ELLICOTT CITY, Md. — As developers race to build more data centers across the country, the Howard County Council isn’t quite pulling the plug yet but rather considering a temporary pause on any new projects.
District 3 councilwoman Christiana Rigby introduced the “Strategic Moratorium for Assessing Responsible Technology” or S.M.A.R.T. Siting bill during Monday's council meeting.
“I think people are really happy that we’re taking a moment to reevaluate. Especially when you understand where our code is, and where we are in time, are really different places,” Rigby said.
Howard County Council considering temporary pause on new data center projects
The last time Howard County updated its data center regulations was more than 30 years ago, in 1993.
The move follows Baltimore, Frederick, and Prince George’s counties, which have all implemented limitations on data center builds with rising concerns over the immense amount of resources needed to support them.
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If the bill is approved, it would create a task force responsible for: Defining what a data center is, studying the impacts on public health and safety of data centers as well as providing recommendations to the county on best practices.
The pause would last 18 months or less, depending on the timing of the task force’s recommendations and any subsequent legislation.
“Data centers are certainly part of our modern data structure but we also need to know where they're going to go and how they're going to go," Rigby said. "We might want to ban the very, very large style data centers, but the ones that could be contained in an office building that are more for cloud storage, that might be alright."
“It’s better to have a work group to really evaluate all those nuances," Rigby added.
Howard County is currently home to a few smaller data-processing centers, but there are no known plans to build a large campus-style data center that's drawn the ire of many other communities.
A public hearing is scheduled for Monday, May 18, starting at 7 p.m. at the George Howard County building.
