On December 26, 2025, J. Brian O’Neill asked a lawyer then serving in the federal government whether there was “any flexibility in that 25-ton number.” The number he was asking about is the point at which Pennsylvania’s air rules treat a new source of pollution in this county as a major facility, which is the point at which the strictest pollution controls and the requirement to offset new emissions attach. The email is public because residents filed Right to Know requests for these records, and DeSmog published them on August 12 alongside reporting that traces what happened after it was sent.
Twelve days later, the request had reached the chief of staff to the chairman of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, and two days after that MLP Ventures was on a video call with the commission.
A threshold is not a ceiling, and the difference is the whole story
Montgomery County is part of the federally designated Philadelphia-area ozone nonattainment region, and Pennsylvania writes the consequence into its air code. Under 25 Pa. Code Section 127.201(f), a facility in Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, or Philadelphia County with the potential to emit at least 25 tons per year of either volatile organic compounds or nitrogen oxides is treated as a major facility subject to the requirements that apply to major sources in severe ozone nonattainment areas. Both pollutants matter for gas-fired generation, and both form ground-level ozone, which is associated with respiratory harm including the aggravation of asthma. Some volatile organic compounds are themselves toxic or carcinogenic.
Crossing 25 tons does not forbid the emissions. It changes what the applicant has to do to be allowed to release them. Nonattainment New Source Review requires the lowest achievable emission rate, a control standard set without regard to what it costs the applicant, and it requires the new emissions to be offset by real reductions elsewhere at more than one ton for every new ton. That is the machinery O’Neill was asking about, and precision here matters, because the accurate description of his request is the more troubling one. He was asking about flexibility in the trigger that subjects a project to the strictest air-pollution requirements Pennsylvania applies.
The rules already answer the problem he described
O’Neill told his contact that emission reduction credits were not available in the region, “making the 25-ton limitation difficult to achieve.” That is a clear statement of what he understood his permitting problem to be, and it should be taken seriously rather than stretched. It does not establish that every lawful route was closed to him. Pennsylvania’s own regulations anticipate exactly the situation he described: Section 127.208 provides that a facility which demonstrates credits are unavailable in its own nonattainment area may obtain them from another nonattainment area, subject to conditions about that area’s classification and its contribution to the violation. Whether that route is workable for this project is a question of fact the public record does not answer. A developer in that position has other options as well, including designing to stay below the threshold, accepting enforceable operating restrictions, or changing the technology or scale of the generation.
What the email establishes is how he responded to the obstacle. He asked whether the EPA could provide waivers. He asked whether the agency had strategies to reduce the limits like those it had applied to coal plants. He proposed, in his words, “Can we implement a strategy in partnership with the EPA?” He described the standards as having been “put in during the ‘green movement’” and said they “may not be appropriate or applicable to today.” The flexibility question was one of five items he wanted raised with the EPA and the Public Utility Commission, and he pressed for speed because a transaction he valued at ten to twenty billion dollars was due to close within six days.
Twelve days from the question to a meeting with the state’s utility regulator
The lawyer he asked was Michael Tierney. The records trace his path from counsel to Governor Shapiro in 2023, to private attorney coordinating O’Neill’s data center plans with state officials in early 2025, to general counsel at USAID that March, to deputy legal adviser at the U.S. State Department in October, the position he held when the December email arrived. The Shapiro administration told DeSmog that it understood Tierney to be an outside advisor engaged by MLP Ventures, that he wrote from a private email address, and that he “did not disclose his federal employment in those conversations.”
On January 5, 2026, Tierney forwarded O’Neill’s email to the chief of staff of the Public Utility Commission’s chairman and thanked him for helping arrange a meeting with a senior official there. The commission and MLP Ventures met by video on January 7. The commission told DeSmog that its communications with the company concerned power generation, environmental oversight, and grid interconnection, and that clarifying its role and jurisdiction is ordinary practice for a responsive regulator.
In the same email, O’Neill described the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection as “extraordinarily cooperative.” DEP told DeSmog that its meetings with MLP Ventures were routine explanations of the permitting process and that it has received no data center permit application in Montgomery County. The agency he praised is the one that would evaluate his air permits if these projects clear zoning. Tierney was nominated in April to lead the Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection at the Department of Veterans Affairs, and as of DeSmog’s August 12 report his Senate confirmation remained pending.
Five months later he told residents their air quality would not suffer
On May 27, 2026, O’Neill stood in Upper Merion’s Freedom Hall and told hundreds of residents that the perception that data centers reduce air quality was a myth and was not true, and that his company was spending billions of dollars on emissions control equipment. In an August 6 interview published by the Chestnut Hill Local on August 12, he said residents can “jump up and down and scream all you want” and that he expects to win these fights legally.
Take the legal claim at face value, because it is the right frame. Winning legally means satisfying the requirements as written, and in December he described those requirements as an obstacle serious enough to ask a well-connected government contact whether they could be relaxed.
Upper Merion’s planning commission voted 4 to 0 on July 22 to recommend denial of the applications before it that evening, and the Board of Supervisors is scheduled to consider the preliminary land development applications on August 13, one day after these records became public.
What the Plymouth zoning hearing can do with this
Plymouth Township has described the standard in its own words. Because the data center is being sought under a catch-all provision, the applicant must prove two things to the Zoning Hearing Board: that the proposed use is of the same general character as a use the ordinance already names for the Heavy Industrial district, and that the way the use is proposed will not have an “adverse or detrimental impact on the health, safety and welfare” of the community. The second of those is where this record lives.
Three points belong in front of the board. First, state officials were told in September 2025 that the Plymouth site would include an 800 megawatt power plant. The zoning notice for the application describes ancillary standby generators and ancillary gas turbines outside the existing buildings, and it states no generation capacity at all. Second, among the 43 conditions Plymouth Township Council published on July 27 is one requiring a clean air micro-grid or combined heat and power system, emission levels meeting the highest EPA or DEP standards, and generators at Tier 4 or better. Council says the applicant rejected its conditions, a spokesperson for MLP Ventures has disputed that characterization, and O’Neill has said he agreed to roughly ninety percent of them. A hearing is the place to establish which conditions he will accept as binding. Third, the December email is evidence of how this applicant approaches an air-quality requirement he finds inconvenient, and that bears directly on the weight his witnesses’ assurances about emissions should carry.
Section 908(4) of the Municipalities Planning Code authorizes the chairman, acting chairman, or presiding hearing officer to issue subpoenas compelling the attendance of witnesses and the production of relevant documents, including documents requested by the parties. Parties to this case have a strong basis to request the applicant’s communications with state and federal officials concerning emissions thresholds, offsets, waivers, and air permitting for this project. The board meets August 17 to set the date for the hearing at which testimony will be taken, and the separate validity challenge, deemed complete on July 27, must begin within sixty days of that date.
Two records now sit in the same public file. In December, he described the air-pollution threshold and the missing credits as problems serious enough to seek help from a lawyer inside the federal government. In May, he told a room full of residents their air quality would not suffer. The board weighing his witnesses on health, safety, and welfare is entitled to see both.
Sources
- DeSmog, “Pennsylvania AI Data Center Developer Asked Trump Administration Official to Help Loosen Toxic Emissions Limits,” August 12, 2026. desmog.com
- DeSmog, “How Pennsylvania Governor’s Office Helped Push for Huge Data Centers in the Philadelphia Suburbs,” August 7, 2026. desmog.com
- The public records, DocumentCloud project “Pennsylvania Data Centres,” obtained through Right to Know requests and shared by residents. documentcloud.org
- 25 Pa. Code Section 127.201, New Source Review, general requirements. pacodeandbulletin.gov
- 25 Pa. Code Chapter 127, Subchapter E, New Source Review, including Section 127.208 on credit use and transfer. pacodeandbulletin.gov
- Plymouth Township Council, “A Statement on the Application for a Data Center at 900 Conshohocken Road,” July 27, 2026, including the 43 published conditions. plymouthtownship.org
- The Chestnut Hill Local, “Developer doubles down on data center plans,” August 12, 2026. chestnuthilllocal.com
- PHL17, “Tensions rise in Plymouth Township as developer challenges zoning in data center fight,” July 30, 2026, on the validity challenge timeline. phl17.com