Plymouth Township Council spent twelve pages today explaining where it stands. The most important thing in the document is not the part about Council. It is the part about what the developer filed.
Give Council its due first, because it earned some today.
Five members went on the record, together, opposing this application. They put forty-three specific conditions in front of the developer, and they published all forty-three so residents can read them. Some of that work is genuinely good. A 500-foot separation for mechanical equipment. A 100-foot planted buffer. Noise limits written down to 16 hertz, which is the frequency range that actually keeps people awake. A decommissioning bond. A public monitoring portal. Somebody did real homework on that list, and residents who spent the last year raising these exact issues should recognize their own fingerprints on it.
Council President Lynne Viscio said, “Although the applicant rejected these conditions and safeguards, we are not backing down.” Ward 1’s William Winchester Jr., whose ward this is, said, “It is unfortunate that Mr. O’Neill has refused these measures and assurances.”
That is a Township Council in opposition, and that is worth something on August 6.
Now the part that should worry everyone.
What he filed
Council writes that the applicant has now filed a second application challenging the validity of the Township’s zoning ordinance, and describes it this way:
“This is a blatant attempt by the Applicant to demand approval by tantrum. The Township will not entertain such theatrics.”
Residents should understand this differently, because it is not theatrics and it is not a bluff.
A substantive validity challenge under Section 916.1 of the Pennsylvania Municipalities Planning Code is the mechanism for attacking a zoning ordinance itself rather than arguing about one application under it. If it succeeds, Section 1006-A allows a court to order the described development approved. A court reviewing that challenge owes no deference to the Zoning Hearing Board or to Council. The Commonwealth Court has said the paramount concern the legislature expressed in that section is to provide a successful challenger with some measure of relief, and that a court declining the relief requested has to consider what alternative relief it can grant instead. The burden shifts to the Township to prove the project is incompatible with its existing, generally applicable rules.
Read plainly, that is an attempt to move this decision out of a room where residents have party status, where neighbors can cross-examine, and where a five-member local board answers to the community, and into a courtroom where none of that applies.
That is the story today. Everything else is context.
The question that is still unanswered
Nine days ago, MoreThanTheCurve asked all five Council members a direct question. Between November 17, 2025, when the first application was withdrawn, and April 19, 2026, when the second one was dated, there was roughly a five-month stretch with no application pending against this property. Section 609.2 of the Planning Code lets a township declare its own zoning ordinance substantively invalid, take a 180-day pause, and write proper rules while shielded from landowner challenges. Montgomery Township used it in March. Doylestown Township, West Whiteland and Lancaster Township all did the same. Montgomery and Chester Counties jointly published a Data Center Ordinance Guide in April with model language ready to adopt. Whitemarsh is drafting from it right now. Tredyffrin authorized amendments with no application pending anywhere in the township.
Council did not respond to that question. It also did not respond when asked whether anyone from the Governor’s administration had been in contact about data centers.
Today’s statement contains what appears to be the answer to the first one:
“As the Township already had a mechanism to review and process the data center use, there was no necessity for the Township to develop a stand-alone data center ordinance for the nascent and emerging use.”
Residents disagreed with that judgment at the time, and this week is the argument for why. An ordinance is law. It binds regardless of whether the developer agrees to it. The forty-three demands were presented instead as a memorandum of understanding, which is a two-signature document, and the developer declined to sign. Council was left holding a list with no legal force behind it.
There is a reason to believe an ordinance would have worked. In Upper Merion, where this same developer has five data center applications in land development, he agreed to abide by some of the stricter provisions of an ordinance that township adopted after his applications were already filed. He complied with a law. He walked away from a request. The difference between those two instruments is the difference we are living with now.
Council does not owe anyone an apology for that. It does owe residents a straight answer, in writing, about what it will do differently, because Plymouth Township has other industrial parcels and this will not be the last application.
What belongs in the record on August 6
The forty-three demands are strong on noise and thin in one place that matters. Demand 26 requires that “All generators shall meet or exceed Tier 4 emissions standards.” Tier 4 is a federal standard for compression-ignition engines. The EPA’s own definition of a stationary internal combustion engine excludes combustion turbines, which fall under a different rule entirely. So that condition reaches the backup diesels that run occasionally and does not reach the gas turbines that would run around the clock. Across all forty-three items there is no megawatt cap, no limit on the number of turbines, no ceiling on annual operating hours, and no numeric nitrogen oxide or fine particulate limit at the property line. Demand 22 goes further and requires that the project “shall be power self-sufficient through on-site power generation,” which locks the power plant in.
Those are fixable gaps, and the hearing is where they get fixed. Parties with standing should put the megawatt figure, the turbine count, the operating hours, and property-line air limits into the record, under oath, with the applicant’s own witnesses on the stand.
What to ask for
Publish the validity challenge. The filing date, where it was filed, and the grounds asserted. Residents cannot evaluate any of this until they can read it.
Answer the five-month question plainly, including whether legal advice shaped the decision.
Adopt a data center ordinance regardless of what happens here, because the rest of the township is still unprotected.
And be at Colonial Middle School on August 6.
Council says it is not backing down. Neither are we. The developer just told everyone exactly how much he intends to negotiate, and the answer was none.