Tag Archives: Southeastern PA

the data center lament? will grandma get run over by a reindeer too?

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Let’s be clear: Business Wire a Berkshire Hathaway company is a press release mill isn’t it? They publish what clients send them don’t they?

So this one sounds like developer fairy tales and new math, eh?

So who is actually going to be Plymouth Township saying NO to a Big Fat Data Center? Not the township, not the residents or the Colonial School District School District right? It’s the developer who will be “hurt” isn’t it? Isn’t this just more bullying like this township pointed out in their presser a week ago?

The press release is issued by a company name very familiar to those in Ardmore from when they were the publicist for a while for Lower Merion Township during eminent domain for private gain, and can we also say we have an Irish lass in particular who is working it once again for her favorite Irish developer?

You know people like this are always getting the band back together aren’t they every time? If it’s not condos, it’s recovery centers and if it’s not any of the above its data centers? Aren’t these people in fact like a well oiled but tired machine?

Are communities in Montgomery County (Pennsylvania) going to let them hit oil this time? I don’t think so do you? Haven’t all of these developers to an extent underestimated the human tsunami against this issue of data centers?

Also very amused to read in this release language that is literally regurgitated from when everybody was furiously sending press releases out about pipelines, correct?

I mean, let’s get real when they did the pipelines out here did most of the jobs go to local people?

Wouldn’t that be a no?

Aren’t local communities still wondering when there’s going to be an effective evacuation plan for pipelines and what is the plan for data centers?

What gives any of these people the right to say they can take all our water and use all our energy and drive people crazy quite literally with the humming of it all?

What gives any of these people the right to say hey no problem we’ll just add more pollution, you’ll never notice a thing?

Data Centers are just the new condo complex and apartment building and warehouse aren’t they?

They can take their fakakta “data analysis” and do what with it?

Isn’t it true that some people are saying that this press release today makes that developer sound a little desperate?

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260804231765/en/New-Economic-Analysis-Shows-That-Blocking-the-Plymouth-Township-Data-Center-Will-Cost-the-Region-%24424-Million-in-Lost-Tax-Revenue-and-15000-High-paying-Construction-Jobs-the-Colonial-School-District-to-Be-the-Hardest-Hit.

PLYMOUTH TOWNSHIP, Pa.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–As Plymouth Township’s zoning board is set to rule on the future of the former Cleveland-Cliffs steel mill at 900 Conshohocken Road, an independent economic and fiscal impact analysis puts a hard number on what is at stake. The study, prepared by 4ward Planning Inc. for 900 Conshohocken Road LLC, finds that converting the vacant 1.95 million-square-foot dormant mill site into a data center would generate $424 million in new tax revenue over 20 years, with the majority flowing directly into Colonial School District classrooms. Blocking the project keeps that revenue at zero…..

…..The study’s own methodology notes the project would add no residential development and no new students, meaning the district receives the full revenue increase without a corresponding rise in service costs.

…….That is not a hypothetical outcome. Elsewhere, in Richland Parish, Louisiana, Meta’s $27 billion Hyperion data center campus generated enough new tax revenue that the local school board paid every vested teacher a $50,935 bonus in June 2026, up from $10,200 the year before, along with a $17,472 bonus for support staff, up from $3,323. In Loudoun County, Virginia, data center tax revenue has allowed the Board of Supervisors to cut the residential property tax rate for 10 consecutive years running, while the county nets an estimated $26 in tax revenue for every $1 spent on services those facilities require.

…….Discovery Data Centers (DDC) acquires and zones land, develops and builds buildings for hyperscale Data Center development and delivers it end-to-end. The leadership team brings 48 years of execution experience redeveloping brownfield sites across biotechnology, food distribution, tier-one operating centers, and Data Centers. Discovery Data Centers “Recycles” existing brown-field sites and buildings, expediting zoning and time to market.

Contacts

Media 
Gregory Agency
Katie Kennedy
610-731-1045
katie@gregoryagency.com 

Greg Matusky
267-226-9083

To follow are a few articles about Louisiana that is referenced in this press release:

https://www.npr.org/2025/11/26/nx-s1-5613755/construction-of-meta-data-center-causing-dangerous-and-reckless-road-conditions

https://lailluminator.com/2026/08/05/as-meta-data-center-expands-advocates-push-harder-for-transparency/

https://www.wwno.org/public-health/2026-04-13/were-monitoring-the-air-and-water-around-metas-data-center-in-louisiana-heres-why

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/27/business/meta-data-center-louisiana-takeaways.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/27/business/meta-data-center-louisiana-takeaways.html

Here is a brief excerpt from the New York Times article:

Along the Mississippi Delta in the northeast corner of Louisiana, Meta is building one of the largest artificial intelligence data centers in the world….Behind the scenes, an extraordinary amount of secrecy was necessary to pull it off. Energy company executives, Louisiana’s governor, state and local officials and representatives of Meta worked on the deal over nine months before it was made public….To avoid roadblocks, Meta and state officials worked in secrecy….To keep the project out of the public eye, Meta and Entergy used nondisclosure agreements with state and local officials. Even some officials who helped pass legislation to support the project didn’t know its details.

https://www.wwno.org/public-health/2026-03-11/the-community-around-metas-data-center-has-questions-were-looking-for-answers

Next are some articles about Loudon County Virginia. (Now remember East Whiteland Supervisors said they had met or spoken with Loudon County officials so were they told about all the money that they would make? Did they get chapter and verse on how they’re supposed to do their confidentiality agreements or whatever?)

To quote an iconic Dire Straits song:

Now look at them yo-yos, that’s the way you do it
You play the guitar on the MTV
That ain’t workin’, that’s the way you do it
Money for nothin’ and your chicks for free

Now that ain’t workin’, that’s the way you do it
Lemme tell ya, them guys ain’t dumb
Maybe get a blister on your little finger
Maybe get a blister on your thumb

And before we get to those links, a friendly reminder that my opinions and questions are bought to me by the First Amendment.

The Dark Side of Data Centers

https://wjla.com/news/local/data-center-noise-fumes-create-flood-of-complaints-in-loudoun-county-virginia-board-of-supervisors-sterling

https://virginiamercury.com/2026/07/30/loudoun-county-other-virginia-localities-consider-hitting-the-brakes-on-data-center-development/

https://www.dcnewsnow.com/news/local-news/virginia/loudoun-county/after-virginia-approved-a-gas-powered-data-center-without-public-input-residents-turned-to-a-local-environmental-group-for-answers/

apparently complaining about the postal service is un-american ?? their customer service doesn’t think so…

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Yesterday I finally had enough of mail going missing, arriving opened or damaged, and so on.  So I blogged about it.

I have received many, many comments and not just the ones I have published on my blog.  Here’s one  I received off blog:

I mailed a couple of things a couple of months ago. It never got there and was never returned. The guy I spoke to said they have had problems since they go through Wilmington. My question is why did they have to change things?  🙁

I totally understand how the commentor above feels. I am actually sitting on hold for the United States Postal Service in Washington DC, not that I feel it will do any good.

My mail , even local mail, also gets routed now through Wilmington, Delaware. I find it ridiculous that is a Pennsylvania resident, my mail goes out of state before comes back in state. 

Other commenters mentioned similar issues of mail not arriving, arriving damaged, arriving reeking of cigarette smoke.

But then there are the commenters who feel they have to defend the United States Postal Service at all costs. I am exaggerating , I don’t understand how hard they have to work , and how they now have to pay for some of their benefits and so on.

Here’s  one of my favorites, because it had absolutely nothing to do with what I was discussing in my previous post:

Perhaps you need to learn something about the USPS … it has to sustain itself since it does not receive US tax dollars. However, it has Congress critters who are determined to kill it since USPS has to ask Congressional permission for virtually any action to become more efficient or to streamline. On top of it, USPS is the ONLY entity that has to prepay retirement liabilities for retirees decades in advance … for future employees who are not even born yet. That was a bon-bon that Congress enacted during the Reagan years on the march to privatizing the USPS. Of course, private companies are not going to maintain service to Podunk USA. After all, for those places,UPS hands off the packages to USPS since USPS, by law, must deliver to Podunk.

Funny, I don’t remember writing about their retirement benefits or “liabilities”. And I’m sorry it has to sustain itself as a business and it is supposed to be a business? And as a customer isn’t my part in sustaining this “business” dependent upon the service received and delivery of my own mail? And yeah, Podunk. Sorry, I kind of live in Podunk so I hope that’s not too dreadfully inconvenient to deliver mail to us?

Then there is the man who keeps writing in that I am exaggerating and basically he knows this because his mail is perfect. HUH?

I am not exaggerating. My mother sent me a card, nothing fancy just a greeting card… Over a week ago. She lives in Center City Philadelphia.  Still hasn’t arrived.  Someone else has sent me something from Holmdel, New Jersey twice in two and a half weeks. Neither times has it arrived. Things mailed to me from Berwyn and Wynnewood have also not arrived. 

A package marked fragile containing a gift for someone arrived yesterday looking like it had been kicked around like a soccer ball. And that was sent some degree of “Priority” mail.

I have a great postmaster at my local post office, and the gentlemen who handle our residential route know where everyone lives and do a great job. But they are only as good as the mail that the actually reaches my local post office. Obviously there is some sort of problem with where my mail goes before it reaches my post office.

So it has been a while since I started this post.  I called the hotline number for the Office of the Inspector General for the United States Postal Service this morning. Hotline phone calls are answered M-F 11:00am – 3:00pm EST 1-888-USPS-OIG (1-888-877-7644).

The customer service woman I reached took close to an hour with me on the phone going over delivery issues and opened, destroyed, and missing mail. I have opened a case and she also gave me the number to consumer affairs in our area which I’m going to share with you my readers. That number is 215-863-6060.

This woman I spoke with tracked the path of some of my mail that she was able to track using basically the tracking numbers that a couple packages arrived with.  And she agreed there was an issue with my nail because I wasn’t just telling her about one type of mail going missing routinely, it’s a little of everything , bills included.  

I told her honestly that I was a blogger and I had written about this on my blog. And that I was doing a follow up post. I told her about the comments I had received, and she was very polite and didn’t discount anything I was saying. She also told me if mail is arriving and it reeks of cigarette smoke that means my mail is sitting somewhere for longer periods of time then it should be. She said people smoke, but for me or anyone to get mail where the odor is pervasive and strong and lingering it means that your mail was sitting somewhere. For quite  a while. And I have read this complaint in groups I belong to.

Maybe this hour out of my day will amount to nothing, but I hope it will amount to mail reaching me better and reaching my friends and neighbors having issues with their mail delivery as well.  

I think it is absolutely ridiculous that they used to sort or mail through Southeastern PA, and now it sorts  through Wilmington Delaware. This woman also suggested that we contact our Congress people. So Ryan Costello tag you’re it.

I end with USPS trivia: the new postmaster general is a woman and she hails from Pottsville PA