Your 3 minutes are up - A talk on Data Centers

Our Take

Credit to Exposure for doing the unglamorous work: filing Right-to-Know requests and actually reading what comes back. Their video on the proposed hyperscale campus at the old Pittsburgh International Race Complex in Big Beaver Borough lays out a timeline that should bother anyone who cares about how these deals get made — borough officials, developers, attorneys, and consultants apparently talking shop long before Switch's name was ever attached to the project in public. That gap between private planning and public notice is the whole ballgame. By the time residents get their three minutes at a podium, the zoning language, the tax abatement structure, and the power/water assumptions are often already baked in.

The specifics raised here are the ones we track everywhere: backup generation and battery storage that can mean diesel and lithium sitting near neighborhoods, water demand for cooling, noise complaints that show up only after construction, and tax incentives that trade a small town's leverage for a developer's spreadsheet. None of that is inherently disqualifying — but it's supposed to be argued out in daylight, not settled in emails residents had to sue for.

If you're in western Pennsylvania or anywhere near a proposed campus, this is the pattern to watch: quiet coordination first, public hearing theater second. Check our facility map to see what's proposed near you, and use our take-action resources if your own borough is about to have its own 'three minutes' moment.