Upper Bern Enacts Data Center and Solar Zoning Rules

Upper Bern Township now has its first rules for data centers, and a rewritten set of rules for solar. On September 10, the Board of Supervisors adopted Ordinance 173 (data centers) and Ordinance 174 (solar), each by a 3-0 vote. Both change the township's 2008 zoning ordinance, the local law that decides what can be built where.

For residents, the headline is what the data-center rule does not allow. A data center cannot be built anywhere in Upper Bern by right. A full data center is permitted only in the township's two industrial zoning districts, coded GI and AI (the Agricultural Industrial district), and only as a conditional use. A conditional use is one the township can approve only after the applicant proves it meets a written list of extra standards at a public hearing. Smaller accessory data-center equipment tied to another use on a site is also a conditional use in the Highway Commercial district. Data centers stay barred from residential and all other base districts, and from the township's overlay conservation and special districts.

What counts as a data center

Ordinance 173 adds definitions to the zoning ordinance's Section 202. A data center is a building or group of buildings that house computer systems to receive, store, process, or transmit data. The definition names machine-learning and artificial-intelligence training, cryptocurrency mining, blockchain processing, and server farms as examples. It sorts the use into subcategories, including colocation centers (which rent capacity to others), enterprise centers (used by one owner), and a High Impact class.

A data center falls in the High Impact class if it meets any one of three tests: it spans two or more parcels totaling at least 20 acres, it is run by two or more business entities, or it has an electrical power load of 25 megawatts or more.

The ordinance also defines "Sensitive Receptors," the neighbors the rules protect most. That list covers homes, schools, day-care centers, retirement and nursing homes, personal care homes, community centers, churches and other places of worship, and campgrounds and parks with active recreation.

The limits a data center must meet

The dimensional rules scale with size. A standard data center needs at least 10 acres and a 300-foot lot width, with buildings capped at 50 feet tall and 40 percent building coverage. A High Impact center needs at least 20 acres and a 400-foot lot width. No single data-center building may exceed a 500,000-square-foot footprint.

On top of those, every data center must clear a set of conditional-use standards. Among the main ones in Section 832.4:

• Setbacks. Every data-center use must sit at least 400 feet from any residential zoning district or from the lot line of any property with a Sensitive Receptor. A setback is the required open distance between a building and a property line. Ground-mounted cooling, heat, and power equipment must also be set back 400 feet from those lines and screened from view.
• Noise. An acoustic study must show normal operations stay under 60 dB(A) in the daytime (7 a.m. to 9 p.m., Monday through Friday) and 55 dB(A) at night and on weekends, measured at the property line. Noise at a lot line bordering a residential district or Sensitive Receptor may not top 45 dB(A). The applicant owes three separate sound studies, including one six months after opening, and a vibration study showing nothing is felt at the property line.
• Cooling. New data centers must use closed-loop cooling for their servers. Open evaporative cooling towers are prohibited unless the applicant proves by "clear and convincing evidence" that a closed loop will not work and wins a conditional exemption.
• Water. A center on non-public water must file a water feasibility study proving the supply will not harm nearby wells, groundwater, or streams. Larger withdrawals need Delaware River Basin Commission approval, triggered at 100,000 gallons a day from any source or 20,000 gallons a day of consumptive use.
• Studies and plans. Applications must include an economic cost-and-impact assessment, an environmental impact study, an electrical impact assessment, an emergency response plan approved by the fire department and state police, an electronic-waste plan, and a decommissioning plan for when the center closes.
• Decommissioning security. The operator must post financial security equal to 110 percent of the estimated cost of tearing the center down, updated every five years.

The solar rewrite

Ordinance 174 repeals the township's older solar provisions in Article 9 and adds a new Section 925, "Solar Energy Systems," along with new definitions. It splits solar into two types and treats them differently.

An accessory system (ASES) is one that mainly powers the property it sits on. If its output is 10 kilowatts or less, it is allowed by right in every district. Above 10 kilowatts, it becomes a conditional use. Ground-mounted accessory arrays are capped at 15 feet tall and kept out of front yards, and the larger ones must sit at least 100 feet from lot lines, rising to 150 feet where they share a line with a home or a public road.

A principal system (PSES) is a stand-alone installation, such as a solar farm, that mainly supplies power off-site. Ordinance 174 allows a principal system only as a conditional use in the Agricultural Industrial district, on a lot of at least 10 acres. It carries the same 100-foot and 150-foot setbacks, requires at least 20 feet between panel rows so fire equipment can pass, and, like a data center, requires financial security of 110 percent of decommissioning cost. Where trees are cleared for a system, the owner must replant two trees for each one removed. The ordinance notes that a new state law, Act 44 of 2026, may override parts of these decommissioning rules.

Upper Bern joins a countywide push

Upper Bern, a rural township north of Hamburg, wrote these rules before any known data-center project has been proposed there, defining the use in advance. It is one of a growing number of Berks municipalities doing so as developers scout sites. Neighboring Windsor Township enacted its own data-center ordinance in August, and Perry Township adopted its rules on September 8, both also as conditional uses with limits on noise, setbacks, and buffers. Our Berks County data-center tracker lists where every project and ordinance stands, and our September 6 preview laid out what the township said it planned before the vote.

What's next

The ordinances are signed, numbered, and in effect. Any future data center or solar farm in Upper Bern will be reviewed against these standards at a public conditional-use hearing, where neighbors can testify. The township posts meeting agendas on its website but does not post minutes; the signed ordinances are the official record of the vote.