Locals from both sides of the Delaware River packed into Pennsbury High School East on Tuesday night to hear updates and raise concerns about the Amazon data center being built on the former U.S. Steel property and request the project be temporarily paused at the very least.
Representatives from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, Amazon Web Services, North Point, Morrisville Municipal Authority and PECO were on hand welcoming attendees, answering questions, and providing handouts on the data center currently under construction.
Credit: Jeff Bohen, Lower Bucks Source
Falls Township and State Police were also on hand for the meeting to ensure the meeting maintained an atmosphere of civility. As part of that effort signs and posters were not allowed into the auditorium.
Credit: Jeff Bohen, Lower Bucks Source
Falls Township Supervisors greenlit the project last year after going through its municipal regulatory process.
Months later Amazon AWS announced its plans to build a data center at the North Point site
Officials say the facility will house servers, storage systems, networking equipment and cooling equipment, and centralize data for management and distribution.
It serves as a backbone for all the digital services we use in our daily and work lives, explained PECO officials.
It will support remote work, support videos, support social media, gaming, the internet of things and AI, officials said.
The two-hour meeting, with officials presenting the history of the North Point site and details on the coolant permitting process now before PA DEP, ate up much of the limited time and left attendees frustrated, as they wanted to ask their own questions instead of being “force fed” corporate “bullshit,” Ray from Levittown said.
The meeting ran past the scheduled 8 pm by about 90 minutes, with a myriad of locals who had yet to address officials or ask questions.
Credit: Jeff Bohen, Lower Bucks Source
Many believe and have alleged Falls officials approved the data center project which was not part of the original plan for the North Point site.
They literally pushed this through without anyone knowing, hundreds of locals have said.
Falls officials have pushed back on those ideas, saying the entire approval process was held at open public meetings last year.
Data Center Resistance Organizer Amanda Westerman said she now has more questions than she came with to the meeting.
The “corporate word salad” employed wasn’t very impressive and did not address specific questions asked by attendees.
“I have more questions leaving than going in,” she said adding “tensions were very high.”
Westerman thanked state Rep. Jim Prokopiak for helping her bring the meeting to fruition.
“Without his help this meeting doesn’t happen,” she said.
Credit: Jeff Bohen, Lower Bucks Source
The project remains under construction, and community members pointed out they’re not even aware of the construction target end date.
Dozens of residents voiced concerns and called for more transparency from officials and the involved companies.
As one attendee said walking out of the in-progress meeting, “We’re not going to get any real answers this way, in an environment the interested parties are controlling entirely.”
The overall sense from listening to conversations towards the conclusion of the meeting was locals felt they really didn’t get the opportunity to have their say last night.
It was a truly frustrating experience, Pat of Doylestown said.
Falls officials said DEP had arranged the meeting in advance of a 30-day comment period which begins on July 18 and continues through Aug. 16 related to Amazon’s plan to install 280 natural gas-fired emergency generator engines and three diesel-fired emergency generator engines. Those wishing to comment may email ra-epseroaqpubcom@pa.gov. Comments will only be accepted related to Amazon’s current permit request.
Commenters may also request a copy of the plan approval application at the same email address, officials said. Commenting on the air quality plan approval application will open on July 18th and remain open for 30 days (July 18th to August 16th).
Credit: Submitted
Amazon officials said the proposed generators would only be a backup for electricity to the data center if there was a power interruption and for limited testing and maintenance purposes of less than 10 hours per year.
Officials from the DEP said they will ensure that Amazon complies with all state and federal laws.
Amazon representative Becky Ford said that the community is not subsidizing data centers’ energy costs.
“We pay full energy costs for support of our site,” Ford said.
As part of Amazon’s permit, the company will be required to maintain “daily” record keeping according to DEP officials. DEP staff would “do unannounced routine inspections at Amazon.” If violations were found, DEP would follow up and assess penalties, she said.
Amazon intends to rely on outside air cooling for about 94 percent of the year and only use water-based cooling during the hottest periods, approximately six percent of yearly operations, officials said.
The draw on local natural resources and the belief that energy costs would rise, despite officials repeatedly denying that would occur is the main subplot behind wanting to stop the center from being built in Falls.
PECO representative Glen Murphy was shouted down, officials said, during his presentation.
While data centers use between 10 and 50 times more energy than a similarly sized office building, Murphy said “it’s going to bring down rates a bit” since Amazon will be using more energy and “contributing more to the overall cost.”
A PECO double contingency peak load study evaluated the electric system on the hottest days of the year when it’s most stressed, according to officials.
Westerman who has lived in Falls for 14 years said when the Board approved the project last year this wasn’t even on her radar “in all honesty.” The mother of three said “my eyes are wide open, there is no going back now” and the resistance group she organized wants to see the data center project paused at the very least.
“We’re far from finished with this fight” she said.
Lower Bucks Source posed a question on Meta about the forum. Essentially did attendees think they were heard.
There were an array of responses as you’ll see below.
LBS Readers comment on Amazon Data Center forum
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