West Mahanoy Township PA curative amendment, data centers and solar (2026)

West Mahanoy Township, Pa. (Schuylkill County; Shenandoah Heights) — RESOLUTION INVOKING THE CURATIVE AMENDMENT PROCESS, adopted UNANIMOUSLY by the Board of Supervisors on TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2026, covering BOTH DATA CENTERS AND SOLAR FARMS. OPERATIVE DECLARATION, QUOTED FROM THE RESOLUTION: 'The West Mahanoy Township Zoning Ordinance is hereby declared to be INVALID as it relates to the regulation of DATA CENTERS, SOLAR FARMS, ON-SITE POWER GENERATION, AND ACCESSORY USES RELATED THERETO.' OPERATIVE EFFECT, QUOTED: 'The township shall not be required to ENTERTAIN OR CONSIDER any landowner's curative amendment or proposals for a data center use or solar farm WITHIN 180 DAYS.' As the board member Martin put it, 'Anything with data centers or solar farms is put on hold.' MECHANISM AND WHY IT IS USED: under the PENNSYLVANIA MUNICIPALITIES PLANNING CODE a landowner may bring a SUBSTANTIVE VALIDITY CHALLENGE asserting that a zoning ordinance unlawfully excludes a legitimate use, and a successful challenger is ordinarily entitled to site-specific relief — the court, not the municipality, then effectively sets the terms. A MUNICIPALITY MAY PRE-EMPT THIS BY DECLARING ITS OWN ORDINANCE SUBSTANTIVELY INVALID AND CURING THE DEFECT ITSELF, which both forecloses the landowner-initiated challenge and secures a statutory period in which the municipality need not process proposals for the affected use. SOLICITOR JIM AMATO STATED THE LOGIC ON THE RECORD, and it is the clearest articulation of it in this dataset: the township had 'determined that WE DON'T HAVE THE PROTECTIONS IN PLACE for data centers or solar farms'; 'WE CAN'T EXCLUDE THESE TYPES OF THINGS FROM CO[MING]… BUT YOU CAN CONTROL IT.' THE PENNSYLVANIA CURATIVE-AMENDMENT COHORT IS NOW THREE AND SHOWS THE FULL LIFECYCLE: Falls Township PA curative amendment on data centers (2026) (Bucks County, August 2026 — recorded AT THE MOMENT OF DECLARATION, outcome then unknown); Montgomery Township PA data center curative regulations (2026) (declared invalid March 2026, ADOPTED CURATIVE REGULATIONS months later permitting data centers as a conditional use in the Limited Industrial District — the COMPLETED cycle); and WEST MAHANOY (declaration plus an express 180-day shield, September 2026). WEST MAHANOY IS THE FIRST TO EXTEND THE DEVICE BEYOND DATA CENTERS. Adding SOLAR FARMS and, critically, ON-SITE POWER GENERATION AND ACCESSORY USES is a substantive widening rather than housekeeping: on-site generation is the component large data centers increasingly bring with them (cf. Irwindale CA data center ban ordinance (2026), whose findings recite 'continuous electrical demand, often supported by diesel or gas-powered' backup), so a curative declaration limited to 'data centers' could leave the generation plant regulable only under whatever the existing ordinance says about power facilities. West Mahanoy closed that gap in the same instrument. THE 180-DAY PERIOD IS A SHIELD, NOT A MORATORIUM IN THE ORDINARY SENSE: it relieves the township of the DUTY to entertain proposals rather than prohibiting the use outright, which is a different and in Pennsylvania a more durable posture than an interim ordinance. expires_date IS COMPUTED as 180 days from adoption and is not stated. RESOLUTION NUMBER NOT OBTAINED; the board member quoted as 'Martin' is identified by surname only in the retrieved text.