Earl Township to Vote Monday on Data Center Ordinance

Earl Township's supervisors hold a public hearing Monday, Nov. 16, at 7 p.m. on a zoning ordinance for data centers, and the vote is on the same agenda. The November agenda, a short Word file whose own properties show it was last modified Friday, Nov. 13, at 3:19 p.m., lists under the solicitor's report a "PUBLIC HEARING" and then a "MOTION TO APPROVE ORDINANCE 2026-2 ALLOW FOR AND PROVIDE REGULATIONS FOR DATA CENTER USE AS A CONDITIONAL USE WITHIN THE INDUSTRIAL DISTRICT." That title is everything the township has posted online about the ordinance. The text is not posted anywhere on the township site, so residents who want to read it before the vote have to go to the township office or hear it read at the hearing.

Monday's is the first data-center hearing in Berks County since Tilden and Maidencreek townships held theirs on Thursday, Nov. 12, and by Saturday morning neither had posted a record of what happened, according to our data-center tracker. The same night, the tracker notes, Colebrookdale Township's commissioners take up a "Curative Amendment for Data Centers" resolution at 7:30 p.m. The tracker's table lists 40 Berks municipalities that have adopted, paused or are writing data-center rules this year, by our count; Earl's row carried only a legal notice through Friday.

The district in question is small. The township's Maps page displays an "Earl Township Zoning Map" that shades the Industrial district, marked "I," in gray in the township's southeast corner along Boyertown Pike (Route 562) at the Douglass Township line: one gray area straddling Boyertown Pike and Fancy Hill Road, labeled "I" three times, around Linden Lane, Fern Road and Vale Drive and west to Stauffer Lane. Everything else on the map is the green Woodland Agricultural Conservation district, the pink Highway Residential strip along West Philadelphia Avenue (Route 73) and the cream Municipal Waste Landfill district in the west. The posted map is an image whose certification block is blank, with no ordinance number, date or signatures filled in, and the file was last changed on the township's server on Feb. 19, 2024, so the official copy is the one at the township office. If the posted map is current, Monday's ordinance would open those few parcels at the Douglass line to data-center applications, not the township at large.

Where, when and how to speak

The meeting is at the Earl Township Municipal Building, 19 Schoolhouse Road, Boyertown. The agenda itself prints no time or place; its header reads "Monthly Meeting," "NOVEMBER 16, 2026" and "AGENDA." The township's Board of Supervisors page says the board meets "on the 3rd Monday of every month at 7pm at the Earl Township Municipal Building," and the township calendar lists the Nov. 16 meeting at 7 p.m. The board is Chairman William Moyer, Vice Chairman Michael Marburger and Supervisor John Cleaver, per the same page.

"PUBLIC COMMENT FROM THE FLOOR" is item 4, after the pledge and a presentations slot with nothing scheduled, and before the minutes and bills. The hearing is item 7.A, under the township solicitor's report, and the agenda prints no rules on how long each speaker gets or whether comment is taken again inside the hearing. The township office is open 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday at the same address; the phone is 610-367-9673 and the email is Earltwp@earltwpberks.com, per the homepage. State law says that when a hearing notice does not print an ordinance's full text, "An attested copy of the proposed ordinance shall be filed in the county law library or other county office designated by the county commissioners," and that the notice include "a reference to a place within the municipality where copies of the proposed ordinance or amendment may be examined without charge" (Municipalities Planning Code, Section 610). Which place Earl's notice names is in the part of the notice we cannot read.

What is known about the ordinance

A legal notice published in the Reading Eagle on Oct. 30, headed "NOTICE TO THE RESIDENTS OF EARL TOWNSHIP," says the supervisors "will hold a public hearing regarding, and at the regular meeting to be held immediately thereafter will consider the enactment of, the Ordinance summarized below on Monday, November 16"; the free excerpt on the Public Notice Pennsylvania site ends there, and the full text sits behind a challenge page. As our tracker notes, the site's search returns the notice for "data center." The agenda's title for Ordinance 2026-2 confirms the subject. Oct. 30 to Nov. 16 is 17 days, by our arithmetic, inside the window Section 610 sets for enactment, "not more than 60 days nor less than 7 days" after publication.

Nothing on the agenda or in the notice excerpt describes a data-center application or a site. Item 7.E, "Zoning Hearing/Conditional Use," is blank, and so are the emergency-management and board-of-supervisors lines. Whether anyone has asked to build a data center in Earl Township is not in the record we can see.

The ordinance did not appear on the board's September or October agendas, which we covered in our Sept. 21 and Oct. 19 previews; neither lists a data-center item or a motion to advertise one. The township's minutes listing runs only through June, so when the board decided to draft and advertise the ordinance is not on the record online. The agenda also says the Planning Commission's Nov. 19 meeting "HAS BEEN CANCELED" and its next meeting "IF NEEDED WILL BE DECEMBER 17, 2026"; the township calendar still shows a Planning Commission meeting on Nov. 19 at 7 p.m., so the two conflict, and the agenda is the newer document.

A conditional use in the Industrial District

A conditional use is a use the zoning ordinance allows in a district only after the Board of Supervisors holds a public hearing and finds the application meets the ordinance's written conditions. Earl's own zoning ordinance defines it as "A specified use permitted within a zoning district that complies with all conditions and standards for its location and/or operation. A conditional use is granted by the Board of Supervisors" (p. 27-20). Under its Section 1506, the board must schedule a hearing within 60 days of a complete application and issue a written decision within 45 days after the last hearing, and it "may attach reasonable conditions and safeguards" (p. 27-164); Section 913.2 of the state planning code sets the same 45-day decision clock and the same power to attach conditions. So Monday's vote would not approve any data center. It would decide whether a data center can apply at all, and where.

The ordinance the township posts is the "Zoning Ordinance of 1996 as Amended," last revised in 2017, per the township's zoning page; it is a 196-page scan with no searchable text, and we read it by optical character recognition. It divides the township into "four (4) separate surface zoning districts": Woodland Agricultural Conservation, Highway Residential, Industrial and Municipal Waste Landfill (p. 27-13). The Industrial District's stated purpose is "to provide for a range of light industrial and manufacturing uses. Public or approved private or community sewerage systems will be required to serve uses within this district, unless otherwise decided by the Township" (Section 701, p. 27-68). Warehouses, product distribution, printing, office buildings and research labs are allowed there by right; the conditional uses today are package and bottle manufacturing, light metal fabricating, component manufacturing, junkyards, mining and mineral processing, adult businesses, non-exempt public utility installations, wireless towers and medical marijuana growers and processors (Section 703, pp. 27-68 to 27-69). Buildings in the district are capped at 35 feet (Sections 704 and 705, pp. 27-69 to 27-70). The words "data center" do not appear anywhere in the scan as we read it. What the ordinance does have is Section 107, "Non-Specified Uses": "Lawful uses not expressly provided for by the terms of this Ordinance may be permitted within a zoning district, if the Zoning Officer is of the opinion that such uses are of the same general character as those uses permitted within that district," provided the officer finds in writing that the omission "was inadvertent" and that the use has "no adverse effect upon the neighboring properties" (p. 27-11). As the ordinance stands, a use it does not list can come in on a zoning officer's written determination that it is of the same general character as the district's listed uses, with no board hearing; Monday's ordinance would give data centers written standards and a hearing before the supervisors instead. The zoning page names the zoning officer, Quinn Haller of Technicon Enterprises II, at 610-286-1622, with sitting hours at the township office on the second and fourth Thursdays from 8 a.m. to noon, and says a hard copy of the ordinance "may be purchased at the Township Office."

What Ordinance 2026-2 would add to that list, and under what setbacks, noise limits, water rules or decommissioning terms, cannot be read before Monday. For comparison, the newest adopted Berks ordinance with its text online, Greenwich Township's Ordinance 2026-02, enacted Nov. 2, also uses the conditional-use route and puts large data centers in that township's Industrial district, with a 5-acre minimum lot, a 200-foot setback from sensitive receptors and a 57 dB(A) overnight noise limit. Maidencreek's draft, heard Thursday, would keep data centers 1,000 feet from homes and cap noise at 55 decibels, per our preview. Earl's numbers are unknown until the text surfaces.

Also on the agenda

The township engineer's report carries a "MOTION TO APPROVE RESOLUTION FOR PLAN REVISION FOR NEW LAND DEVELOPMENT AT PROPERTY 1552 W PHILADELPHIA AVE"; the agenda gives no applicant, project or plan name. The engineer also gives a "HILL ROAD STORM SEWER UPDATE," an item that was on the October agenda as well. The board will approve the Oct. 19 minutes and the treasurer's report and pay bills; no presentations are scheduled. The next supervisors meeting is Dec. 21.

The township's newest posted minutes are June's, so the ordinance file at the township office is the faster route to the text.