Montour County Takes Bold Step with Data Center Ordinance
Montour County's new data center ordinance could reshape local growth and infrastructure. Discover its implications! #DataCenters #Infrastructure
When a rural Pennsylvania county of fewer than 20,000 people drafts ordinances specifically for data centers, something significant is happening beneath the surface.
The Montour County Board of Commissioners recently approved a notice of intent to adopt a data center ordinance — a procedural step, yes, but one that signals the county is serious about getting ahead of an infrastructure wave that has already caught dozens of communities flat-footed. This isn't a reaction. It's preparation.
Why a Small County Is Making a Big Move
Montour County sits in central Pennsylvania's Susquehanna Valley, not the first place that comes to mind when you think about hyperscale computing infrastructure. But that's exactly the point. The data center industry has been quietly migrating away from its traditional strongholds — Northern Virginia, Phoenix, Dallas — driven by power constraints, water scarcity, and the simple math of land costs. Secondary and tertiary markets are suddenly attractive in ways they weren't five years ago.
A county that defines its data center rules before developers arrive holds enormous leverage over how that growth unfolds. A county that waits? It ends up negotiating from the lobby.
The Board's move to formalize a data center ordinance puts Montour County in a proactive posture. Before a single permit is filed, the county is establishing the regulatory framework that will govern zoning requirements, facility standards, and presumably the conditions under which these facilities can operate. That matters enormously — both for attracting the right kind of development and for protecting existing residents and infrastructure from the wrong kind.
What a Data Center Ordinance Actually Does
Data centers aren't like other industrial facilities, and generic industrial zoning rarely fits them well. They require extraordinary power loads — a single hyperscale facility can draw 100 MW or more, equivalent to powering roughly 80,000 homes — but they don't generate significant truck traffic, odors, or traditional industrial externalities. They employ relatively few people per square foot. They consume enormous amounts of water for cooling. They generate noise from thousands of HVAC units running continuously.
Standard zoning codes weren't written with any of this in mind.
A purpose-built ordinance can address the specifics: setback requirements that account for generator exhaust and acoustic footprint, power infrastructure coordination with utilities, water usage disclosures, requirements around backup fuel storage, and connectivity standards that ensure the facility can function as intended. Done well, it creates a clear, predictable pathway for developers while protecting community interests.
Regulatory clarity is itself an economic asset. Developers making nine-figure investment decisions don't like ambiguity. A county with a coherent data center ordinance — one that tells them exactly what's required and what's permitted — is a county that moves faster through the development pipeline.
The details of Montour County's specific ordinance provisions haven't been fully published, but the intent approval sets the process in motion. Public comment periods and formal adoption proceedings will follow.
The Economic Case Is Real, But Complicated
Data centers do bring economic benefits, and it would be dishonest to minimize them. Property tax revenue from a large facility can be transformative for a county budget of this scale. Construction phases generate local contracting work. And the facilities themselves, while not labor-intensive operations, do create stable, well-compensated technical and facilities management jobs.
For context: a mid-size data center representing a $500 million capital investment can generate millions annually in local property taxes, depending on state assessment rules. In a county where the entire annual budget might be measured in tens of millions, that's meaningful revenue that funds roads, schools, and public safety.
The investment opportunities extend beyond the facilities themselves. Data center development tends to pull secondary infrastructure investment behind it — grid upgrades, fiber buildout, road improvements — that benefits the broader community. When a utility runs a new transmission line to serve a 50 MW data center load, that capacity doesn't disappear when the data center is built.
The complication is that data centers also strain infrastructure. Water systems, power grids, and emergency services all feel the load. An ordinance that doesn't account for these impacts — requiring developers to contribute to infrastructure upgrades proportional to their demands — leaves the county holding costs that the developer should carry.
What Other Regions Have Learned
Loudoun County, Virginia — the self-proclaimed "data center capital of the world" — offers the clearest case study in what unmanaged data center growth looks like. The county hosts more than 25 million square feet of data center space and counting. The tax revenue is substantial. But Loudoun has also grappled with sprawl concerns, strain on power infrastructure, and a development pace that periodically outran its regulatory framework. The county has since implemented more structured ordinances and data center overlay zones — essentially catching up to what its growth demanded.
Prince William County, also in Virginia, took a different path: it approved a massive data center corridor but faced significant pushback from residents over impacts to historic and rural land. The lesson there is that community engagement before the ordinance — not after — determines whether the regulatory framework has legitimacy.
Northern Nevada and the Phoenix metro have similar stories: early-mover markets that attracted enormous investment but are now wrestling with grid capacity and water resource conflicts that better upfront planning might have managed more gracefully.
Montour County has the advantage of going second. The mistakes have already been made elsewhere.
What Comes Next for Montour County
The notice of intent is the beginning of the process, not the end. What happens during the comment and adoption period will determine whether the final ordinance is a genuine framework for responsible data center development or a permissive document that simply greenlights whatever comes through the door.
The infrastructure questions are significant. Pennsylvania's grid, operated through PJM Interconnection — the nation's largest regional transmission organization — has seen data center load growth become a dominant driver of new interconnection requests. Getting a meaningful power allocation in PJM's queue takes time and planning. Any serious data center prospect will be running those numbers in parallel with local zoning conversations.
Fiber connectivity is equally critical. Danville and its surrounding area would need to demonstrate robust, redundant network connectivity to attract enterprise or colocation data center tenants. Hyperscale cloud operators — Amazon, Microsoft, Google — are less location-sensitive on connectivity since they build their own backbone infrastructure, but they're increasingly selective about grid reliability and clean energy access.
The counties that ultimately win data center investment at scale won't just be the ones with available land — they'll be the ones that have done the infrastructure homework.
For Montour County, the ordinance is the right first move. What follows — utility coordination, economic development outreach, workforce pipeline conversations with community colleges and technical schools — will determine whether the ordinance attracts real investment or sits on the books unused.
The window is open. Rural and suburban Pennsylvania markets are actively being evaluated by data center developers and site selectors right now. A county that shows up with clear rules, shovel-ready infrastructure planning, and a genuine understanding of what the industry needs is a county that earns a seat at a very lucrative table.
That's what this ordinance is ultimately about: earning that seat before someone else takes it.
Call to Action
Ready to explore how your community can benefit from data center development? Visit InfraSale Marketplace for more insights and opportunities.