A Pennsylvania borough has cut off water access to data center projects and put new applications on hold, citing a projected daily draw of 1.2 million gallons — a figure officials say the municipal system can’t absorb.
The action, confirmed late June 2026, effectively freezes data center development in the borough until the water supply question gets resolved. No timeline for lifting the pause has been announced.
The water demand dispute
Data centers are among the most water-intensive commercial facilities built today — cooling systems run around the clock, and demand doesn’t dip on weekends or overnight. At 1.2 million gallons a day, a single large facility can strain a municipal water system that was sized for residential and light commercial use.
Borough officials didn’t dispute the economic pitch that often comes with data center proposals — jobs, tax revenue, infrastructure investment. The water math, though, didn’t work. The pause applies to projects already in the pipeline, not just future applications.
It isn’t the first time a Pennsylvania municipality has pushed back on the industry’s resource demands. Data center developers have targeted the mid-Atlantic corridor because of its fiber connectivity and available land, and smaller boroughs — with older water infrastructure — have found themselves fielding proposals their systems weren’t built to handle.
What happens next depends on whether the borough’s water capacity can be expanded, and at whose expense. Neither the borough nor any developer has publicly committed to a funding plan for infrastructure upgrades. The moratorium stays in place in the meantime.
