What just happened
On May 6, 2026, at a regularly scheduled commissioners' meeting in Scranton, Lackawanna County Commissioner Bill Gaughan, a Democrat, reiterated his call for the county to take legal action against three proposed data-center projects in nearby Archbald. He had asked the previous county solicitor more than a month earlier for an opinion on the county's options. Newly appointed Solicitor Christopher Caputo's response came in an internal email circulated to commissioners ahead of the meeting and shared by Gaughan publicly during the session.
The opinion's headline finding: although the county has no zoning authority over the municipalities where the data centers are proposed, the county owns real property near the sites -- specifically, the Lackawanna County Housing Authority townhouses on Gibson Street in Jermyn, and the county-owned Aylesworth Park, less than a mile from the Stavola Quarry site. As an adjacent landowner with property whose use and enjoyment may be affected by industrial development next door, the county has standing.
Commissioner Thom Welby, also a Democrat, indicated he agrees with Gaughan and would support pursuing the legal posture. Republican Commissioner Chris Chermak did not address data centers during the meeting but told the Times-Tribune by phone afterward that he plans to discuss the issue with Caputo and the county legal team. The motion to formally engage has not yet been voted on.
The three projects in the county's sights
All three projects are in or adjacent to Archbald, Pennsylvania, in the Mid-Valley region of Lackawanna County. We track all three (and eight more in the same county) on the project map.
Project Gravity -- approximately 1 million square feet of data centers, seven buildings, in the wooded area between Business Route 6 and Eynon Jermyn Road. Two of the seven buildings would sit immediately south of the Lackawanna County Housing Authority townhouses on Gibson Street. The campus' northwest corner abuts county-affiliated housing.
Project North -- a smaller, four-building data center campus, also bordering Jermyn, in close proximity to the same housing authority property. Less detail has been published about Project North; it is the lighter-touch sibling of Gravity, sharing the same regulatory profile.
Project Green Mountain -- seven buildings, each with a 138,000 square foot footprint (combined campus footprint roughly 966,000 square feet), proposed at the Stavola Quarry site east of the Casey Highway. Less than a mile south of Aylesworth Park. The county owns the park.
Lackawanna County overall, on our database, is one of the densest data-center clusters anywhere in the state -- eleven projects on file, five of them in Archbald borough alone. A region the press is not yet calling "Pennsylvania's data-center alley" arguably is one already.
The legal mechanism, in plain English
Pennsylvania municipal authority over land use is exercised at the township and borough level. A county does not generally have the power to override local zoning. Counties can and do issue master plans and adopt comprehensive policies, but the line-by-line decisions about whether a particular parcel is rezoned for industrial use are made by the township or borough where the parcel sits.
However, when a county government owns real property -- a park, a housing-authority parcel, an office building, a courthouse -- the county is, in legal terms, a property owner like any other. Its rights as a property owner survive the limits of its zoning authority. If a neighboring parcel is being rezoned in a way that would impair the county's enjoyment or use of its own property -- through nuisance, noise, pollution, traffic, or other adjacent-landowner harms -- the county has standing to object, intervene in lawsuits, and bring its own actions.
Solicitor Caputo's opinion, as quoted by the Times-Tribune: the county has rights as "a typical landowner... with standing to join existing lawsuits or bring lawsuits on their own to talk about matters -- such as nuisance, traffic, pollution, noise -- that would affect the use and enjoyment of the property that the county owns."
What this means tactically: the county does not have to overturn a local zoning decision to oppose a project. It can sue, or intervene in resident-led suits, on the same legal theories any other neighboring property owner would use. That tactical opening is genuinely novel for county-level officials in Pennsylvania who want to push back against data centers in their region.
Why this matters beyond Lackawanna
Counties across Pennsylvania, and across the country, generally believed they had no legal tools to oppose data-center projects in their member municipalities. The presumption was: if the township said yes, the county was a spectator. The Caputo opinion challenges that presumption directly.
If the Lackawanna posture holds up in practice -- and the next steps are exactly that test, since no formal action has yet been filed -- it gives a template that other counties can adopt. The conditions: the county must own property whose use or enjoyment is plausibly impaired by the proposed data center. Most counties of any meaningful size do own property of that kind: parks, public housing, courthouses, social-services campuses, transit hubs. The standing exists; the question is whether the county elects to use it.
Gaughan's framing in his statement to commissioners is worth quoting in full because it is the language other elected officials will need to make this argument: "We should not surrender this county to an industrial experiment disguised as economic policy by billionaires who do not care about Archbald or any other place in Lackawanna County." That is the political register the legal opinion is empowering.
What to watch
1. Whether Lackawanna County actually files. The legal opinion is in hand. The political will of two of three commissioners is in alignment. The next step is a formal vote of the commissioners directing the solicitor to act. That vote has not yet occurred. Watch the next two to four meetings.
2. Whether Republican Commissioner Chris Chermak joins. The Caputo opinion is non-partisan -- it concerns property rights, not political philosophy -- and Chermak indicated openness in his post-meeting phone call. If he votes with Gaughan and Welby, the action is unanimous, which gives it more political weight.
3. Whether other Pennsylvania counties test the same theory. Counties like Cumberland (where our Pennsylvania Digital I story sits), Montgomery (Project Laurel in Limerick Township), and Chester (Sentinel in East Whiteland) have similar property-ownership profiles. If even one other county files a similar opinion or files an intervention motion, the playbook spreads.
4. Whether developers or trade associations push back legislatively. The Caputo opinion threatens a structural shift in how local-government opposition can be assembled. Expect the relevant developer trade associations to lobby for state-law clarification limiting county-level standing in zoning matters where the county is not the zoning authority. That lobbying push, if it happens, will tell us how seriously the industry takes this opening.
We track all three Archbald projects -- and the broader Lackawanna cluster -- on the map. If you live in the Mid-Valley or Upvalley region and have evidence about any of the three projects, send a tip.