Briefing
Data-center pause adopted Sept. 8; no project is filed
County Council unanimously adopted Resolution 395 on Sept. 8, pausing data-center approvals for 12 months while zoning is written. No campus is on file.
No data-center campus has been proposed in Easton or Talbot County. Resolution 395, introduced August 11 by Vice President Pete Lesher, Lynn Mielke, and Dave Stepp, paused processing, review, and approval of data-center applications for 12 months while the county writes zoning. The County Council held a public hearing and unanimously adopted the resolution on Tuesday, Sept. 8, in the Bradley Meeting Room. There is still no Talbot applicant.
What Resolution 395 does — and what it is not
Resolution 395 is a temporary moratorium now in force after the Sept. 8 adoption. County Attorney Patrick Thomas told the Council data centers are not currently a permitted use. The 12-month pause gives staff and the Planning Commission time to prepare zoning recommendations.
- Twelve months on review, processing, approvals, site plans, permits, and other authorizations for a data center — time to write zoning, not a ban already on the books.
- Effective on adoption, not on introduction. The draft lets the Council extend the pause in six-month steps, up to six times. That 12-month period began on adoption Sept. 8.
- A data center, as the draft defines it, is a building whose primary use is housing servers and the gear that stores and moves large amounts of data. Servers that are subordinate to a lawful principal use on the same property would not be covered.
- Staff and the Planning Commission would prepare the zoning recommendations. President Chuck Callahan was absent when Lesher, Mielke, and Stepp introduced it.
Process record: public hearing and unanimous adoption, Tuesday, Sept. 8, Bradley Room. Official text: Resolution 395 as adopted.
Power — make the law work here
- Maryland Office of People's Counsel, FERC complaint dated May 7, 2026 (docket EL26-63, amended May 22): about $22 billion in transmission advanced through three PJM Regional Transmission Expansion Plan windows (2022 Window 3, 2024 Window 1, 2025 Window 1), overwhelmingly for data-center load. Maryland customers were assigned about $2 billion in capital costs — about $1.6 billion on bills over ten years. OPC challenges PJM's hybrid method: 50% load-ratio share, 50% power-flow DFAX. Remedy sought: assign costs to the zone where the halls sit, or charge the large loads directly.
- That $1.6 billion is mostly BGE and Pepco — about $345 per average residential customer statewide, $673 commercial, $15,074 industrial. Shore bills are a different row. OPC's Delmarva Power estimate is about $205 over ten years for an average residential customer (~$20 a year); Choptank Electric, which covers much of Talbot, is about $508 over ten years (~$50 a year) — higher per member than the BGE/Pepco average.
- A related OPC explainer also cites almost $12 billion advanced in 2024–25 alone, mostly for Northern Virginia, with about $1.3 billion assigned to Maryland. That is a narrower window, not a rival total.
- The Next Generation Energy Act (2025) put large-load customers on a special electricity rate — originally more than 100 MW and an 80% load factor. The 2026 Utility RELIEF Act lowered that to 25 MW and 60% and added a PSC large-load registry. Hosting, if a campus is ever filed, is how Talbot would use that statute instead of only sending the money west.
Water and land — write the welcome
- A year with the Town of Easton and local utilities is time to require closed-loop or air cooling, on-site generation, and setbacks. Easton's council has already told its lawyers to draft a town moratorium.
- Council's $243,600 rewrite of the Comprehensive Water and Sewer Plan (Vision Planning and Consulting, awarded August 11) can put those conditions in the same map as Lakeside.
- Harris Creek and the Tred Avon oyster sanctuaries stay protected if the ordinance says so before the first site plan.
- Queen Anne's adopted a 12-month pause. Longer pauses this year are across the Bay (Prince George's two years, Montgomery 18 months, others studying bans) — not a Shore bloc.
Schools — a taxpayer the budget does not have
FY27 unrestricted school revenue is about $84.6 million after a $10.4 million gap. Enrollment is falling and MCAP math is 20.7%. A campus does not teach algebra. It can pay. There is no data-center tax base today, and there is no enacted 2.5× personal-property subclass to assume. That is one of the few commercial taxpayers large enough to grow the local share without another household rate fight — if an application is ever filed and if the ordinance is written before it, not after.
What a year of rules can lock in
| Term | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Write the tax class locally | A 2026 bill (SB427/HB1595) would have let counties set a special personal-property subclass for data centers of up to 2.5× the real-property rate. It was not enacted. Maryland’s general personal-property cap in §6-302 is not a data-center class. Any bargain has to be written in local law. |
| They pay their own power | The 2025 Next Generation Energy Act (SB937, Chapter 625, PUA §4-212) created a “large load customer” class — more than 100 MW monthly demand and a load factor over 80% — and a special electricity rate so residential customers “should not bear the financial risks” of those interconnections. It does not say “data center.” The 2026 Utility RELIEF Act (HB1532) lowered the threshold to 25 MW and 60% and added a PSC registry. Local zoning can still require they fund their own interconnection. |
| Closed-loop cooling | A year of rules with Easton can require air or recycled-water cooling so Harris Creek and the Tred Avon stay off the discharge map — if a campus is ever proposed. |
| Fiber and jobs that stay | A campus would bring construction trades, a permanent technical crew, and laterals other employers can use. Housing sessions already said the bottleneck is jobs that pay. That is conditional on an application that does not exist today. |
Sources: Maryland Office of People's Counsel; OPC FERC complaint, May 7, 2026 (EL26-63); Next Generation Energy Act (SB937, Chapter 625); WBOC on Delmarva $205 / Choptank $508; WBOC on the Talbot framework; Queen Anne's 12-month moratorium. Related: the news write-up and the MCAP briefing.