That informal yes, expected to be formally ratified by the Middlesex Township Municipal Authority next month, is one significant box checked for the proposed data center’s developers, if it stands.
The board’s consensus was delivered in response to a request for an allocation of up to 400,000 gallons of water per day, equal to 2,367 dwelling units.
That request, which would effectively be a daily cap, was arrived at after the authority ran an analysis that suggests it has unused capacity of 910,000 gallons per day during times of peak demand, at present.
Reserving 400,000 for the so-called Project Bolt would, in theory, leave more than 500,000 gallons available for other new development around the township, according to the authority’s analysis.
Those numbers, Middlesex Authority Chairman Peter Lusardi noted, don’t include the planned construction of a second municipal well now under development.
That’s a project that the authority has been working on since before the data center proposal emerged, he said, and it could be brought online later this decade.
“We gave them what we thought was a reasonable amount of water without overtaxing our resources,” Lusardi said after Thursday’s meeting.
Officials noted Carlisle Development Partners, the project developers, will be on the hook to pay for the extension of water lines into the project area.
Considering the extra revenue the authority will see from the project’s connection fees — which could help cover its future capital costs for several years — “all in all, I think this is a good thing for our customers,” Lusardi said.
The authority, a five-member board appointed by the towship supervisors, is responsible for operation and maintenance of the township’s public water and sewer systems.
Residents present for Thursday’s meeting peppered the board and the developer’s representative, attorney Charles Courtney, with questions.
Some were openly skeptical about how the proposed data center could be cooled with 400,000 gallons per day.
Water is vital because it is used to cool the massive computer server systems on site.
Some large data center complexes have been reported to use more than 5 million gallons of water per day, though newer technologies can greatly reduce that need.
Courtney declined to discuss specifics of Project Bolt’s cooling system Thursday, other than to say it will be designed “basically on the availability of just that amount of water” in the township’s allocation.
In a separate Sept. 3 letter to the authority and shown to PennLive, Igal Feibush, a principal in Carlisle Development Partners, explained a little more.
“The data center campus will incorporate on-site modular water storage and advanced cooling technologies. This balances demand across daily and seasonal cycles, and keeps withdrawals from the municipal system low,” Feibush wrote.
“This approach ensures that Project Bolt is designed for responsible operation within MTMA’s allocations, while also maintaining flexibility as the township’s water system expands, serving both community and economic development needs.”
He also reserved the right to seek more water in the future, however, writing: “As additional capacity becomes available with Well 2, the project’s allocation can be revisited and adjusted in coordination with MTMA.”
About the project
Data centers — in layman’s terms — are big computer server farms that provide key infrastructure for ever-growing information storage and sharing needs.
Sketch plans for the Middlesex site — dubbed Project Bolt — show three distinct campuses of six buildings each on the now-undeveloped tract in the 200 block of Country Club Road.
Large residential developments, like The Meadows and Country Manor Mobile Home Park, sit across Conodoguinet Creek and on the other side of existing tree lines.
But all the proposed buildings, according to master plans shown so far, will be at least 1,000 feet away from the closest existing home.
Those conditions, the developers’ pitch materials state, make the Country Club Road site “uniquely qualified ... for tucked-away, low-impact data center development.”
Carlisle Development Partners LLC acquired the 715-acre site off Country Club Road for $44 million earlier this year.
As customers of the public water system, the data center would become part of a network that draws water from a set of underground wells, none if which are in the immediate area of the proposed facility.
There would be no direct draws, according to current plans, from the Conodoguinet, which is a water source for some downstream municipalities, or the groundwater table at Country Club Road.
Water is just one piece of the approval puzzle for the project, which has already generated a significant amount of concern from Middlesex residents and others concerned about potential strains on the energy supply, water and environmental concerns.
First-phase land development plans for the project are now under a separate review by the Middlesex Township Planning Commission, and are expected to be considered through the fall and winter.
If the potential pitfalls can be avoided, there is a lot for local officials to like about this project.
There will be piles of new property tax revenue — something badly needed by the deficit-ridden Cumberland Valley School District, and welcomed by the worried-about-deficits Cumberland County commissioners.
Developers have projected $65 million annually in new township, school and county taxes, though that figure has not been independently corroborated.
And then there is the possibility of several hundred new jobs.
Representatives of PowerHouse Data Centers, one of the partners in the Carlisle group, said last month each building could employ 25 to 40 workers, depending on the final tenants and the technologies they deploy.
That’s a minimum of 450 jobs at full build-out, ranging from entry-level positions starting at $25 per hour to salaried engineering and management positions ranging from $70,000 to $120,000 per year.
Then there is the prestige and potential spin-off from bringing some top corporate flags into the region as well. PowerHouse has predicted its eventual tenants will come from the ranks of Big Tech giants such as Google, Amazon or Oracle.
At last report, Carlisle Data Center Partners had not finalized any agreements with end users yet.
The Middlesex Municipal Authority is expected to take final action on the allocation request on Nov. 20.
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