Non-disclosure agreements on data centers spur talk of ‘secret deals’

(The Center Square) – A naturally silent stretch of fields and woods, set between two nuclear plant cooling towers and a bustling mall, caused Limerick Township to get a request for another kind of silence: a non-disclosure agreement.

A data center was being pitched for the 191-acre patch in Montgomery County, near Pottstown. People associated with the idea wanted Limerick to do an “NDA,” according to Daniel Kerr, longtime township manager. He said the municipality’s supervisors and solicitor discussed the pitch and decided not to sign.

“We just didn’t think it was the right thing to do,” Kerr said. “We want all the discussions to be public.”

Not every municipal government thinks that way. In Virginia, a hotbed of data center activity, 25 out of 31 local- and county-level governments that were surveyed by university researchers said they had signed NDA’s tied t...