West Penn Township wants to establish parameters to control where data center development could occur in its municipality.

Board Chairman Tony Prudenti gave a brief overview at Tuesday morning’s board of supervisors meeting on ordinances for bitcoin mining and PPL substation.

“Things are happening very fast in the real estate market because of these new things we need in the area,” Prudenti said. “They just use a ton of electric, (and) we don’t have an ordinance.”

Herb Woodring, assistant to the board of supervisors, is working on ordinances for data centers and for data mining.

Woodring told the board he is working on both of the ordinances a little here and a little there.

Prudenti said that in his mind, he thought they both ran together.

However, township engineer Mike Begis, from ARRO Consulting, said data centers and warehouses are two separate animals.

“I don’t think you can combine them,” Begis said. “Right now, data center is the big thing.”

Woodring told the board he could probably finish the data center ordinance first, as that’s the one he was working on.

Under public comment, resident Carl Greves told the board there are lot of videos on YouTube about data centers.

Greves said that on the whole, “a lot of people are really unhappy” about data centers.

Supervisor Kyle Kester said he read the stories in Monday’s edition of the Times News about data centers and said some say data centers aren’t bad.

But, Greves said that isn’t what he’s come to hear about data centers.

“Right now, there’s a lot of problems with noise,” Greves said. “People can’t escape it.”

Woodring said he had some reservations as well.

“I don’t know how (the township) could handle any data centers because of the water they use,” Woodring said. “I don’t think we could afford to have them use the amount of water they would need to use.”

Prudenti wasn’t convinced though, that

“I don’t know; I think we have plenty of water,” Prudenti said. “We really got to figure out a zoning district or a couple zoning districts by right.”

Greves said it’s the giant companies that come in and want to build data centers.

“How can you protect yourselves? They do anything (in order) to get their foot in the door.”

Prudenti said it’s a difficult situation for the township to be in.

“We’re trying to beautify West Penn Township, and all of a sudden putting this monster thing in that anyone can see,” Prudenti said. “There’s all sorts of things we can think about.”