The water utility company revealed that Archbald PA data center speculators can't possibly predict water usage needs.
If true, it is quite a bombshell admission by the water company's director of engineering revealing the speculative position of the proposed data centers in Archbald Pennsylvania.
Dan Rickard of PAW said that there are no actual end users currently invested in or currently interested in using a future data center in Archbald Pennsylvania. And who knows if there ever will be. Speculation later on in a financial bubble is pretty risky.
Dan Rickard of Pennsylvania American Water said this at a Archbald Borough Council work session on March 11th, 2026:
Can utilities handle data centers’ electricity, sewer and water needs? Here’s what officials from Pennsylvania American Water, PPL and the Lackawanna River Basin Sewer Authority said - By Frank Lesnefsky | The Times-Tribune PUBLISHED: March 13, 2026 at 6:36 PM EDT | UPDATED: March 13, 2026 at 8:33 PM EDT Dan Rickard, PAW’s director of engineering, pointed to a large capacity available to sustain data centers, describing the utility as “well positioned to support data center development.” “The large water demands that you hear publicized with these data centers are true to some degree, but they’re really actually very limited to certain times of year that they’re used for cooling,” he said. He noted that although they’ve had inquiries, there are no agreements in place, nor do they have firm numbers on water usage from local data centers. The six proposed in Archbald are all “developers and speculators” with no users, he said. “They’re not sure how much water they’re actually going to use,” Rickard said. “It seems to vary almost daily, if not weekly, every time we talk to them.” (emphasis added)
The water company is asserting that they can handle the water needs of future data centers, but at the same time the water company admits they’re not sure how much the data centers will need to use because they have no idea what the use case is.
This isn’t reassuring. Quite the opposite. How could they predict anything at all if they have no idea yet what they’re going to be computing in these data centers?
And so the claim that was made at the Archbald Wildcat Ridge Data Center Campus public hearing on March 10th is also dubious. How do they predict confidently that they will be “reducing the need for on-site generation” of power in new data centers? How could they know?
Wildcat Ridge Data Center Campus faces major opposition in Archbald - By Frank Lesnefsky | The Times-Tribune PUBLISHED: March 11, 2026 at 4:37 PM EDT | UPDATED: March 11, 2026 at 5:06 PM EDT However, the 41 generators per building are a “worst-case condition” in case the end-user is something like a hospital system, critical infrastructure component or social media platform, Mitten said. New data center designs are drastically reducing the need for on-site generation, eliminating 80% to 90% of generators because of the power reliability that the electric utility can bring to the property, he said.
And this assertion that they’ll be drastically reducing on-site generation in upcoming data centers completely contradicts the plans we’ve heard from both President Donald Trump and Governor Josh Shapiro, who have both announced that new data centers will “bring their own power” and are expected to be self-powered, and it would follow that it would be with on-site power generation or a data center that’s also a power plant. How does one resolve this contradiction? You can’t have it both ways.
So which is it? You can’t have it both ways.
Hyperscale data centers aren’t the backwards progress we need.
The comment from Ben Mitten representing the data center project, just grouping hospitals and social media platforms both equally within the concept of critical infrastructure is totally bonkers! This should be a big red flag that this isn’t an industry thinking clearly about community priorities.
I think I speak for nearly all of the humans who want to continue to live, and literally stay alive, in Northeastern Pennsylvania; If we had to give up drinking water, indoor plumbing, clean air to breathe, and choose an inhospitable living environment, just to be on social media or use an internet search engine, I think we’ll skip on that so-called “progress” because going back to before we had running water is NOT progress!!
Transcript: Lackawanna County Commissioners 2-18-26 ECTV Streamed live on Feb 18, 2026 Lackawanna County Commissioner Bill Gaughan at the February 18, 2026 county meeting: “Arrogant, data center developer, who by the way wore a turtleneck which for some reason annoyed me in the worst way. But he had this turtleneck and he was the most ignorant arrogant person I’d ever seen speak and a woman got up in Archbald and was asking this man questions and his response was: Don’t you use google? Don’t you use google? So let’s eviscerate all the hundreds and thousands of acres of land in Lackawanna County so we can use Google.” (download: https://chloehumbert.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/2026-0218-bgaughangoogle30sec.mp4 )
Even though that’s just not what these big hyperscale data centers are for. We already had Google 20+ years ago, and frankly it was better before they started enshittifying it, especially with the AI. And the fact is, that the tech tycoons themselves say it’s needed for the AI.
Transcript: Eric Schmidt Interview on AI data centers (Former Google CEO) August 2024 Eric Schmidt: “I talked Sam Altman is a close friend he believes that it’s going to take about 300 billion maybe more I pointed out to him that I done the calculation on the amount of energy Acquired and I and I then in the spirit of full disclosure went to the White House on Friday and told them that we need to become best friends with Canada because Canada has really nice people helped invent AI and lots of Hydra power because we as a country do not have enough power to do this the alternative is to have the Arabs fund it and I like the Arabs personally uh spent lots of time there right but they’re not going to adhere to our national security rules whereas Canada and the US are part of a triumvirate it where we all agree.” Erik Brynjolfsson: “so these 300 billion data centers, electricity starts becoming the scarce resource.” (download: https://chloehumbert.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/eric-schmidt-clip.mp4 )
Full transcript: Three Mile Island, pouring taxpayer money into the AI bubble. Don’t Wait For Everybody - Episode 031 Chloe Humbert Nov 22, 2025 (download https://chloehumbert.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/2025-3mile417.mp4 )
The big hyperscale data centers with the GPUs are not even needed for streaming recorded content or viewing a livestream. Those are just needed for AI. Or for cryptocurrency printing, like Greg Beard and his tire burning crypto printing plant while he’s the US Dept. of Energy Director of Loans and getting involved with AI lobbying orgs. He’s not the only one in a public office while lobbying, or while involved in running a crypto business.
Full Transcript: Data Centers are Noisy Monster Palaces Don’t Wait For Everybody - Episode 030 Chloe Humbert Oct 04, 2025 (download: https://chloehumbert.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/2025-noisymonsterpalace1.mp4 )
So if it was just for the usual stuff, we don’t need an environment wrecking monster palace, we just don’t.
Transcript: Luzerne County Data Center Community Meeting Physicians for Social Responsibility Pennsylvania Feb 27, 2026 Josephine Gingerich, PSR-PA: "So, the main thing to know about this is that the data centers of old that are around us and used that we need for our cell phones and for our internet are nothing like these hypers scale data centers proposed across the country. there's a little data center in Wilkes-Barre right in the town and it's uh a company that uses uh provides Wi-Fi and cell phone service to the community there, but they also have their office building. It's innocuous. It's not noisy. You don't even know it's there. Those are the types of data centers that supply us with our day-to-day things that we use and need. The water consumption from AI is two to four times anything for the rest of the internet.
I worked at a data center 20+ years ago when we called it a webhosting office, and it was in a neighborhood. It was kept chilly inside, and it there was a hum and AC noise in the rooms with the computer servers, but it wasn’t driving the neighborhood insane even during a heat wave where it was above 90°F for days on end. Because it was a small building, a small business, locally owned and operated. And it was where all sorts of websites and email and whatnot were physically located.
And even PA Senator Rosemary Brown, who had been told probably that these data centers were for online shopping carts, that’s what she was saying last summer, and now she’s made a pivot and backs the proposed statewide moratorium. Voila.
Northeast Pennsylvania lawmakers target data centers, back moratoriums By Frank Lesnefsky | The Times-Tribune PUBLISHED: February 25, 2026 at 10:07 AM EST | UPDATED: February 25, 2026 at 5:41 PM EST State Sen. Rosemary Brown announced her support Tuesday for a moratorium on the data center industry and unveiled a legislative package that would restrict data centers to industrial zones.
Transcript WVIA Keystone Edition Data Centers: Deal or Dilemma? Season 2026 Episode 2 | 54m 59s Aired: 02/15/26 Lackawanna County Commissioner Bill Gaughan: “Call on our state legislators and our governor to impose a moratorium to give us more time to study the negative consequences that we’ve seen all over the country. Down in Georgia there’s a bunch of state lawmakers that just got together and they’re trying to push legislation now for a moratorium there. And this is happening in other parts of the country as well. So, I think it’s really important.” (https://chloehumbert.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/2026-wviagaughanmoratorium.mp4 )
My letter to reps (because why lowball going in?):
Hi, I want a 5 year data center moratorium. Thank you.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
