“Don’t Even Put Your Signs Out” Calvert Residents Continue Anti-Data Center Campaign With A Focus On Re-election

PRINCE FREDERICK, Md. — Calvert County locals continued their pushback against allowing data centers in the county at the April 7 Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) meeting.

Myra Gowans, representing Calvert Citizens United, began her comments by waving to the board members.

“I’m going to wave goodbye to you now,” Gowans said. “Because you won’t be here next year. There is just no way.” Gowans specifically called out commissioners.

Calvert Citizens United is a community action group that focuses on ethical conflicts within the county government and opposing development projects in the area. Gowans accused the commissioners of “backing themselves into a corner” with their agreements with companies on data centers, and betraying the unions that supported them in past elections.

“You all have made a mistake. And don’t even put your signs out,” Gowans said to the BOCC.

BOCC District 1 candidate Patrick Flaherty said he drafted an ordinance that would put strong, anti-data center protections in place that would restart the process from scratch. He criticized the current board for “giving major players a two-year head start” and for what he viewed as a lack of transparency in the process.

“Let’s stop the delays and half measures. Let’s do things right and give Calvert residents the transparency they deserve,” Flaherty said.

One resident, representing a group called Neighbors of Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, said he lives just a few miles from the Constellation property that is currently a site of interest for the Amazon Web Services (AWS) data center plan. The resident read out the names of his neighbors who would be impacted by the addition of a data center. These people, he said, were not just collateral damage — they were friends, neighbors and farmers, many of whom had been on their property for generations, and who were not notified when the zoning ordinance changed to allow heavy industrial use in the forested area near their homes.

“Constellation did not gather the support of their neighbors,” he said, citing their zoning change in order to market the property specifically to data centers. And these were only the first three speakers.

Calvert residents spoke throughout the public comment period about environmental impacts, concerns about cost of living, and the government process that led to this point. Speakers also called into the meeting remotely and submitted a petition in support of the now-defeated moratorium on data centers.

Two companies, Natelli Holdings and Amazon Web Services (AWS), have presented possible plans for data centers, but neither has yet entered a formal proposal or begun the permitting process.

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