A proposed data center in Nesquehoning was given more time to work on resolving some issues with its preliminary site plan.

During Nesquehoning’s planning commission meeting on Monday, the commission voted unanimously to conditional preliminary plan approval for Keel Infrastructure’s plans for a four-building data center off Industrial Road in the borough. This motion essentially stops the clock and allows Keel the time it needs to address all items that still are needed, including obtaining necessary permits and finishing various reports.

Greg Haas, Keystone Consulting Engineer and the borough engineer for planning and zoning, provided a 13-page letter of items that need to be resolved before site preparation could begin.

He noted that this was the first submission of the plan and it had been reviewed in accordance with the borough’s land development ordinance, sewer and sewage disposal ordinance, water ordinance, zoning ordinance and the recently adopted data center ordinance.

Haas disclosed that he met with representatives of Keel, as well as their engineer last week to discuss his findings.

“I feel that was an important meeting to have before this public meeting to go through and kind of walk through what we could address and what I felt were important comments,” he said.

The plan is a preliminary plan, meaning once all comments are addressed and adequately mitigated, a clean preliminary plan approval would be needed from council so Keel could begin site improvements.

A second submission of the project plans for final approval must then be submitted for review by the borough before any building construction could take place.

The commission asked whether the company plans to continue the application as a preliminary plan to allow time to address Haas’ comments; or have it as a preliminary/final plan submission.

Kevin Roberts, director of permitting with Keel Infrastructures, confirmed that this submission was just for preliminary plans.

“We’re planning to proceed with the preliminary plan and addressing Greg’s comments,” Roberts said. “We’ve got a very high level of confidence in fulfilling those in the next couple of weeks and we hope to have that wrapped up as soon as possible.”

Additional recommendations

Haas said that in addition to his comments, John McArdle issued a memo on behalf of emergency management with items he feels needs more work; and ARRO Consulting also submitted additional comments. All of those will be taken into consideration as the plans are revised.

The commission asked several questions surrounding the plans, including stormwater management, the number of water EDUs that will be needed and generator and fuel storage at the site.

Rachel McCune, the civil engineer for the project, said that as of right now, the estimated EDUs that will be needed is 86, which is based on calculations for a warehouse of 35 gallons of water a day per employee as well as condensate discharge.

However, she noted that this figure will be adjusted as the project moves ahead and more figures are better established.

Roberts noted that a total of 32 generators will be used at each of the four buildings with each generator having its own diesel storage tank.

Reports on diesel containment; as well as noise will now be finalized, with the hopes of being completed in June.

The commission asked if there was a timeline that Keel plans to stick with in regards to addressing the comments.

Roberts said that hopefully, by the end of June, if not early July, they will have the majority of the items completed, noting that the geotechnical and retaining wall reports currently have the longest lead time.

“Our intent is to start sending Greg some of the lower hanging fruit so we can check them off the list and have the dialog we need to address his comments,” Roberts said.

Keel Infrastructures, formerly Bitfarms, is proposing to construct four data center buildings totaling 618,921 square feet on land zoned industrial.

Last month, the plans, as submitted to Carbon County Planning Commission, received conditional plan rejection at that time because of several items that do not conform to the borough’s ordinances.

The data center project began last year, when Bitfarms Ltd., which purchased the Panther Creek Cogeneration Plant off Dennison Road, announced its plans to construct the complex on land owned by Kovatch Enterprises.

Several public meetings to further outline the plans were held, followed by the borough planning commission and zoning board working to create the proposed ordinance that is expected to be acted upon tonight.

In March, Bitfarms, which is based in Canada, announced the rebranding to Keel Infrastructures, with offices based in the United States. Keel is “a North American digital infrastructure and energy company that develops and owns data centers and energy infrastructure for high-performance computing workloads, including AI.”

A more in-depth visual of the project is also available on Keel’s website at www.keelinfra.com/campuses/panther-creek.