The Prince George’s County Council passed a two-year moratorium on hyperscale data center development to give members more time to consider how the county will go about it in the future.
The decision followed nearly an hour of public input and about half an hour of discussion among council members. The moratorium is an extension of previous and similar actions by the council.
Public testimony varied widely, with supporters and opponents of data centers arguing about utility rates, environmental damage, jobs and economic impact. A coalition of more than two dozen data center supporters, wearing neon green shirts and hats, tried to sway the council with testimony focused on fact and fiction. They left en masse before the hearing ended.
But the real debate happened among the council members. There was talk of reducing the two-year moratorium to a shorter time period, and at one point the council rejected a proposal to hold the resolution for more discussion.
“There are too many unanswered questions,” council member Wala Blegay said. “I did serve on the qualified data center task force, and what I found from it was unanswered questions. How does it impact our water? We don’t know. We don’t have all of the answers.”
Council member Sydney Harrison spoke about the potential benefits to county revenues, but also the trade-offs from the “health, environmental and utility strain perspectives.”
“I am a proponent of diversifying our tax base,” Harrison said. “Neighboring jurisdictions with over 200 data centers derive more than 42% of their local tax base from these facilities. I’ve observed the construction of these data centers in close proximity to residential and commercial areas, amongst commerce areas. The long-term impacts of these data centers, particularly over the next two decades, have not been fully vetted or understood yet.”
He said any green light for the construction of new data centers needs to take energy consumption into account. He also said zoning changes that allow for data centers to generate their own energy need to be discussed further, and argued for the creation of a community benefit task force, something other jurisdictions have also started doing.
“I believe this is part of the negotiation with the data center companies, and I believe the county sets the rules, not the data center companies,” Harrison said.
After it was clear the measure was going to pass, three members of the council abstained from voting. Council member Tim Adams voted no on the moratorium, primarily because of the two-year length.
As the council moved closer to a vote, council chair Krystal Oriadha said all of that was going to be taken into account in the weeks and months ahead. Council member Shayla Adams-Stafford is working on a bill that would address data centers for good, and the council chair, who is against data centers, said the bills will be heard later this year.
“If we pass comprehensive legislation, it lifts the moratorium,” Oriadha said. “The onus is on us, and the onus is that we can still have that conversation with the community.”
The moratorium is not necessarily a signal that the council won’t allow data centers in the future.
“To me, it was simple. It makes sense to pause it while we continue to have those conversations, not let it lapse, so projects can move forward that are harmful,” Oriadha said.
She pointed to the data center project proposed for the old Landover Mall site, which the county is trying to stop, as one she considered harmful.
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