The tax revenue from a data center project on Saw Mill Technology Center site could offset any budget shortfalls and provide tens of millions of dollars in annual funding to Jim Thorpe Area School District. This revenue may support school operations, facilities, and programs—sparing Carbon County residents the1.5-mill property tax increase they are facing in 2026.

To satisfy the Board of Supervisors, the Township Engineer, and/or a Pennsylvania-certified landscape architect (§240-40.2), there will be a 100-foot landscaped buffer along all property lines to provide a dense, opaque, four-season screen. Clear-cutting is prohibited along the property lines, and existing mature forest must be retained wherever possible. Along with these stipulations, buffer planting must include: ·       One large evergreen tree per 25 linear feet of buffer·       One deciduous (canopy) tree per 75 linear feet of buffer·       One ornamental/flowering tree per 50 linear feet of buffer·       Five shrubs per 25 linear feet of buffer

The Penn Forest Township ordinance places responsibility for protecting residents' water on the developer and backs it with enforceable safeguards. A three-step groundwater study must be completed and approved before data center developers drill any well, and a mandatory Well Depletion Agreement covers all private wells within 3,000 feet of the site – meaning that should any water depletion occur, the developer is required to provide replacement water at its own expense. Additionally, today’s facilities increasingly rely on closed-loop and air-cooled systems that recirculate the same water and require remarkably little daily water use — a modern data center’s daily draw can be a small fraction of what a small neighborhood, farm, or golf course uses.

A data center is a large industrial customer that pays for its own power and the infrastructure to deliver it; rates are set at the regional grid level, not by any single facility. Here, Penn Forest’s ordinance goes a step further: any future developer must fund 100% of the infrastructure the facility requires, disclose its energy needs up front — peak demand, battery storage, and effects on rates and grid reliability — and obtain written certification from the local utility that there's enough capacity to serve the community first. Regionally, power prices are set through PJM Interconnection, a regional transmission organization that coordinates wholesale electricity across all or parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia. This means that Penn Forest Township residents pay the same rate as Philadelphia residents. Data center operators pay a higher share of transmission costs, not residents, and infrastructure upgrades tied to the project are paid for by the project, not ratepayers.