proposal for a 400-plus-acre parcel next to Parkland High School.
“The only acceptable outcome is no data center,” Greg Sussman, of the South Whitehall Civic Alliance, said Thursday.
Ulrich cited a provision in Pennsylvania's Municipal Planning Code that authorizes planning commissions to request public hearings.
No commission members responded.
An attorney for Edged US declined to answer, though Chief Investment Officer John Callahan earlier Thursday said the company was "committed to clear transparency and communication.
Callahan is not related to former Bethlehem Mayor John B. Callahan, who is part of the development group proposing a data center in Lower Mount Bethel Township.
In an emailed response Monday evening, Edged US Vice President of Marketing Marcie Kaplan did not commit to a public hearing but said the company "will continue to provide factual information and address community questions through the appropriate public forums."
The alliance is fighting to stop the data center from opening in the township. It runs the OpposeAtlasDC.com website and sponsors billboards and signs throughout the area.
Greg Sussman and several other alliance members distributed flyers and spoke to residents Thursday evening as they waited for the middle school’s doors to open.
“The only acceptable outcome is no data center,” he said.
The alliance is keeping open all of its options, and its members “are prepared to fight (Edged US) at every level – all the way up through the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, if necessary – to stop the data center,” Sussman said.
“Anything and everything is on the table.”
A new proposal
Edged US executives tried Thursday night to convince township residents the proposed facility would be different from other data centers – and better than alternatives for the industrial site across North Cedar Crest Boulevard from the high school.
The developer is now seeking approvals to build a complex with three data center facilities – each covering about 500,000 square feet – after significantly scaling down its first proposal. That plan, submitted in December, called for six data centers that would have spanned more than 5 million square feet.
The new data center would use a “closed-loop” cooling system that would require no water from South Whitehall Township’s municipal system, according to project director John Dolan.
“No project costs of Project Atlas – as it relates to electricity – will be passed on to local residents,” Edged US Chief Investment Officer John Callahan said.
Using that instead of an evaporative cooling system installed at many older data centers could save more than 2.8 billion gallons of water at the facility each year, which is equivalent to the usage of 50,000 homes, he said.
That's roughly two-thirds of the annual water supplied by the Lehigh County Authority's Central Lehigh Division, which serves South Whitehall and six neighboring municipalities.
It supplies about 4.1 billion gallons of water each year to more than 18,000 residential and commercial customers, according to its website.
The data center complex would be powered by a new PPL substation, according to Callahan, who said the company would pay for all required infrastructure upgrades.
“No project costs of Project Atlas – as it relates to electricity – will be passed on to local residents,” Callahan said, pre-emptively acknowledging one of the major concerns among those in the crowd.
The new plan pushes the data center further from the property’s boundaries. The nearest homes are more than 1,000 feet away from the proposed data center buildings, while Parkland would sit almost 1,700 feet away, Callahan said.
He and several other executives working on the project spent much of the meeting’s first 90 minutes framing the new data center proposal as a much better alternative than a previous plan for the 400-plus-acre property.
That plan could have included eight heavy-industrial buildings that cover more than 5 million square feet and put thousands more vehicles on local roads each day, according to their presentation.
The data center’s impact on local traffic patterns would be minimal, according to an engineer working on Project Atlas with Edged US.
“This project is not generating traffic. This project does not use any additional water from your water supply,” attorney Gregg Adelman said before admonishing people yelling interruptions from the crowd.
Project Atlas would bring almost $9 billion in investment to the area, and the data center complex would generate more than $16 million in annual tax revenues to “fill the coffers for this community and for Parkland schools,” Edged US representative Garland Christopher told officials and residents.
That money could be critical. The school district faces a $15.7 million funding gap for the 2026-27 academic year.
“Who is going to bridge that if Project Atlas is not here?” Garland said.
'It could be worse'
Several hundred residents filled the Springhouse Middle School auditorium Thursday night, with a few open seats vastly outnumbered by those standing along the walls.
But many weren’t won over by the new proposal.
The heavy-industrial plan that Edged US described as an alternative for the property is a “boogeyman project,” one resident said.
The developer’s “major selling point” for its data center project was "It could be worse,” he said.
Resident Spurgeon Dunbar said Edged US presented itself as an “altruistic” company ready to invest billions to help township residents stave off tax increases.
But “I would love to know how much you all stand to gain on this,” he said to executives.
Kevin Kelley, who lives about a quarter-mile from the Project Atlas property, said he and his neighbors are “being asked to absorb” much of the potential impacts of the data center.
Those include “a continuous low-frequency noise that will disrupt our otherwise peaceful neighborhood” and significant electrical infrastructure to support a proposed substation for the project, Kelley said.
“Even if the developer writes the check for this infrastructure, residents of South Whitehall and the students of Parkland High School will inherit the permanent weight of large-capacity electrical lines and steel towers required to bring a massive amount of power to our neighborhood,” he said.
David Wilson, chairman of the planning commission, told the standing-room-only crowd that Thursday night’s meeting was meant for Edged US leaders to provide an “introductory presentation” for their scaled-back proposal and to give residents a chance to voice their concerns.
“This is your first opportunity” to comment on revised Project Atlas plans, Wilson said, pledging more meetings for residents to weigh in on Project Atlas.
The South Whitehall Township Planning Commission is scheduled to meet Aug. 13; it’s unclear whether the Project Atlas proposal will be on that agenda, as it’s not yet available.
Texts spark furor
Posts have circulated on social media since last week with images purporting to show text messages between several people involved with Project Atlas.
Some of those texts, sent during the planning commission’s Thursday night meeting, denigrated residents’ physical appearance.
“These people don’t regularly bathe or have all their teeth,” one reads.
Others messages appeared to mock their opposition and intelligence.
“No way to fix this stupid,” another text reads.
Marcie Kaplan, Edged US’ head of marketing, said those messages were linked to an employee with Scannell Properties who “briefly participated” in the public hearing on behalf of the developer.
“The comments attributed to him were his own and do not reflect the values, positions or approach of Edged US or its project partners,” Kaplan said.
He is “no longer involved” with Project Atlas, and the developer “remain(s) committed to respectful, factual and constructive engagement with the South Whitehall community,” she said.