Data centers hit Berks County zoning: five towns, five plans

Update, July 16, 2026: Reading adopted its six-month pause on July 13, and the wave has since spread to at least six more townships. See Six more Berks County townships draft data-center rules.

Five Berks County municipalities are writing data-center rules at the same time, each with a different playbook. The wave says less about any single project than about what local officials expect: large, power- and water-hungry facilities looking at Berks land, and zoning codes written decades before anyone imagined them.

Reading decides first: July 13

At the July 6 Committee of the Whole, Councilmember Jaime Baez Jr. presented a draft ordinance that would allow data centers only in the Heavy Manufacturing district and only by conditional use, putting each application before Council rather than the Zoning Hearing Board. The draft sets a 5-acre minimum (8 acres for a "Major Data Center," triggered above 50,000 square feet or 20 megawatts of demand), bans the facilities on Fritz Island and wastewater parcels, requires closed-loop or low-water cooling, caps noise at 55 to 65 dBA, and demands decommissioning security equal to 125 percent of estimated cost. Baez called it protection for "our land, our air, our water, but most importantly... our residents."

The administration offered a different route: Community Development Director David Barr recommended a curative amendment with a six-month moratorium so rules are not rushed. No vote was taken July 6; the moratorium resolution goes to Council on July 13.

Behind the urgency sits a specific property. Baez pointed to the roughly 50-acre former Dana South site at 1 Berkshire Plaza, sold to C&B Development LLC in March, as a "perfect site for a data center." No application has been filed.

The rest of the county's playbooks

• Cumru Township moved first: its Board of Commissioners adopted a data-center overlay, Ordinance 798, on a 3-1 vote in April. It is the county's early template.
• Spring Township's June 22 agenda authorized preparing a "Data Center Ordinance, Curative Amendment and/or Pausing Resolution." The outcome is unconfirmed because June 22 minutes have not posted.
• Bern Township's July 7 agenda carried a "Curative Amendment for Data Center Uses Resolution," alongside a separate fight over where commercial solar belongs.
• Exeter Township supervisors discussed convening a joint session with their Planning Commission to draft flex-industrial and data-center rules at their June 8 meeting, per the approved minutes. No draft exists yet.

A curative amendment, the tool three of the five are reaching for, is Pennsylvania's mechanism for a municipality to concede its zoning code has a gap and fix it before a developer exploits the gap; a pause or moratorium buys drafting time.

Why residents keep showing up on this

The stated drivers are the same in every municipality: electricity demand measured in tens of megawatts, water consumption for cooling, noise, and what happens to a hulking building when its operator leaves. Reading's draft addresses each directly, which is why it is the most detailed text so far, and why the July 13 choice between a permanent ordinance and a six-month pause will set the county's template as much as Cumru's overlay did.

Municipal zoning is decided at exactly the kind of meetings most residents never attend. Which body governs which decision is in how Berks County government works, and every story we publish about a given municipality collects on its coverage page, starting with Reading.

Verification notes: Reading's draft carries no bill number and was not formally introduced; Spring Township's June 22 votes are unconfirmed pending minutes; Bern's July 7 outcome was not yet public at publication. We will update as minutes post and after Reading's July 13 session.