Shane W Potter

BUFFALO TWP — The board of supervisors approved the creation of a municipal curative amendment during its meeting on Wednesday night, Aug. 12, which will give the township 180 days to draft hard rules and regulations into its code regarding data centers.

The action also effectively prohibits any developer from pitching a data center project in Buffalo Township during this time period.

“I don’t want to call it a moratorium, but effectively, it is,” said township solicitor Brian Farrington, who says he has worked with other municipalities in Butler County on similar curative amendments regarding data centers.

According to Farrington, by initiating a “municipal curative amendment” process, the township is preventing developers from using a similar “landowner curative amendment” process to potentially force through a data center project.

“The process by which, when a developer tries to develop in a municipality and the use is not permitted or conditional... you have to do what’s called a landowner curative amendment process,” Farrington said. “By Buffalo Township starting this process... it prohibits a landowner from going for a landowner curative amendment.”

Several other municipalities in Butler County — including Adams, Center and Lancaster townships — have taken similar measures in addressing the potential proliferation of data centers, which have become a hot-button political issue in the Keystone State and across the nation.