Data centers and data center accessory uses are allowed only by conditional use approval from the Board of Commissioners, and only in the Special Use District or, where applicable, the IHCO overlay’s HI District; they are prohibited in all other zoning districts.

Data center accessory uses must be secondary and incidental to a data center and generally must be located on the same tract or on adjacent parcels developed as one unified development.

A data center site must contain at least 2 acres.

Data centers are limited to a 35-foot building height, with up to 10 additional feet allowed for specified roof-mounted equipment. Accessory uses may not exceed the principal building’s height, excluding roof equipment.

Data centers and accessory uses must be set back at least 1,000 feet from residential zoning or uses, sensitive receptors, adjoining property lines, and road rights-of-way.

Data center electric substations generally must be set back 1,000 feet from adjoining property lines, road rights-of-way, existing residential structures outside the project parcel, and sensitive receptors; they must also be 50 feet from project parking lots and 200 feet from waterbodies, streams, and wetlands.

A landscape buffer is required next to residential areas, sensitive receptors, and public roadways. The buffer must be at least 50 feet wide, cannot contain structures, parking, storage, loading, or signs, and must meet specified year-round screening, planting, maintenance, and replacement standards.

Applicants must provide a performance guarantee for required buffer landscaping equal to its estimated installation cost, and the guarantee generally cannot be released until after the second growing season.

Roadside fencing may not be chain-link or include barbed wire or similarly intrusive deterrence devices unless the fencing is fully screened from view.

Cooling, ventilation, and operating equipment, including backup generation equipment within 1,000 feet of a roadway, residential area, or sensitive receptor, must be fully enclosed unless the applicant demonstrates that enclosure is mechanically infeasible; otherwise, it must be fully screened by approved buildings, vegetation, berms, or solid screens.

Data centers and accessory uses must comply with detailed daytime, evening, and nighttime sound limits. For example, the equivalent continuous sound level limit is 50/45/45 dB for rural or low-density residential areas and sensitive-receptor properties, 55/50/45 dB for medium- and high-density residential areas, and 65/60/55 dB for mixed-use, commercial, and industrial areas.

Maximum, peak, and pure-tone sound levels are separately limited, and mechanical or acoustically induced vibration may not exceed 200 micrometers per second RMS in any one-third octave band.

A professional acoustical expert must submit a sound-modeling study with the application and an as-built sound study six months after the certificate of occupancy and before final escrow release; later studies may also be required by the Township.

A data center may not be approved without demonstrating an adequate water supply and showing that withdrawals and discharges will not adversely affect nearby groundwater or surface waters.

Public-water applicants must provide certification that the public authority will supply the required water. Applicants relying on nonpublic sources may need Delaware River Basin Commission approval for withdrawals of at least 100,000 gallons per day averaged over 30 days or consumptive use of at least 20,000 gallons per day averaged over 30 days.

Applicants relying on nonpublic groundwater or surface-water withdrawals must submit a detailed water-feasibility study, including projected average and peak demand, water uses, recycling and discharge, nearby wells and sewage systems, surface waters, habitats, and other required technical information.

Groundwater proposals require a hydrogeologic report by a Pennsylvania-licensed professional geologist, aquifer testing, sustainable-yield analysis, drought-availability analysis, and analysis of impacts on nearby wells, surface waters, and the groundwater table.

Surface-water withdrawals must satisfy basin-specific flow, passby-flow, withdrawal, flood, and habitat-protection standards, generally based on at least 10 recent years of flow records or an approved reference stream gauge.

For nonpublic groundwater projects withdrawing or discharging at least 50,000 gallons per day over a consecutive 30-day period, nearby property owners within 3,000 feet or the applicable cone of depression must be notified and offered baseline well testing before the aquifer test.

Groundwater projects must provide a monitoring plan with upgradient and downgradient monitoring wells, collect pre-withdrawal benchmark data, inspect wells at least monthly, and submit quarterly reports on withdrawals, groundwater levels, precipitation, equipment accuracy, and monitoring trends.

The operator is presumed responsible for adverse impacts to water-supply wells within the area of influence occurring within 60 months after production begins, and must remediate confirmed impacts at no cost to affected owners. Financial security is required based on $10,000 multiplied by the number of other groundwater wells in the hydrologic environment.

Applicants connecting to the electric grid must provide certification from the electric service provider that sufficient capacity is available and that the provider will serve the data center, including disclosure of known project-related impacts on electric rates or availability.

An Emergency Response Plan must be submitted, reviewed and accepted by the local fire department and emergency management services, and must address fire suppression, containment, ventilation, evacuation, emergency access, responder training, inspections, and 24-hour emergency contacts.

Battery or other energy-storage systems must comply with NFPA 855 or similar standards and include fire-suppression systems specifically designed for battery storage.

Facades facing roads, residential districts, or existing residences must incorporate at least two specified design elements for every 150 horizontal feet, such as changes in materials, height, or five-foot-deep step-backs or recesses.

Parking must be provided at a rate of at least one space per 8,000 square feet of employee-accessible floor area or one space per employee on the largest shift, whichever is less.

Electric substations must have year-round opaque landscaping or an at least eight-foot screen wall, generally be located to the side or rear of the principal building, and not be located in a required front yard.

New or enhanced electric transition and distribution lines must be underground where technically possible, and on-site power lines of 34.5 kV or less must be buried.

On-site generation must meet environmental, safety, and utility-interconnection standards; generators must be Tier 4 or better, and all building roofs must be designed as solar-ready.

A Solar Energy Plan must identify projected annual electricity use, proposed solar systems and capacity, expected generation, and an installation schedule requiring solar systems to be installed no later than 12 months after the certificate of occupancy.

A Conditional Use application must include an Environmental Impact Study prepared by an environmental engineer addressing groundwater, surface water, air, soil, combustible materials, emissions, fire and emergency operations, odors, noise, smoke, dust, glare, heat islands, vibration, and electrical disturbance.

A licensed professional engineer must prepare a Traffic Impact Study covering nearby roads, intersections, and interchanges, including traffic volumes, trip generation, level of service, parking demand, truck deliveries, and mitigation of identified hazards or congestion.

A Conditional Use applicant must submit an economic impact study estimating Township costs for infrastructure, emergency preparedness, administration, police, and fire protection, as well as projected tax and other revenues.

As a condition of approval, the applicant must enter into one or more Community Benefits Agreements addressing impacts on infrastructure, environmental and historic resources, emergency responders, roads, sewer systems, local government, and other identified impacts; the agreement may require improvements or payments in lieu.

Applicants must submit a long-term site master plan identifying current and future data center buildings, accessory uses, generators, energy systems, substations, cooling equipment, water and wastewater systems, fuel systems, roads, emergency access, conservation areas, setbacks, buffers, wetlands, waterways, and other infrastructure. Parcels may be added or removed only through a subsequent Conditional Use application.

A separate Development Agreement is required to document preemptive public improvements and safety-related upgrades needed to address impacts on fire companies, emergency response, equipment, training, and electric-grid infrastructure.

Cooling systems must use closed-loop, air-cooled chiller technology; open-loop or once-through evaporative chilling is prohibited.

Backup power may be used during emergencies or when the utility provider identifies grid vulnerability, but regular unnecessary generator use is prohibited.

Final land-development applications must include utility confirmation letters stating no impact or that utilities will serve the project, on-site water recycling is required, and wastewater must receive pretreatment before sewer discharge, specifically addressing PFAS.

The applicant must provide an executed Utility Curtailment Agreement requiring automatic reduction to maintenance-only operations, not exceeding 10% of normal capacity, during a grid emergency, peak-demand event, or voltage reduction.

Applicants must provide decommissioning and upgrade procedures covering removal and disposal of obsolete electronic materials and must post upfront bonding to cover potential municipal costs from site abandonment or decommissioning.

Operators must submit annual compliance reports detailing monthly utility use and efficiency, generator use, reductions in efficiency, and spikes in energy or water consumption.

The ordinance creates a conditional-use approval pathway for data centers and their accessory uses in the Special Use District and, where applicable, the HI District of the Industrial Heritage Corridor Overlay District; they are not prohibited outright in those districts.

The definition of Data Center Accessory Use broadly permits related administrative, logistical, fiber-optic, storage, security, power-generation, energy-storage, substation, utility-line, cooling, water, wastewater, and environmental-control facilities when located on the same tract or on adjacent parcels developed as a unified project.

Accessory renewable-energy systems, including battery storage and on-site solar generation serving the data center, are expressly permitted.

The dimensional standards allow a data-center building to be up to 35 feet high, plus up to 10 additional feet for roof-mounted cooling, ventilation, HVAC, and similar equipment.

The ordinance establishes a minimum data-center lot size of 2 acres, providing a defined path for projects on sites meeting that threshold.

Data-center electric substations may serve users on the same or adjacent site, or on a site immediately across a road right-of-way, and an on-site substation may be placed beside or behind the principal building without an internal buffer between the building and substation.

On-site or behind-the-meter generation using natural gas, renewable fuels, or other clean sources is permitted when used to improve reliability, efficiency, or sustainability, subject to environmental, safety, and utility-interconnection standards.

The parking requirement is limited to one space per 8,000 square feet of employee-accessible floor area or one space per employee during the largest shift, whichever is less.

Existing topography or vegetation may satisfy all or part of the required landscape buffer, reducing the amount of new buffering that must be installed.

The required sound limits do not apply to emergency standby generators during emergency use, and generator testing during specified daytime hours may exceed the normal limits by up to 20 dBA or 20 dB for up to one cumulative hour per seven-day period.

The long-term site master-plan process allows an applicant to identify current and future data centers, accessory uses, substations, generation systems, cooling equipment, water systems, and other infrastructure on a unified plan, providing a framework for planned expansion subject to a later conditional-use application for added or removed parcels.