Local proposal. Statewide pattern.

In 1791, the federal excise on whiskey landed on the western Pennsylvania frontier as a tax on distant capital's terms — imposed by people who did not live here on people who did. The farmers of Westmoreland, Washington, Allegheny, and Fayette counties refused. They organized. They marched. The rebellion was suppressed; the principle survived.

Two hundred and thirty-five years later, the parcels along the Kiskiminetas are being bid on by gas operators, brokers, and infrastructure funds whose addresses are in Canonsburg, New York, Chicago, Riyadh, and Abu Dhabi. The consideration on offer is decades of 24/7 industrial computing and on-site gas combustion. What is being asked of us is the same thing: consent on terms set by distant capital, for a use that profits distant capital, on land we live on.

The answer is the same answer.

A parcel in Armstrong County, Westmoreland County — held by a natural gas operator, adjacent to active residences along the Kiskiminetas River — is being marketed for the construction of a hyperscale data center campus, powered by on-site natural gas generation. The applicant has not yet filed a formal application, which is why the applicant's identity, the parcel boundaries, and the projected capacity are not yet on the public record. That window — between the option agreements being signed and the application being filed — is exactly when residents have to organize.

We are not waiting for the filing. By the time a development application reaches the PA officials' agenda, the studies have been commissioned, the options have been signed, and the lobbyists have already had their meetings. Township-level zoning is the only point at which residents have meaningful leverage. After the filing, our options narrow to litigation.

Across western Pennsylvania, gas operators — chiefly CNX Resources and EQT — have been openly marketing their land holdings for direct-connected data center deployments. Build the data center on top of the gas wells. Eliminate transmission losses. Sell power directly to the hyperscaler. Bypass the regulated grid.

The cheapest gigawatt is the one you don't have to ship.

The framing is industrial logistics. The reality on the ground is a 24/7 facility — turbines, cooling towers, transformers, substations, backup diesel generators — placed within audible and visible range of residential parcels. More than two dozen Pennsylvania sites are now publicly under discussion.

In April 2025, Homer City Redevelopment and Kiewit announced a 4.5-gigawatt natural-gas-powered data center on the 3,200-acre site of the former Homer City coal plant in Indiana County. It is the largest gas-fueled AI data center project in the United States.

Homer City is not just a project. It is a template. Take a parcel already classified as industrial. Repurpose existing transmission infrastructure. Build new gas turbines. Sell capacity to hyperscalers under direct-connect agreements. The local economic case is real. So are the costs imposed on neighboring townships that did not vote on it.

In October 2025, CNX and JLL publicly listed Zediker Station — a 1,500-acre former coal mine in Washington County — as a marketed site for hyperscale data center buildout, complete with on-site natural gas generation. The listing materials describe a “remediated mine gas plus shale” power mix and characterize the campus as carbon neutral.

The Zediker listing matters less because of the specific site than because of what it announces: this is what the industry is doing in our region, openly, with multi-billion-dollar brokers, and the next site is being chosen now. The same operator that holds parcels in Armstrong County is the operator marketing Zediker.

The industry frame for these projects is that combining “remediated mine gas” (methane that would otherwise vent from old mines) with shale gas produces a fuel mix that, on paper, has a net-neutral carbon footprint. The accounting is plausible at the level of global CO₂ inventories. It does not describe the local atmosphere.

Whatever the accounting, the turbines themselves emit nitrogen oxides, formaldehyde, volatile organic compounds, and particulates. The withdrawn water does not return to the watershed in the form it left. The cooling towers, substations, and backup generators do not stop running at night. Carbon neutral addresses the global atmosphere. The neighbors live in the local one.

1. Option agreements precede filings. A developer can hold an exclusive option on a parcel for months without filing anything public. By the time a permit is filed, the deal is past the negotiation phase.
2. The PA Permit Fast Track Program. Adopted under the Shapiro administration, it shortens review windows for projects identified as economic-development priorities. The window for public comment shrinks accordingly.
3. Township meetings are scheduled inconveniently. Many supervisors meet at 5pm or 6pm on a weekday. Working families cannot attend. The room that decides becomes a smaller, less representative room.

None of this is unique to our township. All of it is fixable, and most of it is fixable by people who decide to show up.