USA – PENNSYLVANIA Trends and Developments Contributed by: Erich Schock, Ron Reybitz, Kate Durso and Colin Keefe, Fitzpatrick Lentz & Bubba, PC
needs a clear story about demand, discharge, fund - ing, long-term operations and mitigation. Addressing stormwater is an underappreciated con - straint. It affects the development of warehouses, data centres, manufacturing, solar, mixed-use redevelop - ment and ordinary commercial projects. In Pennsylva - nia, it often sits at the centre of municipal and county land development review, state permitting, site engi - neering and neighbourhood concern. Stormwater can affect usable areas, grading costs, building and park - ing layout, and the approval schedule. Public investment reflects both the need and the opportunity related to water use. In 2025, PENNVEST announced a USD547.1 million funding round for drinking water, wastewater, stormwater and non-point source projects across Pennsylvania. That investment helps to modernise systems, but it does not replace project-level diligence. A developer still has to know whether the specific authority, plant, pipe, pump station or receiving stream can support the project in question. Solar as the Cautionary Example Solar remains part of Pennsylvania’s energy and land use picture, but it is no longer the straightforward growth story it might have appeared to be in some markets. Utility-scale solar still has demand, particu - larly as large users and public entities look for renew - able power options. At the same time, many projects now face a harder path through local zoning, agricul - tural land concerns, interconnection limits, decom - missioning obligations and public opposition. That does not make solar irrelevant or a mistake, but it does make it a cautionary tale. A use can be favoured by market demand and still slow down when municipal ordinances, local planning goals and pub - lic expectations have not caught up. Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection recognises the role of local governments in solar siting, including zoning and land use review for grid-scale projects. Similar local questions are now appearing around bat - tery storage, data centres, substations, transmission lines and other infrastructure-heavy uses.
The lesson is simple: public need does not eliminate local review. A project that looks compelling at the state, regional or utility level may still have to answer municipal-level questions about traffic, farmland pro - tection, noise, viewshed, emergency services, storm - water and future land use. The best projects anticipate that tension instead of treating it as a late-stage com - munications problem. Pennsylvania’s Local Approval Layer Pennsylvania’s land use structure is one of this mar - ket’s defining features, particularly for developers more familiar with county-led approval systems. Maryland offers a useful East Coast comparison. It has about 6.3 million residents and 24 primary local jurisdictions: 23 counties and Baltimore City. Pennsyl - vania has about 13.1 million residents, but land use approval often drops below the county level to one of 2,560 municipal corporations. Roughly 1,603 of those municipalities have adopted their own zoning ordi - nances. Another 137 are covered by county zoning, and 821 have no zoning at all. The result is a far more localised approval map. County review still matters in Pennsylvania, but it usually does not replace municipal review. Municipal zoning takes precedence over county zoning, and a municipality can displace county zoning by adopting its own ordinance. The same local-first pattern often appears in subdivision and land development reviews. Even where there is no zoning, a project may still need subdivision and land development approval, stormwa - ter review, sewage planning, highway access approv - als, environmental permits, building code review and utility co-ordination. “No zoning” can mean no zoning district or conditional use process; it does not mean no land use hurdles. There can be real variation from one municipality to the next. A use permitted by right in one place may require conditional use approval, a special exception, a variance or a zoning text amendment elsewhere. Definitions matter, too. A local ordinance may not clearly account for a data centre, battery storage facil - ity, fulfilment centre, life sciences manufacturing use or accessory generation facility. When that happens, the approval process can become the place where the use is effectively defined.
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