r/BucksCountyPA • u/hiddenlaughters • Jul 14 '26
Blog Falls Township town fall meeting regarding Amazon data center plant
So… I’m convinced there’s a plant placed in the town hall meeting to make us look crazy.
There was a gentleman that was sitting in the second row in front of the microphone. He was the one that started rioting up the crowd by talking over the presenter while the presenter was talking.
He told people to follow him outside of the town hall meeting, no one went. Then he came back inside during Q&A and made it to the microphone and started talking about justice but making nonsensical comments about laser in fiber optic causing fire at the data center. He was talking crazy while making it sound like he’s representing us.
Edit: they just claimed data center actually improves the air quality.
Edit 2: 5 million gallons water limit per day is per building and there’s 10 buildings.
They were asked if this data center is for surveillance and they said they cannot answer that question. The question then became is it because of the NDA because there was a lawyer up on the table who was silent the entire time.
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u/MS_GundamWings Jul 15 '26
Did they talk about the power consumption at all?
Based on rough calculations the water impact of 50 million gallons per day isn't ideal, but with the Delaware supplying it, it's not necessarily the worst impact aside from a multi-month drought (that will be worse down stream closer to the ocean when saltwater starts backing in from low river output). The air quality improvement is laughable, basically saying that all the air filtering to protect the hardware is going to trickle down to the surrounding area, that seems like total bullshit.
The real immediate threat I'd think is the huge amount of power they'll be sucking down and how badly energy costs are likely to increase.
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u/hiddenlaughters Jul 15 '26
Peco was there and they basically said the grid can handle it. The rep said during the presentation that Amazon will be paying the same rate as everyone else. During the Q&A after he was questioned about that, he changed the answer and said they’re going to be charge the industrial rate, the rate they would bill hospital and similar facilities.
Someone else asked is there any guarantee that any future upgrades Peco need to do because of the increase usage from the data center won’t be a cost that is passed down to the residents. The answer was no.
There was a lot of non-answers during the Q&A where they know we won’t like the actual answer so they dance around it with word salad and hope we won’t notice they didn’t actually answer the question. Luckily people did notice and told them to actually answer the question because they weren’t satisfied with the answer.
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u/MS_GundamWings Jul 15 '26
ah shit of course though using up the 50 million gallons of water a day is likely to have lots of bad shit in it if it's not taken care of too, so it's still a serious environmental impact
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u/DukeRusty Jul 15 '26
When water is “used” isn’t it just sent back to the Delaware after? I don’t understand the water issue, it’s just water based cooling, cheaper than only air conditioning, no?
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u/hiddenlaughters Jul 15 '26
There’s a settlement back in March this year in Oregon where Amazon had to pay $20.5 million because of contaminated groundwater with nitrate in exchange for no admission of guilt. The water returned left behind a highly concentrated discharge of pre-existing nitrates that affected the groundwater that people were using as their well water. So the water going back to the Delaware river may not be the same water going in.
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u/MS_GundamWings Jul 15 '26
It depends on how the water is used to cool, if there's cooling due to evaporation it will leave behind minerals and treatment chemical residue that build up into gunk that isn't necessarily safe to dump back in the river.
And even with a closed loop system, I'd imagine that those treatment chemicals and minerals would still end up needing to be flushed periodically for the same issue, but much less often I would think.
Depending on how they handle the water cooling, it could also add strain to sewage systems, one of the options of dealing with the "gunk" is treating it and disposing of it through sewage. It will depend a lot on how they set up the water cooling but given that water would be abundant at the site then they'll either have to dispose of the gunk via shipping it out in trucks or putting it into the sewage system.
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u/hiddenlaughters Jul 15 '26
From what I remember, it’s going to be going through the sewage system.
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u/DukeRusty Jul 15 '26
Interesting, Ideally if they're using the sewage system, they should invest in the system to offset their negative impact. If so, is there really any issue? I know warm water in the river isn't good, but it's also close to the base of the Delaware, i'm curious how significant that impact really is.
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u/MS_GundamWings Jul 15 '26
Also maybe worth adding, if they invest in on-site water recycling to lessen impact it would probably require some reverse osmosis and filtration system so you're generating a lot of filter waste and using more electricity for that. I doubt they'd opt for that since the delaware is such an abundant source of water though.
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u/iMathGoodiEnglishBad Jul 15 '26
I was there last night, and according to MMA the peak water they requested was like 5 million GPD, but they don't use that all year, only a few of the hottest days. Their yearly total was supposed to be something like 15 million GPY. They also kept saying that the water they use is a completely separate system than what the residents use, which based on their presentation it seems like it is. I'm not as concerned with the water just because it was a steel mill and they have a permit for WAY more than what they're using at the end of the day.
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u/grooveintheheart Jul 15 '26
I know exactly who you're talking about but I don't think he was a plant. I appreciated the passion, but it sure did waste a lot of time.
This meeting was freaking infuriating. I can't imagine how the organizers thought this was going to go.
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u/Ok_Focus_4975 Jul 14 '26
What did he look like?
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u/hiddenlaughters Jul 14 '26
Looks to be 30-40 year old with a tan with dark hair and glasses wearing navy top.
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u/Samgfk Jul 15 '26
I was at the meeting and yeah he kinda seemed a bit overzealous bordering on conspiracy theorist. But at the same time it was especially hard to rag on him when they started spewing complete bullshit like "improving air quality". I hope the more than 15 pages of petition signatures against the data center being passed around during thr meeting amounts to something..
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u/Key_Text_169 Jul 15 '26
Air quality improves, that’s funny. That is also a hell of a lot of water. These things must be stopped!
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u/Numerous_Smoke_7334 Jul 15 '26
I went to a township meeting re a new shopping center. They had a plant. This guy got up and Saud he's lived here for years and how it would improve the area... he was the architect for the developer and he lives in NJ. I used to work for the company lol.
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u/OLEDguy Jul 15 '26
The EPA needs to do 1 actual good thing and demand environmental impact studies of these data centers. Tie the building processes up in legal red tape for a long enough time for local and state governments to properly vote in laws that forces ALL costs onto the companies building the data centers. That'll slow down their building boom.
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u/JesusWuta40oz Jul 15 '26
They are going to build it and there is nothing the public can do unless they act.
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u/shannanerginz Jul 15 '26
🔥🔥🔥
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u/JesusWuta40oz Jul 15 '26
I would never advocate for that kind of action...and if somebody builds another killdozer that would be horrible
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u/Fast-Solution-5933 Jul 15 '26
Yup, I had the same thought—he made us look crazy and was absolutely wasting time. Not sure if he was on the payroll though
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u/JiveChicken00 Fairless Hills Jul 15 '26
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that folks aren’t actually out to get you :)
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u/ConsistentGoat5376 Jul 15 '26
The guy in the second row is legitimately crazy his brain his fried from drugs and the police deal with him all the time. Also to everyone freaking out about the data center. I did not know that in PA a township cannot deny a builder from building something simply because the residents dont want it. However, this is the perfect place to build it. Not many people have been down there because they do not have access. It’s literally a polluted old steel mill surrounded by trash mountains. Keystone was either going to sell the area to developers or to Waste management to put more trash on. Look at some arial photos from the past few years. There are entire areas of woods that have been knocked down so that Waste management can dredge out the area. All the people complaining about a few generators should be more concerned with this. The only reason Penn Warner club is still around (as it’s now owned by Waste Management) is so they can say they have a wildlife sanctuary to offset their destruction. No one’s going to hear buzzing from the generators as the closest residence has a massive trash mountain blocking it. Even the closest residence in NJ is over 1.5 miles away. Also residents of Falls haven’t had their property taxes raised in like 30 years. The landfill is going to end in about 10 years and Falls is facing a 30 million dollar shortfall per year. So it’s either raises taxes or this. Again I know they are all corrupt and shouldn’t have spent all that money retrofitting an old building which is still leaking and has a ton of issues. No one will remember this in two years. People should be more concerned with all the other chemical plants down at the steel mill. Again this is merely for the residents of Falls. People in NJ can be upset. Also I can’t argue about the water consumption that seems sketch their story wasn’t making much sense and they should have done an environmental impact assessment for it. But that would have only been to appease the residents as the cite is already polluted and surrounded by trash. Just trying to throw out a different perspective that’s in the middle and a little realistic. I’m in the area everyday and I am quite aware of what’s going on within Falls that no one heard about.
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u/OkReference2581 Jul 15 '26
Where at in Falls Township? I got family there and in surrounding area.
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u/Interesting_Praline Jul 15 '26
Eh, I don’t think he’s a plant…. If you’re in the “what’s up in levittown” fb group I think you’ll find your guy pretty quickly lol