A bill before the Frederick County Council intended to limit data centers could open Pandora’s Box according to opponents, and force the county to rely on the Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project.
The bill, introduced in June, would limit data centers to a maximum of 1% of Frederick’s total landmass, equal to 4,200 acres.
Data centers would be restricted to a plot located north of Adamstown, at the site of the old Alcoa Eastalco Works. That’s double the land of Frederick’s current 2,100 acre data center campus, Quantum Frederick (QF), which isn’t even full yet.
The bill would also increase the distance that data centers can be built next to residential areas from 200ft to 500ft. Speaking at a County Council meeting on Tuesday, Charles Zitrick, a 22 year Frederick County Public School teacher, says 500ft is nothing. “This is Pandora’s Box,” Zitrick said. “When you open this up, the only thing [data centers] are interested in is to expand.”
QF is planned to use 1 gigawatt of electricity, which is enough to power 30,000 homes. This comes as Maryland already imports 40% of its electricity.
While the county says it's not their job to regulate power, Sue Trainor, a Frederick County resident, says electricity is a lot like ice cream. She may not regulate how it's made, but there are consequences if she eats too much. “You choose to create additional infrastructure to support growth,” Trainor said. “[But] we don’t know what these additional sites added on to the Eastalco site will consume.”
Frederick County Council Member Steve McKay says Frederick may have to rely on out-of-state power. This could include the Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project, a 70-mile power line posed to cut a 150-foot-wide line through Baltimore, Carroll and Frederick County.
The data center bill puts the council at odds with the county’s decision to oppose the MPRP, McKay says, and may even prompt future projects. “If we do go down the road of significantly expanding the land available for datacenter development here in Frederick County, then we are setting up for the next MPRP and the next one after that.”
While data centers can consume large quantities of power, they also produce a great deal of heat. QF is projected to consume one million gallons per day as coolant, which the county has already accounted for. McKay says newly proposed plans could increase that to 7 million, but doesn’t know if the county can handle that volume of water. “Particularly when it comes to drier months when that water needs to go back into the Monocacy or the Potomac,” McKay said.
The County plans to announce future hearings at a later date.
