What is happening in our township is a national play.
$700 billion in 2026 capex, a $500 billion sovereign-wealth consortium, and a state-by-state preemption strategy. Armstrong County sits inside it.
The money has to land somewhere.
Combined 2026 capex of Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Oracle. Three-quarters of it is AI infrastructure.
The Stargate consortium's announced U.S. AI infrastructure target — OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank, and MGX (Abu Dhabi AI investment vehicle chaired by Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed, UAE National Security Adviser).
BlackRock / Microsoft / NVIDIA / GIP / MGX (AIP) plus xAI bought Aligned Data Centers in October 2025 — the largest private digital-infrastructure deal on record. Aligned's pipeline spans Maryland, Ohio, Illinois, Virginia. The capital floor under every PA-adjacent developer.
Five reasons this lands faster than residents can organize.
- 01Behind-the-meter generation.
Hyperscalers bypass PJM interconnection queues — multi-year waits — by building on-site natural gas turbines or co-locating at nuclear plants. FERC rejected the Talen/AWS amended ISA at Susquehanna in November 2024 (2–1) citing cost-shift to ratepayers. In June 2025, Talen and AWS restructured the same deal as a 1,920 MW 'front-of-the-meter' PPA through 2042 — a relabeling that takes the $18B arrangement outside FERC jurisdiction. In December 2025, FERC under new chair Laura Swett unanimously directed PJM to create three new transmission-service categories enabling co-location. The grid bypass is now an enabled feature, not a bug.
SOURCES - 02Option agreements before public filings.
Developers tie up parcels under non-disclosure option agreements months or years before any zoning application is filed. By the time the public sees the application, the deal is mostly done. Heatmap News (April 29, 2026) documented this directly: emails obtained by Pennsylvania organizer Colby Wesner show Amazon was granted NDA-bound early access to PA's Fast Track / SPEED permitting program in April 2025, months before the program was publicly available. Minnesota has banned local-government NDAs entirely; Microsoft has publicly pledged to stop using them. PA has no such statewide requirement.
- 03State fast-track permitting.
Pennsylvania's Permit Fast Track program (Executive Order 2024-04, codified at 4 Pa. Code Subchapter MMM) and the November 2025 budget law codify automatic permit approval at 30 days for air quality and 60 days for stormwater/groundwater if DEP fails to act. Under the SPEED program (June 2025), applicants can hire private engineers to perform the initial permit review — firms exempt from the PA Right-to-Know Law. Air-quality exemptions like the one PADEP granted CNX's Mamont Impoundment in 2024 allow facilities to be built without the full public hearings the full Title V process requires. Heatmap News reported in April 2026 that Amazon was granted NDA-bound early access to Fast Track / SPEED in April 2025 — months before the program was publicly available.
SOURCES - 04Township-level decisions in low-attendance meetings.
Pennsylvania is a strong local-control state — normally a good thing, except when applications are filed during summer or holiday seasons with minimum legal notice in townships of fewer than two thousand residents, where most adults are at work during meeting hours. PA Capital-Star (April 21, 2026) covered the PSATS panel telling supervisors to enact data-center zoning before applications arrive: under the PA Municipalities Planning Code, ordinances passed after an application is filed cannot be applied to that pending application. The window closes the moment a developer files.
SOURCES - 05State preemption of local zoning.
West Virginia HB 2014 (signed April 30, 2025) strips counties and municipalities of authority to regulate certified data centers and microgrids 'in any way,' and diverts most revenue to a state income-tax-cut fund. The Pennsylvania mirror is three bills: HB 502 (RESET Board, with a retroactive look-back voiding residential rezoning passed since Jan 1, 2024), SB 991 (DEP preselects 15+ sites and bypasses municipal review), and SB 939 (regulatory sandbox with default approval). Pushback: Sen. Katie Muth's three-year moratorium, and Sen. Rosemary Brown's questioning posture in Northeast PA on transparency grounds. Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R-Indiana) — whose district contains Homer City — is holding the House regulatory package (HB 1834, 2150, 2151, 2246), preferring what he calls a 'holistic' approach.
SOURCES
We are not alone.
Comparable Pennsylvania campaigns — in Hampden, Blakely, Archbald, Hazle, East Whiteland, and Montour — have halted or scaled back data center projects when residents organized early. Hampden Township voted unanimous rejection. Project Gravity in Archbald was kicked off PA's Permit Fast Track on May 1, 2026 after sustained citizen pressure. Sen. Katie Muth has introduced a three-year moratorium. Rep. Robert Matzie's HB 1834 (PUC oversight + clean-energy mandate + ratepayer cost protections) and Rep. Kyle Mullins's HB 2150 (annual energy/water reporting, $10k/day penalties) passed the House with bipartisan support — and are now held in the Senate by Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R-41, Indiana), who is the senator for Armstrong County and personally endorsed the TECfusions Upper Burrell project at its January 2025 launch.
Three Rivers Waterkeeper, Food & Water Watch PA, PennFuture, and the Pittsburgh Media Partnership are all on the ground. Spotlight PA's data center tracker is the most complete public record. The fight is not local. Our township is local; the coalition is statewide.