Sept. 15, County Executive Aisha Braveboy ordered a pause on permits for data center development until a county task force finishes its controversial work. 

An explosion in data center development in Northern Virginia helps make Loudoun County the wealthiest county in the country, according to Bloomberg. However, data centers have also greatly increased energy demands and crowded out other uses for open space.

Here in Prince George’s County, by Nov. 30 the Qualified Data Center Task Force must make recommendations to address the environmental impacts of data centers, quality of life in affected communities and energy demands. 

That task force, with the county planning department, will host a community meeting this Saturday from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. at the Prince George’s Sports and Learning Complex Fieldhouse in Landover, near the site of a data center planned for the former Landover Mall property (2101 Brightseat Road). 

The county plans to allow construction of another data center in West Laurel, at 6201 Frost Place, between the Burtonsville electrical substation and a WSSC building.

Qualified data centers house the physical infrastructure that runs the internet and artificial intelligence platforms. They provide servers, data storage and network equipment. 

Prince George’s County has five data centers in the north of the county, according to a task force map, and has identified 349 additional sites for possible development, including 16 that the Prince George’s County Economic Development Corporation has marketed to developers. Those 16 featured sites include the planned Landover and Laurel data centers, as well as a cluster of six sites northwest of the Andrews Air Force base in County Council District 7. 

County planning staff and local politicians have promoted and streamlined data center development as a way to raise revenue without increasing taxes. 

Activists petition to halt Landover data center

Sept. 10, community members and activists gathered outside a task force meeting to oppose the continued development of the data center at the site of the former Landover Mall, which closed in 2002.

“I feel like they are going to sway us by talking about the revenue generation,” said cosmetologist, activist and Landover resident Taylor Frazier McCollum, in an interview. 

In July, she created a petition calling for a halt to development of the Landover Mall site that currently has over 21,000 signatures.

McCollum said the Party for Socialism and Liberation, Washington D.C, supported the petition. The party, which McCollum recently joined, interviewed her and promoted her petition on their Instagram page as well as on their national website.

“Just those two pages alone were able to kind of carry the petition further than I would have ever carried it by myself,” she said.

The party also helped organize the protests on Sept. 10. Party leaders have not yet responded to a request for comment.

Concern over energy and water use

McCollum said she has family who have consistently seen their energy bills increase, and data centers would increase bills further. 

Bloomberg analysts agree that energy prices are rising for consumers because of data centers.

McCollum said she is specifically concerned about the strain that these centers will put on the PJM power grid, which provides power to 13 states including Maryland as well as Washington D.C.

“The grid can’t handle it,” she said. “They’re charging us for the infrastructure that they’re trying to build, but they’re returning to fossil fuels in many of these cases.”

Task force member David Tilley, an environmental engineer and associate professor in the Environmental Science & Technology Department at the University of Maryland, College Park, said he considers power consumption to be the largest issue that data centers pose. 

He said they can consume gigawatt hours of power in a year, and that one gigawatt alone is enough to power around 750,000 homes for a year. Tilley estimated that the county has around 350,000 homes. 

He also said the data centers of Loudoun County, Virginia, which has been a leading county nationwide in the development of data centers, consume around 5 gigawatts hours of energy per year.

“I just don’t see how the price of power is not going to go up,” he said.

Tilley also mentioned that the massive facilities require a lot of water for cooling.

McCollum said water that could be going to homes for drinking, washing and other basic needs is instead used to cool data centers.

“It’s more important for us to have clean drinking water for the public than it is to have clean drinking water for a data center,” she said.

Revenue opportunity for the county

Proponents for data centers believe they are an unparalleled economic boon.

In a presentation to the county council back in 2020, former president and CEO of the Prince George’s County Economic Development Corporation David Iannucci laid out many of these benefits. He outlined how tax revenue generated from equipment at these centers, coupled with increased job accessibility, could provide millions of dollars to the county over a period of 10 years.

“I’m advocating that Prince George’s County do this because of the large tax revenues that come to the county, with very little demand on services, very little traffic, and the jobs that are there are very high paying jobs,” he said, advocating for legislation that would make the county more attractive to data center developers.

Demand for data centers is at an all-time high, and is only predicted to get higher according to Tilley.

“This is going to be the issue of the next decade if this continues,” Tilley said.

The county data center task force was chartered in February and began meeting in May. Task force members include county officials and representatives of utility companies, unions, business and community groups.