Schuylkill County Commissioners are defending their decision to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) with a company representing Amazon regarding a proposed data center it wants to build in Schuylkill County.
Amazon is proposing to construct a data center in Kline Township, outside McAdoo. It’s one of two actively proposed data centers in Schuylkill County. Another, developed by Nebius, is a proposed AI data center at Highridge Business Park in Butler Township. A third potential data center in New Castle Township, near its borders with Frackville and West Mahanoy Township, remains in limbo.
Last week, a Spotlight PA article shed light on public officials who had signed NDAs at the request of data center companies and the companies representing them. Schuylkill County Commissioners were among those disclosed in the article as having signed NDAs related to the proposed Amazon data center.
On Wednesday, the Commissioners heard pushback from several members of the public who expressed their concern with the board’s willingness to sign NDAs, in general, and regarding the proposed Amazon data center in Kline Township.
County Solicitor Paul Datte said that he gave the Commissioners advice that “There was no harm in signing it.”
“Yes, a Non-Disclosure Agreement was signed but we were clear that we were duty bound to disclose any public record that was presented to us by Amazon under the Right to Know law unless Amazon actually went into court and did something to stop it,” Datte added.
Datte explained that the request to sign the NDA was in advance of a meeting Amazon wanted to have with Schuylkill County Commissioners in 2025. He said County officials were presented confidentiality agreements and NDAs from a company representing Amazon. The solicitor said that at that point in time, Amazon was not disclosed as the potential developers of the Kline Township industrial site.
“We reviewed the agreement and explained that we could not sign the agreement in that form,” Datte said, citing the County’s disclosure requirements under the Pennsylvania Right to Know laws.
The amended NDA, Datte said, included a third-party clause which would have then required Schuylkill County to contact Amazon and/or its representative company at that initial meeting, that it had received a Right to Know request seeking copies of the NDA.
“From the County’s perspective, we were duty bound to disclose any public record that was provided to us,” Datte added.
During that meeting, Datte said County officials – including the three Commissioners – were “not presented any documents at all.”
“They did disclose that it was Amazon,” he said, adding that officials were presented with a “general rendering” of what the data center campus would look like in Schuylkill County. Datte said that it was up to six weeks later that Amazon did announce it was the company behind the proposed data center in Kline Township.
NOTE: Coal Region Canary has reached out to Kline Township and Butler Township officials through former Right to Know requests regarding possible NDA signings between them and data center companies seeking projects in their municipalities. Chris Riedlinger, solicitor for Butler Township, says no Butler Township official has signed an NDA or any confidentiality agreements with Nebius or any other data center developer.
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