Project dossier · Montour County, Pennsylvania

Talen Energy Montour Data Center Denied

County commissioners unanimously denied Talen Energy's request to rezone 800+ acres from agricultural to industrial for a data center plus power-plant expansion, after a grassroots group gathered ~3,000 petition signatures.

Key facts

Operator: Talen Energy
Size: 800 ac
Location: Montour County, Pennsylvania
Stage today: Denied

Source

What to do next

Next step: Denied — watch for a re-filing or a scaled-down resubmission; ask the clerk to add you to the notification list.

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What has happened so far (13 events)

2024-11-01ruling
FERC rejected a proposed interconnection service agreement among PJM, PPL Electric, and Talen that would have increased the load Talen could transfer directly from the Susquehanna nuclear plant to its co-located Amazon data center campus. · source
2025-06-01utility
Talen Energy expanded its Amazon Web Services partnership with a new long-term agreement to supply up to 1,920 MWe from its Susquehanna nuclear plant through 2042, part of Talen's broader co-location strategy for AI data centers in Pennsylvania. · source
2025-08-01announcement
Concerned Citizens of Montour County formed with four members after Talen's rezoning request became public; its first town hall days later drew about 120 people. · source
2025-08-18filing
Talen Energy submitted a rezoning petition to Montour County covering roughly 870 acres in Anthony and Derry Townships, seeking to change land from agricultural to industrial near its Montour Steam Electric Station for a data center and power-plant expansion. · source
2025-11-19hearing
The Montour County Planning Commission voted to recommend against Talen Energy's request to rezone roughly 870 acres of agricultural land to industrial. · source
2026-01-23hearing
Montour County commissioners held an all-day public hearing at First Baptist Church of Danville on Talen's rezoning request; residents wearing red 'Say No Industrial Rezoning' shirts testified about farmland loss, water use, noise, and land impact. · source
2026-01-23public-comment
Concerned Citizens of Montour County delivered a petition signed by about 3,000 residents opposing the rezoning, roughly twice the population of the township and more than voted there in the 2024 election. · source
2026-02-10denial
Montour County's three commissioners voted unanimously to deny Talen Energy's rezoning request; Chair Rebecca Dressler said Talen had not met its burden of proving the project would benefit the community and that no evidence showed benefits outweighed foreseeable public harms. · source
2026-02-10coverage
Talen Energy responded saying it remains committed to pursuing a data center in Montour County and would 'listen, incorporate feedback from the Commissioners, engage with the community, and refine our plans.' · source
2026-03-30report
Civil Eats profiled the Montour County fight as a case study of a small farm county organizing successfully against a hyperscale data center and power-plant expansion. · source
2026-04-14public-comment
Montour County held a public hearing on proposed amendments to its data center ordinance, including new height and setback distance requirements. · source
2026-04-28ruling
Montour County commissioners unanimously approved amended data center ordinance provisions establishing new height and setback requirements for any future data center development. · source
2026-08-18moratorium
Governor Josh Shapiro signed an executive order restricting data center development in Pennsylvania, eliminating fast-tracked permitting and formalizing GRID Standards requiring community engagement, energy-affordability protections, and environmental standards for developers seeking state support. · source

Find the paper trail

Find the paper trail (0 filed · 12 places to look)

State environmental permits

Backup generators, water withdrawal and stormwater are permitted by the state, usually earlier and in more detail than anything filed locally.

Pennsylvania DEPThe program page: which permits this state requires, and the office that issues them.
DEP Data Center Permit Tracker (the only state register built for data centers — it already feeds this tracker)Searchable public filings — search the operator, the shell LLC on the deed, and the address.

County & town filings

The rezoning application, site plan, traffic and noise studies, staff report and every revision.

Board of Commissioners agendas & packetsThe meeting packet carries the staff report, site plan and conditions — verified page for this locality.
Search Montour County planning filingssearchPlanning departments post application files under many different names. Find the department, then ask the clerk for the application number — that number unlocks everything else.
Search Montour County property records / GISsearchThe parcel record names the buying LLC and the sale date, which is what ties an anonymous filing to an operator.

Utility & grid records

The electricity request is filed with the grid operator and the utility long before the town hears about it — and states the real load.

PJM Interconnection (Mid-Atlantic, Ohio Valley) — interconnection queueRequested megawatts, queue position and target in-service date. The MW here is the real number; the one at the town meeting is often phase one.
Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission — docket searchSpecial contracts, large-load tariffs and rate cases are docketed here. Testimony and exhibits are public, and are usually more candid than the press release.
FERC eLibraryFederal filings: transmission agreements, interconnection service agreements, and co-location disputes.
Search the serving utility for a will-serve lettersearchThe will-serve or load-service letter is the utility's own written commitment. Ask the utility and the PUC for it by name — it is frequently the first document to exist.

Federal databases

Works anywhere, and covers the operator's record at its other sites.

EPA ECHO facility searchEvery federally-reported air, water and waste permit at a facility, plus its inspection and violation history. Search by address or draw a radius around the site.
EPA EnvirofactsThe same underlying records, queryable by county — useful for 'what else is permitted near this site' rather than one facility.
EPA Facility Registry ServiceResolves the shell LLC on a permit to the facility it belongs to. Worth a look when the filing name means nothing locally.

These are places to look, not evidence that anything has been filed. Links were checked on 2026-08-21; search links are queries, not records. What to ask for.

Around here

Montour County community briefing — Expiredterm ran to 2026-04-30
Pennsylvania briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts.

Other tracked projects in Pennsylvania

4-3 Salem Township Data Center — Salem Township (Luzerne County) Rumored
900 Conshohocken Road data center (former Cleveland-Cliffs steel mill) — Plymouth Township (Montgomery County) Awaiting decision
AWS Berwick — Berwick Under construction
AWS Falls Township campus (Keystone Trade Center) — Falls Township (Bucks County) Approved
AWS Salem Township campus (Susquehanna nuclear plant) — Salem Township (Luzerne County) Under construction

Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “Talen Energy Montour Data Center”, aigridwatch.com/projects/talen-montour-pa, retrieved 2026-10-11.

As of August 2026 (2m ago) · changes weekly — re-check before citing

A working set of identified proposals a community can track, not a census — most of the country's activity is not in here yet. Pennsylvania is the exception: its rows are synced from PA DEP's own data-center permit tracker, so the state's coverage is close to complete and carries the permit trail with it. **Each row carries its own provenance.** Rows showing a verification date link to reporting or the governing body's own record and were read on that date; rows marked *unverified* have no source on record — a lead to check, not a fact to cite. **Stage is derived, not asserted.** *Hearing scheduled*, *Awaiting decision*, *Approved* and *Withdrawn* are computed from each row's milestone dates on every rebuild, so a hearing date that has passed stops reading 'scheduled'. Hearings get moved and projects re-file under new names — treat a scheduled date as the earliest to act by, and confirm with the clerk before relying on it. Leads are mined into data/project_candidates.json and promoted here only after a human reads a primary source.

Part of the data center project tracker — open data, CC BY 4.0 (JSON · CSV).