6/29 Data Center Siting Hearings

6/29/25

Critical Digital Infrastructure (CDI) Overlay Zone

County Planning Commission Hearing 7/9

County Council Hearing 7/15

Background: Location of data centers in Frederick County continues to be an issue for residents concerned about quality of life here. Current zoning allows data centers to be sited only in Limited or General Industrial Zones (LI or GI), but the advisory Data Centers Work Group (DCWG) recommended against allowing data centers "by right" in any industrial zone. Because data centers are huge, noisy, and brightly lit (among other things), the DCWG suggested that an additional layer of analysis and public input be required before site plans can be approved, even in industrial zones.

Both the Planning Commission and the County Council will hold hearings on the CDI Overlay Zone bill 25-09 in the coming weeks. Council Member Steve McKay published a very clear summary of the bill's provisions, which we draw from below:

The bill creates and defines a CDI Overlay zone in our code. This will remove the current "by right" zoning for data center development within the LI and GI zones.
Within the next few weeks, the county administration is expected to propose a map outline of a CDI Overlay - specifying an area where data centers may be developed - and that zone is expected to be centered around the current EastAlco Growth Area.
The bill allows data center development to occur on property adjacent to residential development, but changes the 200' set back previously established by the Council majority to a 500' setback. The concern here is that this provision appears not to be applicable if the intent truly is to limit data centers to the area right around EastAlco.
The bill specifies that the CDI Overlay may not exceed 1% of the County's total land area, or 4,224 acres. (See our last newsletter for a graphic of what that might look like, centered around EastAlco.)

Sugarloaf Alliance continues to participate in the debate. We have serious concerns about the effects of so many resource-intensive data centers in our county and state, we stand with our Adamstown neighbors who now are threatened with expanded data center development, and we worry that the county is engaged in a kind of incrementalism that eventually will aim back at the Sugarloaf area.

PLANNING COMMISSION HEARING, 7/9

Please plan to attend the Planning Commission hearing on Wednesday, July 9. The Planning Commission will hear public comments and make recommendations to the County Council regarding the CDI Overlay legislation. Wear white to show the Commission your opposition to the legislation as currently proposed. Planning Commission meetings take place in Winchester Hall and begin at 9:30am; see the agenda here.

COUNTY COUNCIL HEARING, 7/15

Please plan to attend the County Council hearing on Tuesday, July 15. The County Council will hear public comments regarding the CDI Overlay legislation. Wear white to show the Council your opposition to the legislation as currently proposed. Council meetings take place in Winchester Hall. Hearings usually begin at 7:00pm; the agenda is not yet posted.

NOTE: You may send your comments to the Planning Commission, the County Council, and the County Executive by email or snail mail. IF YOU OFFERED COMMENTS AT THE JUNE 17 COUNTY COUNCIL MEETING, those comments were not part of a hearing and therefore not on the record for the CDI Overlay bill. You can put them on the record, by submitting them in writing at this time (as above).

Investing in Workers and Workplaces (IW2)

Plan Update

Background: See the information initially offered about the IW2 project at the county's website; see Sugarloaf Alliance's concerns about the proposal and the early process here.

County planning staff have prepared an IW2 document for Planning Commission consideration; the briefing based on this document is scheduled for their 7/23 Planning Commission meeting. (The agenda is not yet published.) We will offer more specific thoughts as that date approaches.

For now, we will note that we see no mention of EastAlco or data centers in this document focused on county economic development, and we see very little in the way of analysis. There are a lot of proposed parcel rezonings; we offer the document here so that you can see what areas they are looking at.

Sugarloaf Alliance

Public Information Access (PIA) Requests

Is Data Center Construction in Frederick County Subject to

Effective Oversight and Regulations Enforcement?

On May 18, 2025, Sugarloaf Alliance filed a Maryland Public Interest Access (MPIA) request with Frederick County in order to learn more about the county’s oversight of data center construction at the Quantum / EastAlco site in Adamstown. The request asks for records between 3/15 and 5/16, and reads in part:

"Rowan Digital is building multiple data center facilities in Frederick County. These facilities have been given the names “Bauxite” I, II, and III. In April 2025 Amazon Web Services was named as the customer of the first of the Rowan facilities (Bauxite I)….

“The records sought here all deal directly with the core operations of Frederick County government. The Amazon affair [learn more here], data center development, and regulation of Critical Digital Infrastructure are all parts of the ongoing activities of county government. These records shine a bright light into an otherwise unknown area of government regulatory activities.”

We know that Governor Moore has taken action in support of data center development in Maryland and in Frederick County specifically. (In the recently completed legislative session, he vetoed the bill funding research into the effects of data center development in the state. Last year he asked for and signed the Critical Infrastructure Streamlining Act of 2024, overriding the Public Service Commission’s concerns about the dozens of diesel generators commonly installed in order to power data centers during power outages). Documents responsive to the Alliance’s MPIA request include an email from the Governor's Office of Business Advancement asking that the Rowen site improvement plan be expedited or afforded some leniency, “even if it is at-risk.”

Read this email and the full cache of responsive documents here.