A proposed data center’s sewage plans have received approval for possible development in Nesquehoning.

On Wednesday, Nesquehoning Borough Council in a 5-0 vote approved the Carbon Node East sewage facilities planning module. Council members Bruce Nalesnik and Suzanne Smith were absent.

Carbon Node East is the proposed development of a four-building data center owned and operated by Keel Infrastructures. It would be located just off Industrial Road in the Hauto Valley Estates. The area is zoned industrial.

Borough and Carbon County planning commissions have recommended approval of the module.

Greg Haas of Keystone Consulting Engineers reviewed the plan for this project for the county and also serves as the borough’s zoning and planning commission engineer.

At last week’s Carbon County Planning Commission meeting, Haas said the project includes “940,000 square feet of buildings containing the latest technology designed to support high performance computing for artificial intelligence workloads, and proposes to connect to the existing Nesquehoning Borough sanitary sewer system.”

The proposed wastewater flows are projected to be 18,662 gallons per day or the 86 equivalent dwelling units.

Haas noted that the flow is based on 250 employees with a usage rate of 35 gallons per day per employee, plus a little less than 10,000 gallons per day of condensate water from the mechanical cooling equipment inside the buildings.

The wastewater system would then use gravity to transport the wastewater to the borough wastewater treatment plant for processing.

Haas noted that the borough’s plant has “adequate capacity to collect, convey and treat the anticipated wastewater flows and that there will be no hydraulic or organic overloads within five years.”

Haas said that the plan has been reviewed and “found to be consistent with the goals of the Carbon County Comprehensive Plan for land use.”

In a related matter, borough council also voted 5-0 to approve a resolution for the plan revision for the new land development of Carbon Node East. The revision reflects that the planning module conforms to all sewage-related zoning and other sewage related ordinances.

Keel Infrastructures is proposing to construct a 350-megawatt data center that would employ approximately 297 people once fully operational.

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 ordinance regarding how a data center would operate within the borough limits.

In March, Bitfarms rebranded to Keel Infrastructures, a New York City-based digital infrastructure and energy company that develops and owns data centers and energy infrastructure for high-performance computing workloads, including AI.

Last month, the borough voted unanimously to conditional preliminary plan approval for the project. It was noted at that time that 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.

Keel representatives said at that time that they were hoping to have necessary reports regarding noise and diesel containment, as well as other comments that need to be addressed completed by the end of June or early July.

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