Data centers, data center campuses, and data center accessory uses are permitted only by conditional use in the I-2 and I-3 districts, requiring a conditional-use application and hearing.

Applicants bear the burden of proving, with competent, substantial, and credible evidence, compliance with all required performance standards; failure to prove compliance requires denial.

For phased developments, applicants must demonstrate compliance with applicable standards at completion of the first phase and every later phase.

Applicants must disclose full-build-out electrical demand, including information-technology load, cooling systems, and supporting infrastructure.

Approval requires studies demonstrating adequate electrical-infrastructure capacity at full build-out without adverse public-health, safety, or welfare impacts.

Applicants must identify proposed substations, transmission lines, and utility upgrades, document financial responsibility for them, and disclose anticipated capacity issues.

Applicants must disclose the number and capacity of backup generators, generator-testing hours, and total on-site fuel storage.

Fuel-storage areas must be at least 1,000 feet from every property line.

Cooling systems and maximum annual water consumption must be identified in the application.

Applicants must submit a traffic-impact analysis covering construction traffic, including oversized-equipment deliveries, and the Township may require traffic-management or mitigation measures.

Applicants must submit an emergency-services coordination plan addressing fire protection, hazardous-materials response, battery systems, and fuel storage.

Data centers and campuses must be separated from one another by at least 100 feet.

Noise is limited to 55 dBA daytime and 45 dBA nighttime at residential uses, 65/55 dBA at parks, and 65/60 dBA at other uses, measured at the property line.

Applicants must submit a professional acoustic-engineer sound assessment, and a post-construction noise study is required six months after issuance of a certificate of occupancy.

Backup-generator testing is limited to 7:00 a.m. through 9:00 p.m. and no more than two hours per day, with a 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. testing window from May 1 through September 30.

Backup generators may be used only during outages, natural disasters, similar emergencies, and regular reliability testing or exercising.

An adequate second means of emergency ingress and egress must be demonstrated, along with Fire Chief approval of emergency access, truck turning, fire suppression, and hydrant availability.

Data center buildings may not exceed 45 feet, with rooftop equipment allowed to extend up to 10 additional feet; total building and rooftop-appurtenance height may not exceed 55 feet.

Minimum lot areas range from 10 acres for buildings under 50,000 square feet to 50 acres for buildings over 250,001 square feet.

Parking, loading, and interior-driveway setbacks must be 50 feet from public street rights-of-way and 25 feet from other lot lines.

Parking must be provided at a minimum of 1.5 spaces per on-site employee on the largest shift.

Truck parking and truck idling must be at least 300 feet from residential districts or occupied dwellings, reducible to 250 feet only if sound studies demonstrate compliance without sound-mitigation measures.

Data center sites adjoining sensitive receptors, residential uses or districts, or collector or arterial roads must provide enhanced landscaped buffer strips on berms.

Required street-front and sensitive-receptor buffer widths are 300, 400, or 500 feet depending on whether the combined building footprint is under 100,000 square feet, 100,000 to 250,000 square feet, or over 250,000 square feet.

Buffer strips require specified evergreen trees, canopy trees, ornamental trees, shrubs, year-round screening, maintenance plans, and financial security for ongoing maintenance.

Substations may not be located within 500 feet of a residential district or occupied dwelling.

Power lines of 34.5 kV or less located on-site must be buried, and applicants must provide written utility verification of capacity, safe equipment sizing, adequate cooling infrastructure, no harmful voltage fluctuations, and completed third-party electrical inspection.

Data center facades may not be blank and must include specified fenestration, material changes, façade breaks, roofline variation, and a differentiated main entrance.

Cooling, ventilation, generators, and other equipment closer to a public road or residential use than the principal building must be enclosed or screened by an opaque barrier and dense vegetation.

Rooftop equipment must be screened on all four sides, set back from parapets, and placed as far as feasible from residential uses and sensitive receptors.

Lighting must use full-cutoff or fully shielded fixtures, limit illumination to 0.1 footcandle at residential uses and 0.5 footcandle at nonresidential uses, use LED lighting no warmer than 3000K, and limit fixture height to 20 feet.

Construction hours are limited to 7:00 a.m. through 6:00 p.m. Monday through Friday and 8:00 a.m. through 6:00 p.m. Saturday, unless the zoning officer grants an administrative modification.

All construction and site traffic must access the site through River Road.

Applicants must submit a construction transportation plan covering routes, traffic volumes, construction hours, traffic controls, road protection, staging, emergency access, agency coordination, and a responsible coordinator.

On-site energy generation, substations, fuel-cell systems, and batteries require Fire Chief approval and a safety plan, with annual recertification and site inspections.

Data centers must generally use closed-loop cooling; once-through cooling is prohibited unless the applicant proves it is necessary, environmentally safe, and uses specified treatment and discharge controls.

Applicants must submit water-feasibility studies addressing demand, sources, cooling use, recycling, aquifers, nearby wells, surface waters, and effects on water resources when public water is unavailable.

Projects with specified water withdrawals or consumptive uses must obtain Delaware River Basin Commission review and approval.

An environmental-impact assessment is required with the conditional-use application, including air emissions, nuisance impacts, stormwater, archaeological resources, comprehensive-plan impacts, alternatives, mitigation, and critical environmental areas.

Applicants must submit a current Pennsylvania Natural Diversity Inventory report and comply with state-directed measures for threatened, endangered, or special-concern species.

A Thermal Impact Mitigation Plan, sealed by a Pennsylvania-licensed professional engineer, is required for new data centers, expansions over 25 percent, and certain high-density computing facilities exceeding 10,000 square feet or 2 megawatts.

The Township may require additional thermal mitigation, post-construction verification, operational monitoring, annual reporting, testing, corrective actions, and applicant-funded peer review.

Buildings must be solar-ready; uncovered roof areas must use roofing with a solar-reflective index of at least 78, and buildings over 200,000 square feet must have rooftop solar supplying as much facility power as feasible before occupancy.

A decommissioning plan is required, with removal and restoration procedures, a professional-engineer cost estimate, responsible-party identification, and financial security equal to 110 percent of estimated decommissioning costs.

Financial security for decommissioning must remain in effect for the facility's life and be updated at least every five years.

A data center is deemed to have ceased operations after 20 continuous months of nonoperation unless the owner demonstrates good-faith efforts to resume operations or submits redevelopment plans.

Applicants must disclose on-site and off-site fiber infrastructure, routes, construction methods, public-infrastructure impacts, restoration methods, and responsible parties.

Electromagnetic-field emissions may not exceed 2 milligauss above ambient background at the nearest property line or any point accessible to the public, requiring baseline and post-construction verification.

Data center operations may not cause electromagnetic interference with nearby electronic or communications equipment, and verified interference requires immediate corrective action.

Construction and operation may not cause ground vibration above 0.2 inches per second, with pre-construction, post-construction, and possible continuous or periodic monitoring required near residences or sensitive receptors.

Data centers and data center campuses are added as permitted-by-right uses in the I-2 Planned Industrial Park District, allowing development without conditional-use approval under the 2025 amendment. permitted in Use Class 8.A as a by-right use

Data-center equipment and campus accessory structures, including substations, cooling facilities, water facilities, security structures, and utility infrastructure, are authorized as supporting uses; the 2025 measure also exempts equipment and unoccupied accessory structures from the normal 25-foot separation between buildings. data center equipment shall be permitted by right

A campus may satisfy its parking requirement by aggregating parking across the entire campus rather than providing the minimum separately for every center. The 2025 version sets the minimum at 40 spaces per center, while the 2026 draft replaces that with 1.5 spaces per employee on the largest shift. the minimum parking for a data center campus may be reached by aggregating all parking

After approval of a campus master plan, each identified lot, parcel, building, or phase is permitted by right, subject to submitting a conforming site plan to the zoning officer before obtaining a building permit. development of each lot, parcel or building identified in the data center campus master plan shall be permitted by right

The master-plan process allows phased development with no expiration or time limit on campus approvals, protecting a project from having to complete all phases within a fixed period. No time limitation shall apply to approvals of a data center campus

The 2025 master-plan rules exempt applicants from several SALDO requirements, including the tentative sketch plan, recording the overall master plan, and sidewalks; each final phase site plan must still be recorded, and the township may require an as-built master plan. the following provisions of the SALDO shall not apply

The 2025 measure defines broad categories of minor master-plan modifications that can avoid a new full master-plan approval, including internal-road or utility changes, accessory-equipment relocation, building-location shifts, third-party agency requirements, and up to a 5% increase in building area. A minor modification to an approved data center campus master plan

The 2025 measure authorizes the Board of Supervisors to approve waivers or modifications when a requirement is unreasonable, causes undue hardship, or an alternative standard provides equal or better results. the Board of Supervisors may approve waivers or modifications

The 2025 amendment permits construction and heavy machinery operation from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., Monday through Saturday, and allows the zoning officer to authorize additional hours by administrative modification. may occur between the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m.

Required periodic testing and emergency operation of data-center equipment are exempt from the 2025 sound limits; the 2026 draft also exempts lawful regular operation of utilities and electrical generation or transmission facilities, subject to the draft's stated exceptions. required periodic testing of data center equipment

The 2026 draft permits phased campus development and continues the master-plan/minor-modification framework, including treatment of up to 5% building-area increases and changes required by PennDOT or DEP as minor modifications; larger changes require Planning Commission review and Board approval. A data center campus may be developed in one or more phases