Legal Update
Middlesex families take the data center fight to the Environmental Hearing Board and County Court
Zoning
A company from Virginia wanted to build data centers on farmland in Middlesex. In December 2024, its attorney emailed the Township a finished set of rules, with a map of the land they should cover. The Supervisors adopted those rules in May 2025 as a Data Center Overlay District, 35 days after the developer asked them to move quickly. It went on four parcels: the land the developer wanted, and nowhere else. Today about 80 percent of the overlay in the zoning law matches the attorney's draft, word for word.
New here? PAX-1 is a $15 billion, 16-building data center campus going up near Carlisle. Start with the basics or read the FAQ
The mechanism
Every parcel of land carries a label that says what can be built on it. Homes go on residential labels, farms on farm labels, factories on industrial labels.
An overlay is a sticker placed on top of that label. It says this land can also be used for one extra, special thing.
Putting a sticker on doesn't change the label underneath. It adds a new permission on top, so two sets of rules govern one piece of land.
May 30, 2025
The Supervisors stuck the Data Center Overlay on 694 acres of farmland on Country Club Road. At the time, the land had a Residential Farm (RF) label.
September 3, 2025
The Township rewrote its whole zoning map, and this land got a new label: Mixed-Use Neighborhood (MU-1). The zoning says MU-1 is for “neighborhood-scaled” uses “having limited impacts on surrounding residential areas.”
The data center sticker stayed on top.
2026
Under the sticker, a campus of 16 data center buildings, nearly twice as tall as the zoning around it allows, is going up on land labeled for houses and corner stores.
It sits right next to homes, farmland, wetlands, the Appalachian Trail, and the Conodoguinet Creek.
Who wrote the rules
Today, about 80 percent of the overlay in the zoning law matches it word for word. These emails came to light later, through requests under Pennsylvania's Right-to-Know Law.
October 19, 2023
The Township's steering committee finishes its draft of a new zoning ordinance, with five special overlay districts, from airport hazards to wellhead protection. The words “data center” appear nowhere in its 394 pages.
October 25, 2024
The developer's attorney and PowerHouse's CEO pitch the data center to the Supervisors at a 7:30 a.m. workshop. The minutes record the pitch.
“This concept is a multi-billion-dollar minimal impact project which will create no direct impact on the school district, low traffic impact and generate large tax revenue for not only the Township, but the County and school district.”
December 4, 2024
The developer's attorney emails the Township and its planning consultant a ready-made Data Center Overlay ordinance, outside any public meeting.
January 7, 2025
The planning consultant writes back to the developer's attorney:
“we have the Data Center Overlay language incorporated into the draft.”
January 31, 2025
An internal Township email passes the Supervisors' direction to the planning consultant: allow data centers “by right,” without a public hearing, on the two farms that became the PAX-1 site. That morning's workshop minutes don't mention data centers, the overlay, or either farm.
“Allow Data Centers By Right in the Data Center Overlay District area (on the PennTerra & McNaughton properties along Country Club Road in the MU-1 Zoning District) and in the Industrial Districts.”
March 24, 2025
The Planning Commission recommends the new zoning ordinance, overlay language and all. None of its six conditions mentions a data center, and no Supervisors' or Planning Commission minutes have mentioned one in the five months since the pitch.
April 23, 2025
The developer's attorney files the overlay as a standalone amendment, saying it has to pass as soon as possible,
“or else the availability of power is jeopardized and with it, the viability of the data center project.”
May 30, 2025
At the hearing, just before the vote, the developer's attorney tells the Supervisors the overlay is the Township's own work.
“It's not like this amendment was, you know, we submitted something and, you know, it's what you are adopting.”
Most of what they adopted is the draft he emailed on December 4, word for word.
The only rules that bind the developer are the rules the developer helped write.
The developer published its own timeline of these months. See it checked against the record
Who benefited from this zoning change?
April 25, 2025
At a workshop, the developer asked the Board for a Data Center Overlay, the zoning it needed to reserve PPL power for the project.
May 30, 2025
The Board adopted the overlay at a public hearing held at 7:30 on a Friday morning.
At the May 30 hearing
“15 billion, with a b”
The developer's attorney opened with what the project was worth, and said its real estate taxes would run “in the tens of millions of dollars annually.”
At the May 30 hearing
Five people spoke. Every one raised concerns.
Four asked the Board to wait for more information. The Board adopted the overlay anyway, unanimously.
At the May 30 hearing
“Ma'am, I have no idea.”
That was the Board chairman's answer when asked how much water the data center would use. He also sits on the Township's municipal authority. Then he moved to adopt the overlay.
At the May 30 hearing
The studies come later.
“You can't answer every question about every project up front at the zoning stage,” the developer's attorney told the Board. The water studies would wait for the land development stage.
September 9, 2025
The information session came after.
The developer held its information session for residents. By then the overlay had been law for more than three months, and the new zoning ordinance for six days.
March 13, 2026
A tour planned by the developer's lobbyist.
With more of the data center's plans still before the Board, the Township sent five people, a supervisor among them, to tour data centers in Virginia. The lobbyist's stated goal: to show that data centers “operate as unobtrusive neighbors.”
They counted what the project might bring in. They never counted what it would cost.
Conditional use or by right
On September 3, 2025, residents asked the Supervisors to make data centers a conditional use. The Supervisors said no.
In Middlesex, a warehouse needs a public hearing. So does a truck terminal. So does a solid waste facility. A hyperscale data center does not.
“Most Pennsylvania municipalities that have addressed this issue have designated data centers as a conditional use,” Michael Helbing, who directs Penn State's Center for Energy Law and Policy, wrote in June 2026.
Cumberland County's planning department
Recommends a hearing, not by right
Its 2026 guidance: “Instead of allowing data centers by ‘right’, require them to go through a conditional use or special exception process.” It notes that many communities are adopting sound limits of 45 to 50 decibels, and setbacks of 500 to 2,000 feet from homes. In January 2025, while Middlesex was drafting its overlay, the county's white paper suggested 57 to 67 decibels at the property line.
Peach Bottom Township, York County
Requires a hearing before the zoning board
Any cooling water must come straight from the Susquehanna River. Noise may not pass 58 decibels at the edge of a neighbor's property, averaged over the day with nights counted more heavily.
Loudoun County, Virginia
Stopped allowing data centers by right in March 2025
Northern Virginia is the world's largest data center market, and Loudoun County is part of it. Each new data center now needs a special exception, even in industrial districts, so the county's board can “approve with conditions or deny” it.
For PAX-1, Middlesex required no hearing and allows 70 decibels at the property line, above the 57 to 67 the county suggested. The limit does not apply during a power outage.
The zoning problem
The label underneath
MU-1
Mixed-Use Neighborhood
The sticker on top
DCO
Data Center Overlay
40 ft
75 ftAbout 2× taller
10,000 sq ft
25 acres109× larger
50%
70%1.4× more paved
From the Township's zoning ordinance. View the ordinance
The land is here
Data centers belong here
A data center is an industrial use. By Middlesex Township's own ordinance, it's allowed in exactly one zone: Industrial. The land on Country Club Road is zoned MU-1, four zones away.
The Township skipped all four.
They took the heaviest use on the scale and stuck it on the quietest end.
What the law calls this
Spot zoning is when a township changes its zoning for one piece of land to a use that looks nothing like its neighbors, all for the benefit of one user.
Pennsylvania courts have said no to this type of thing for years.
At the May 30 hearing, the developer's attorney told the Supervisors what this overlay allows: “it's not a broader use, it's a data center overlay. The project that we're pitching is the project that would be done.”
“The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment. Pennsylvania’s public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the Commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people.”
In 2013 the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that a government body has to weigh the environmental impact before it acts, not after.
The Supervisors had that duty. They adopted the overlay at the same hearing where their chairman said he had no idea how much water it would use.
We are asking the county court to say no here too, on both grounds.
What we're doing
The overlay is the only zoning that allows a data center on this land. Take it off, and the label underneath is what counts: Mixed-Use Neighborhood, where data centers are not allowed. In county court, we are going after the overlay itself, and the plans the Supervisors approve under it.
Asks the court to strike the overlay as spot zoning, as a violation of the Environmental Rights Amendment, and as an abuse of discretion.
What's next: On November 13 the court holds an evidentiary hearing on the merits of the case, on our request to halt construction.
Ask the court to reverse the Supervisors' plan approvals and send the plans back to them to be denied.
What's next: Our brief on the Phase 1B approval is due November 2, 2026, and the court will hear oral argument on January 12, 2027. The Phase 1C and Phase 2 appeal and the September 2 appeal are with the county court.
Fund the fight
The spot zoning challenge and the land use appeals run on briefs, expert witnesses, and filing fees.
