In your PA township, is zoning a friend or foe? Check quickly. If you’re in a township where Commercial and/or Business/Industrial Zoning allows logistics facilities as a Permitted Use, change your zoning now. Else, your battle is lost. The invasion of truck terminals/logistics facilities will appear so quickly you won’t know what hit you, or why. This is happening all over the Poconos.

Most of us live here in Kidder Township for the silence, the clean mountain air, to happily share the woods with the birds, deer, bear, wild turkey, and other wildlife; and to hunt, fish, golf, hike, ski, swim, and enjoy the woods.

Instead, the woods are being mowed down while we hear hundreds (soon thousands) of truck Jake brakes rumbling along Route 940 in Kidder Township, carrying 30-ton loads from I80/I476 to a 1.1 million square-foot logistics facility, with another 420,000 square-foot. facility to be built across the road. Did you know the I80 bridge will be under construction for the next five years, forcing the trucks onto local roads through White Haven?

More trucks will continue east on Route940 to a third 739,050 square-foot facility being built now in this rural area adorned by EPA-Designated High Quality Waters streams, valuable wetlands, and habitats for rare and sensitive plant or animal species. Rumbling further eastward the trucks travel through Tobyhanna Township and the Tobyhanna watershed, to Mount Pocono, or to exit at Interstate 80 using Route 115 south. The Poconos world is their oyster now.

State and local officials haven’t reacted but did offer that “we should have zoned our township better,” or “you’ll appreciate the employment taxes from the jobs the logistics facilities create,” not acknowledging that some logistics facilities already employ robotics.

The Keystone Opportunity Zone tax abatement opportunities delight the developers, as no property tax is paid on the building for 10 years. KOZ was approved to stimulate economic growth and development, not destruction, of a community.

Be aware of your zoning. Change the zoning in Kidder Township. Let’s not let this continue.

Beth Hurley

Kidder Township