Ransom Township Data Center, Ransom Township, Pennsylvania

Scranton Materials LLC, which runs a stone quarry at 819 Newton Road in Ransom Township, Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, is fighting in court to overturn the township's January 2026 refusal of a zoning change that would have allowed a six-building data center campus on its 251-acre property. The site borders West Scranton and is zoned S1, an open space and conservation district.

The concept plan shown to the township planning commission had six buildings, each 214 by 732 feet and 120 feet tall, stepping up a hillside, with two stormwater ponds of about 10 and 17 acres and retaining walls 50 feet high within 70 feet of the property lines, planning commission chair James Murphy testified. Murphy said the plans referred to cooling towers not shown on the drawings, that an access road ran into Newton Township, and that the ordinance had no analysis of the effect on water, sewage or emergency services.

"The ultimate recommendation with the planning commission was that they (supervisors) do not accept this ordinance as written," Murphy said. More than 100 people packed the township garage for the January 20 hearing, many wearing yellow "NO DATA CENTERS" pins, after the municipal building proved too small the week before.

Attorney Laura McGarry, representing her mother, Scranton resident Susan Magnotta, argued the company had presented no witnesses and could not authenticate its exhibits: "This is a hearing, nothing's been heard. They haven't presented any evidence," she said. Against the advice of solicitor Kevin Conaboy, Supervisors Robert Wells and Gerald Scott Jr. voted to deny the application, and chairman David Bird voted to let it proceed.

"When the solar people came to present their case, they had the environmental study done, they had the hearing study done, they had the glare study done," Wells said.

In its appeal to the Lackawanna County Court of Common Pleas, the company's attorney Michael Mey argues the supervisors had no authority to dismiss the application that way and that the township's zoning unlawfully excludes data centers, a use Pennsylvania municipalities must allow somewhere within their borders. The company also argued Magnotta had no standing because she does not live in the township, but in June 2026 Lackawanna County Judge Margaret Bisignani Moyle ruled that she does; she lives less than a mile from the property.

Elsewhere in the township, Mudiita Land Venture LLC bought more than 500 acres along Ransom Road, above Waste Management's Alliance Landfill, for $2.4 million in July 2026, and a Mudiita website had advertised a 930-plus-acre all-electric data center campus in Lackawanna County. Sinha Shatrughan, whose name is on Mudiita's incorporation papers, said the Scranton Materials outcome changed its plans: "Personally, I didn't want to go ahead with any sort of data center there right now."

Mey has asked the county court to reverse the supervisors and grant zoning relief for data centers on the Scranton Materials land, so the appeal now rests with the Lackawanna County Court of Common Pleas.