LA PLATA — A planning agreement that has governed St. Charles since the 1970s could, in theory, let a data center be proposed inside the planned community, Charles County Commissioner Amanda Stewart said Oct. 20. She told residents she will ask to put the issue on a future commissioners’ agenda.
“I saw a loophole and I don’t like loopholes,” Stewart said during the board’s response to public comment.
The remark came as residents returned to the commissioners’ meeting to press again for a countywide ban on hyperscale and co-located data centers. It also came one night after a Charles County Planning Commission discussion in which county planning staff acknowledged that a data center could, theoretically, seek use approval from the St. Charles design review board, though they said it was highly unlikely to get far.
What Docket 90 is
Docket 90 is the 1970s zoning approval that created St. Charles as a planned unit development in Waldorf. Within the planned community, a planned design review board, or PDRB, approves the uses for new commercial and industrial buildings under the community’s master plans. The Planning Commission sees those projects later, when site development plans come before it.
Stewart said she listened to the Oct. 19 Planning Commission meeting and spoke with county staff afterward. “A data center could come, but it’s not likely to come,” she said of the Docket 90 framework. “And so staff understands that I don’t like that.”
She said one fix could be zoning rules for commercial uses that need large amounts of energy or water. She also repeated that she does not believe hyperscale data centers should be allowed in Charles County.
What planning staff told the commission
The Oct. 19 item was narrow. Planning and Growth Management Director Jason Groth, Deputy Director Kathy Reisinger and attorney Steve Scott, representing St. Charles Community LLC, asked the Planning Commission to move a handful of minor approvals from the PDRB to county staff. Those include fences, decks and sheds on existing homes, a change in owner or tenant of an existing business when the use stays the same, and temporary signs.
Groth said the change has “absolutely nothing to do with data centers” and transfers no new authority to the review board. The commission approved the request by voice vote. The change will be set out in a memorandum of understanding signed by the commissioners’ president and St. Charles, with no end date but a termination clause for either side.
Commission member Jeffrey Bossert pressed staff on a broader point: whether the Planning Commission should weigh in earlier on new commercial and industrial projects in the planned community, rather than at the site plan stage, when developers have already invested heavily.
Groth used data centers as a worst-case example. He said a data center could, in theory, propose itself to the PDRB and win use approval. But he said a developer would face costly power studies first, which he put at about $100,000 for SMECO’s review and about $500,000 for a larger grid study, plus water and community concerns. “I really just don’t think it’s going to happen behind the curtain,” he said.
Scott said only one St. Charles village master plan remains in play, Piney Reach, and that its only industrial area is the existing Piney Reach Business Park. The rest of the village is planned for homes and small pockets of neighborhood commercial use, he said.
The push for a ban
Most of the eight residents who spoke during the Oct. 20 public comment period raised data centers, several of them asking for an outright ban. Alana Davis, who leads the Charles County Against Data Centers Coalition, asked County Attorney Wes Adams to clarify whether data centers are currently prohibited in the Docket 90 area. She said that at an August Planning Commission meeting, county planners and the St. Charles developer suggested a data center could be built in industrial areas there if the design review board approved.
Davis also told commissioners that Calvert County had put a review of a countywide ban on an upcoming agenda. The Chronicle could not immediately confirm that claim. Calvert commissioners voted 5-0 in August for a six-month moratorium on new data center applications after Amazon dropped plans near Calvert Cliffs.
Shelley Posey of La Plata thanked commissioners for rejecting zoning text amendment 25-187, which would have set rules for data centers, and urged them to “define them clearly and then ban them outright.” Another speaker asked Commissioner Ralph Patterson whether he wants a co-located data center near the CPV St. Charles Energy Center in his district.
How commissioners answered
Commissioner Gilbert “BJ” Bowling said he voted against data center measures twice and tried to introduce a ban. He repeated that he did not know about TeraWulf, the company tied to plans for the Morgantown Generating Station site, until it presented to the board. The Chronicle reported Oct. 14 that Bowling said his ban lacked the votes and shifted his focus to power supply.
Commissioner President Reuben Collins said data centers are not on the agenda for the board’s remaining meetings this term. He said a proposed task force was meant to bring residents and experts together, and that the state may decide the question first.
A third commissioner, identified by colleagues as Commissioner Thomasina Coates, said the data center amendment never got a motion and that no county permissions for data centers exist now.
Patterson said every member opposed the zoning amendment and that nothing is pending on data centers for the current board. He did not directly address the co-location question in his remarks.
Stewart said the board has been waiting on a state data center report she understood was due Sept. 1 and has not been released, along with direction from Gov. Wes Moore’s executive order, before writing local rules. Statewide, a UMBC poll this month found most Marylanders oppose new data centers.
A new board of commissioners takes office after the Nov. 3 election. Stewart said she will file her agenda request with colleagues; no date has been set.
