KRNL Data Center, New Castle Twp, Pennsylvania

KRNL Data Centers, based in New York City, has bought an 89-acre wooded tract in New Castle Twp, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, for $600,000, land that had been owned by Mount Laurel Enterprises of Mahanoy City. The site sits behind the Schuylkill Technology Center North Campus and Broad Mountain, between Interstate 81 and the Laurel Street homes of neighboring Frackville. In May 2026, New Castle Township rezoned the land so a data center could be built there as a conditional use requiring a hearing before the township's supervisors, though no formal application has been filed and no megawatt figure or tenant has been published.

The 89-acre parcel is wedged between the Walnick Manor section of Butler Township to the north, Interstate 81 to the south, a PPL Electric Utilities high-voltage line to the west and the Schuylkill Technology Center North Campus to the east; plans obtained by Coal Region Canary in 2025 showed four long buildings and a substation on the site.

The people who would live closest to the site are not New Castle residents. Frackville's council voted unanimously in September 2025 to oppose the project, and West Mahanoy Township's supervisors wrote that they worried about the electricity and water use, round-the-clock fan noise from cooling and the loss of trees that buffer Interstate 81 noise. Frackville residents argue that New Castle Township and the Saint Clair Area School District would get the tax revenue while Frackville absorbs the losses.

"These developers are from New York City and they have no ties to our people," Ryan Twardzik, who leads the Frackville-area residents, said. "What they see is relatively cheap land next to a substation, and they do not care what's around it."

On May 5, 2026, before a standing-room crowd, New Castle's supervisors voted 2-0, with one abstaining, to create the Highway Industrial district along Interstate 81 near Frackville, replacing Conservation zoning on the KRNL parcel and requiring a hearing before the supervisors for any data center there. The rules require 200-foot setbacks, environmental studies before approval, and limits on woodland clearing and lighting.

"You make this decision, you don't live beside it," Bobbie Cicioni told the supervisors. "Imagine if you did." "Frackville will not be Frackville anymore if that build this data center," Bernie Karpovich said. "I will be facing this data center every time I look out the window or sit on my front porch." Solicitor James Conville said the township had to act: "If we don't do something and we don't do it very quickly, they come in with no restrictions."

KRNL is one of several data center prospects in the area; State Sen. David Argall has counted nine potential sites in his district, which includes Schuylkill County. If KRNL files a formal application, the New Castle Township Board of Supervisors will hold the conditional use hearing and decide; many of the people who packed the May meeting live in Frackville and Butler Township, where the effects would fall, not in New Castle, which decides.