SUGARLOAF TWP. — Residents at a meeting on Tuesday reacted to plans for a data center, a plastics-to-oil plant and a high-voltage line — all of which have been proposed since March.
“This is a real onslaught,” Annie Vinatieri said during a Sugarloaf Twp. supervisors’ meeting at which she asked about LBT Investment Group LLC of Chicago, which wants to construct the data center and has sued the township.
After learning about plans of Alterra Recycling LLC to produce synthetic oil at a pyrolysis plant that would process 189,216,000 pounds of plastic a year, Vinatieri helped organize a meeting with the public and a representative of the company on June 26.
Vinatieri and others have commented on connections between the plastics plant, the data center and a 500 kilovolt line that PPL proposed building in March that would go through the Sugarloaf Valley while connecting Nescopeck and Harwood.
Alliance to Stop the Line left information packets on the windshields of vehicles parked outside the supervisors’ meeting where the audience filled every chair.
Data centers need access to power sources as well as water for cooling, lawyers for LBT Investment said in a proposal to the township on May 20. Vinatieri obtained a copy from the township and shared it with the newspaper.
LBT Investment’s proposal said the data center would have six buildings of 200,000 square feet apiece and allocate 10 acres for electrical substations.
Andy Sanko voices his concerns in regards to a proposed plastics pyrolysis plant during the Sugarloaf Twp. Supervisors meeting on Tuesday, July15, 2025.(John Haeger / Staff Photographer)
Because the township’s zoning ordinance doesn’t allow for data centers anywhere, attorneys for LBT Investment proposed a curative amendment top fix the deficiency. The curative amendment would allow data centers in general industrial and mining areas called I-1 zones, including 185 acres along Tomhicken Road that the company wants to develop.
During their meeting on June 17, the supervisors removed the curative amendment from the agenda and six days later sent LBT Investment a letter saying they will not adopt the amendment,
After receiving the letter, LBT Investment filed an appeal in Luzerne County Court against the township.
Julie Wagner Burkhart, an attorney with Stevens and Lee of Allentown, a law firm, representing LBT Investment, said the company had to appeal to preserve rights but remains willing to negotiate.
“An appeal was not the preferred route for my client,” Burkhart wrote to the supervisors on June 25.
Township resident Andrew Sanko told the supervisors that he was concerned because the curative amendment hadn’t been discussed.
“I’m alarmed at the lack of transparency,” Sanko said Tuesday when others at the meeting also called for transparency.
Joseph Baranko, the township’s solicitor, said his firm recommended that the supervisors not consider the curative amendment. Pulling the amendment from the agenda, Baranko said after the meeting, effectively denied the motion and sent the matter to court, where it would have ended up anyway.
Vinatieri offered to share a list of legal firms with experience in curative amendments with the township and said, although Baranko has 40 years of municipal law experience, he works for Slusser Law Firm whose owner, Chris Slusser, is solicitor for Hazleton Area School Board, which granted tax relief to developers of properties along Tomhicken Road, and his family owns land near the site Alterra wants to develop.
“It seems like a conflict,” said Vinatieri, who brought her 10-month-old son to the meeting. “You guys can’t mess this up. For my baby. For the love of god.”
In response, Slusser said his family does own land nearby but his firm isn’t involved with the development of Alterra or the curative amendment.
“Despite there being no legal conflict we have suggested that Sugarloaf retain outside counsel to represent it relative to both of these matters,” Slusser said Wednesday in a text message. “We recognize that perception, even if it’s not based in fact, can be very important and sometimes overriding. To that end we are more than happy to step aside on these two issues. What we will not do, is sit idly by to allow false and potentially damaging accusation to be made against this firm or its attorneys.”
Baranko told Wendy Larock, who owns properties in Sugarloaf and Black Creek townships, that organizations such as the Alliance to Stop the Line can join the case filed by LBT Investment. He said she could ask her lawyer about a right of intervention.
“We’ve got to up our game” against businesses inundating the townships, Larock said. “The reason we live here is because it’s rural.”
While Sugarloaf Twp. has rural traditions, it also is home to Penn State Hazleton, a segment of the Laurel Mall and several motels. Census information indicates fewer than 1% of the nearly 4,000 residents work in agriculture.
In the proposal for the curative amendment, LBT Investment said a data center would bring less traffic than two warehouses that a previous developer, Sugarloaf Logistics, planned for the land it purchased in 2020 from the Richard E. Angelo Family Limited Partnership, which remains the owner of record.
The data center would employ 180 people earning salaries of $80,000 to $150,000, the proposal said. Building the center would cost $4.8 billion, of which $3.2 billion would be for equipment, and the project could be completed by 2032.
Court proceedings, however, can delay projects as happened in 2016 when Glenn O. Hawbaker proposed an asphalt plant on Tomhicken Road. Proceedings continued in county and state courts for four years before the plan was dropped, although that case dealt with whether Hawbaker’s plans met requirements for a special exception to the zoning ordinance rather than whether the ordinance needed a special exception.
On Tuesday while the supervisors were meeting, the Infrastructure Committee of Luzerne County Council approved a resolution opposing the power line but tabled action on Alterra’s plastics plant. Supervisors here and in Black Creek opposed the power line in April.
Sugarloaf Twp. Supervisors Rick Weaver, left, and Joseph DiSabella, Sr., look on and listen as residents voice concerns in regards to plastics pyrolysis plant and data center during the Sugarloaf Twp. Supervisors meeting on Tuesday, July 15, 2025.(John Haeger / Staff Photographer)
Supervisors here said they weren’t invited to the county council’s meeting, which they learned about through media reports a day earlier.
Township resident William Bonham said he was perplexed by how little the supervisors knew about Alterra’s plans, which supervisors in neighboring Butler Twp. opposed on July 8.
“That has flown under the radar without a lot of people knowing,” Bonham said.
Supervisor Joseph DiSabella Sr. said Alterra’s representatives dropped off a brochure when speaking at a meeting in May. The company has asked speak again at the August meeting, but haven’t filed anything in the township.
Alterra has asked for air quality permits from the state Department of Environmental Protection, which is reviewing them.
Alterra’s plant would emit 5.6 tons of hazardous air pollutants, 44.4 tons of volatile organic compounds and 11.1 tons of particulate a year, according to its application with the state.
“It’s going to stink. It’s going to kill our economy. Nobody wants it,” Colleen Cavallo, a Black Creek Twp., said at the Sugarloaf meeting.
Brenda Rizzo, also a resident of Black Creek Twp., suggested that the Sugarloaf Twp. supervisors study health effects in Akron, Ohio, where Alterra operates a smaller plant than it proposes for Sugarloaf Twp.