The leader of a group fighting a proposed data center near Frackville told the Schuylkill Technology Center board of directors Monday night that he believes a former board member is using his position to influence the board on behalf of a New York developer seeking access through STC-North’s campus.
The former board member, Roy Heim, calls those comments “an all-out lie.”
Ryan Twardzik leads Save Frackville, a community group that has opposed the proposed New Castle Township data center project from the beginning. He made the accusation during public comment at the board’s meeting at STC-South in Mar Lin, where about 50 people packed a standing-room-only board room. About a dozen residents mostly of Frackville, Butler Township, and West Mahanoy Township spoke, urging board members to deny any easement across the school’s land to KRNL Frackville LLC.
KRNL owns about 100 acres of woods in New Castle Township between Interstate 81 and Laurel St., where opponents expect a data center campus to be built. Twardzik says every way into the site runs through residential streets in Frackville, Butler Township, or West Mahanoy Township, which is why an easement through STC-North’s land matters to the developer.
“Roy Heim has been bragging about this connection and leverage with the school board here, and how that will allow him to push this project through,” Twardzik told the board.
Heim, who spoke with Coal Region Canary on Tuesday about Twardzik’s accusations, acknowledged that he’s talked with the developer and that the idea of routing traffic around the back of STC-North was his. But he says he was only trying to keep traffic out of Frackville’s neighborhoods.
“I’m only trying to help the people in Frackville,” Heim said.
Twardzik laid out a timeline for the board. KRNL bought a parcel of about eight acres next to STC-North from Jeffrey Miller on July 30, according to the deed. The Blue Mountain School Board accepted Heim’s resignation Aug. 5, ending his time on the STC board, and the STC board accepted his resignation as vice president Aug. 12. Twardzik said plans showing access through STC-North land are dated Aug. 12.
“That would be a really short timeline to come up with a whole engineering plan that proposes to utilize land owned by the STC for a private developer to access an inaccessible portion of land,” Twardzik said.
He also said Heim, while still on the board, invited STC employees to a data center economic impact presentation at Alvernia University in Pottsville last December, and that no one from Frackville, West Mahanoy, Butler Township, or the area’s state representative was invited.
“We have documents, we have dates, we have conversations,” Twardzik said, asking board members to consider “the nefarious nature of a business dealing like this.”
Heim said he’s had three conversations with KRNL, and that his goal in each was to make the project easier on its neighbors. He said he talked the developer down from five buildings to four and pushed it to keep everything against I-81.
“I said, ‘Listen, guys, you are way too close to the neighbors. Get away from the neighbors,'” Heim said.
Under the option Heim described, traffic would leave Route 61 for VoTech Rd. and Maple St., swing around the back of STC-North past the school’s CDL training lot, then follow a cleared path parallel to I-81. He said it follows the same easement PPL used for its power line and substation work.
“It stays completely away from the school,” Heim said. “No cars go in front of the school, and no cars go through town.”
Heim said he told the developer that if the school grants an easement, “you’re going to have to give something back,” whether that’s a new CDL training lot or something else. He said he’d like to see “something for kids and jobs.”
He said the option was handed to STC management a few weeks ago as a suggestion. “It wasn’t anything to vote on,” Heim said. “It was a discussion.” He said KRNL has made no formal request for an easement.
As for the eight acres bought in July, Heim said, “That part was never talked about.”
Heim said the December session at Alvernia was educational, led by a data center specialist he believes was from California, and wasn’t just about KRNL. He said representatives of the water authority, a few townships and schools, and the County Commissioners attended because “everybody was trying to get educated.”
He denied bragging about his influence with the board.
“I have great relationships there, but I don’t know that I would go out and tell somebody, ‘Oh yeah, because of my relationships, I’m going to get something through,'” he said, noting several board members are new since he left and he doesn’t know them.
Heim said his resignation from Blue Mountain had nothing to do with the data center, pointing instead to the frustration with fellow board members he voiced at his final meeting there.
“I’m actually here fighting for you,” Heim said he’s told opponents.
Reached Tuesday, Twardzik stood by what he told the board.
“I don’t lie about anything,” Twardzik said. “I just laid out a pattern of actual public record timelines.”
Still, he questioned why Heim remains involved now that he’s off the board. “Why is he still involved with the developer pushing this?” Twardzik said.
He also said the developer approached Butler Township for access and was turned down. “The developers know that it doesn’t have it, which is why they’re trying to get land from a public school,” he said.
Other residents who spoke Monday kept coming back to the same complaint: the decisions that will shape this project belong to New Castle Township and the STC board, not to the people who would live next to it.
“We haven’t been able to fight the fight that we wanted to, because the property is on New Castle Township land, so that leaves us with a town that can’t fight for ourselves,” said Bobby Ciccone, who lives at the corner of Laurel and Second streets. “We have a board that is making a decision for us.”
Gina Cappel, who runs a child care program in Schuylkill Haven, put it more bluntly.
“Frackville does not have a voice because we’re being squashed by New Castle Township supervisors who are choosing greed over our quality of life,” she said.
Frackville Borough Council voted unanimously last year to formally oppose the project, but the land sits outside the borough. Adam Twardzik, who said he lives about 2,000 feet from STC-North, told the board that Frackville, West Mahanoy Township, and the Frackville Area Municipal Authority have all formally opposed it.
He said New Castle’s zoning rules allow data center buildings up to 80 feet tall as close as 200 feet from a home, a school, or a nursing home, and that the buildings would sit on ground 100 to 150 feet higher than the top of Laurel St. He said the 60-decibel noise limit doesn’t apply when emergency diesel generators are running.
He pointed to the BRADS landfill outside Saint Clair and Natural Soil Products near Tremont as examples of facilities that didn’t live up to local promises once they were running.
“A data center on that land will destroy the character of the town, the community, and the school,” he said.
Bernie Karpovich, who lives on Laurel St., said the buildings would rise about 30 feet above the 50- to 60-foot trees across from his house. “I urge you to please deny access for KRNL,” he said.
Patty Domalakes, president of the Frackville Downtown Revitalization Committee, said she talks to business owners, neighbors, and people at church and the supermarket. “I haven’t found anyone in Frackville who wants the data center,” she said. She also noted the Schuylkill River Greenway trail is expected to reach Frackville in the next few years.
John Gower, a Frackville native who teaches at STC-North, said he worries about years of construction traffic hauling heavy equipment past the school and about the diesel generators data centers keep for backup power. He closed by reading STC’s mission statement, which ends with the word “community.”
“We are a community,” Gower said.
Karen Domalakes noted that KRNL bought land zoned for conservation.
“They purchased land in a conservation district and intend to do exactly the opposite,” she said. “So how could you trust them with any decision that they’re going to make?”
The STC board is made up of school board members from each of Schuylkill County’s public school districts. It took no action Monday.
Board President Scott Jacoby, opening the comment period, referred to an easement for a data center that he said “will eventually be located behind our facility.” One resident seized on the word after comments ended, saying it sounded like the decision had already been made.
“There has been no proposal made to this board,” Jacoby said. “We don’t have a proposal, so we can’t take action tonight.”
Alexandra Trexler, North Schuylkill’s representative on the board, said she missed last month’s meeting and was still gathering information. “Those people can’t speak for the entire board,” she said. “We all do have our own thoughts and comments.”
Another board member said that if a proposal is submitted, the board has to consider it and can’t reject it without public discussion or a vote.
Larry Wittig, who represents Tamaqua Area School District on the STC board, asked to address the crowd, acknowledging it was out of the ordinary for board members to respond to public comment. When he mentioned a presentation board members had seen, residents asked who gave it.
After the meeting, Wittig said he saw the access road as a way to keep construction traffic out of Frackville’s neighborhoods.
“If it was going to happen anyway, they’re going to be screwed if we say no, and five years from now there’s 100 trucks going by their house,” he said.
Wittig said he’s never met anyone from KRNL, that the board hasn’t received a proposal, and that talk of a new CDL training area was just that. “That was us talking in the air,” he said. “Nobody proposed anything.”
He said that if residents can stop the project, he’ll vote against the easement.
“These guys are convinced they can stop them. If they can, good, I’m happy for them, and I’ll vote no on the easement,” Wittig said, adding that he speaks only for himself.
But if the data center gets built anyway, he said, “We’ve squandered an opportunity to save those residents all that hardship.”
“If the students can benefit by this, and the residents can benefit, in my mind, it’s a win-win,” Wittig said.
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