The Calvert County Board of County Commissioners voted unanimously Aug. 18 to impose a six-month moratorium on new data center development, capping months of escalating local conflict over the industry that reshaped the county’s political leadership and drove one of the region’s largest technology proposals to collapse just weeks earlier.
The moratorium, approved after a public hearing that drew a standing-room-only crowd, bars the county from accepting or approving any new site plan applications for data center projects. It takes effect Aug. 28 under Title 4 of the Land Use Article of the Maryland Annotated Code. Commissioners said they plan to take up potential changes to the county’s zoning ordinance regarding data centers as a permitted use at a future meeting. Many residents at Tuesday’s hearing argued the six-month pause doesn’t go far enough, pushing instead for a two-year moratorium similar to those adopted in other Maryland jurisdictions, and raised concerns about the strain data centers could place on the local power grid, water supply and noise levels.
The vote comes less than three weeks after Amazon Web Services withdrew its application to build a data center campus, known as the Calvert Technology Center, adjacent to the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant in Lusby. The project, first revealed in April and formally filed with the county in May, would have covered more than 2.46 million square feet across eight buildings with up to 500 megawatts of capacity, powered through an arrangement with plant owner Constellation Energy. Calvert County announced the withdrawal Aug. 4; Amazon has said the decision reflected internal planning factors, including “development timelines, operational requirements, and our ability to deliver quickly for customers,” rather than a response to local opposition. Constellation, for its part, said in a statement that “the opportunity continues in Maryland and Calvert County to create jobs, grow the economy” through digital infrastructure investment, and that it looks forward to continued work with the county and state.
The AWS project became the flashpoint for a broader political shift in Calvert County. In the June 23 Republican primary, all three incumbent commissioners who had opposed a moratorium on data center development — including board president Todd Ireland and vice president Mark Cox Sr. — lost their races to challengers who campaigned against the industry’s rapid expansion in the county. That shift set the stage for this week’s unanimous vote, a reversal from earlier this year, when the board had repeatedly voted down moratorium proposals.
A separate data center proposal from developer Natelli Holdings, planned along Route 4 near Calvert Cliffs State Park, remains active and was not affected by AWS’s withdrawal, meaning the new moratorium is not merely symbolic. Melissa Emmal, a resident who organized an online petition for a moratorium that has drawn more than 10,000 signatures, has said Amazon’s exit doesn’t change what residents are asking for and that the community still wants time for independent studies and zoning changes before any future project moves forward.
Calvert County joins a growing list of Maryland jurisdictions that have moved to pause or restrict data center development this year, several of which adopted longer freezes than the six months Calvert commissioners approved. The county’s zoning ordinance already includes specific use standards for data centers, covering issues such as setbacks, adopted before this week’s vote; the moratorium instead pauses the site-plan review process itself while commissioners weigh whether to continue permitting the use at all.
More information on the county’s data center review process is available at www.choosecalvert.com/DataCenters.
