Annapolis, MD – In a letter sent to Governor Moore and the General Assembly today, 64 environmental, consumer, and community groups from throughout Maryland called on the governor and lawmakers to sign a moratorium on the construction of new hyperscale data centers. The General Assembly returns to Annapolis on January 13 for the 2027 legislative session.

The letter was written and circulated by the environmental organization Food & Water Watch and signed by groups that include MLC Climate Justice Wing, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Progressive Maryland, Third Act Maryland, Nature Forward, Mothers Out Front, and Chesapeake Physicians for Social Responsibility. 

“While the General Assembly is out of session, data centers are being pushed into communities by some of the wealthiest, most powerful corporations in the world. Marylanders need to see our legislators take immediate action and make their support for a data center moratorium clear in the lead up to January,” said Jomar Lloyd, Maryland Organizer for Food & Water Watch. “Maryland needs a data center moratorium — we won’t stop pushing for these commonsense protections that communities desperately need and deserve.” 

The letter, in part, states: 

“The explosive growth of data centers is one of the biggest affordability and environmental threats of our generation. This rapid expansion of data centers is straining water resources, raising electricity prices, emitting harmful pollutants, and driving more fossil fuel production to meet new energy demands among a host of other issues like noise pollution, vibration impacts, and e-waste. All this compounds the significant and concerning impacts data centers are having on society, including lost jobs, social instability, and concentration of wealth.”

“Data Centers dramatically impact our environment and the quality of life of current, especially for future generations” said Sonia Demiray, Executive Director of the Climate Communications Coalition. “Data Centers set back our clean energy transition by delaying vital action on climate change; their exorbitant demand for water further threatens thePotomac River, the most endangered river in the country. They also increase carcinogens and air pollution, harming people and wildlife, and they impact biodiversity and public health with noise and light pollution. To understand how we can protect our environment and future generations, we need a moratorium right now.”  

“Our county, state and federal laws are completely inadequate to protect communities, public health, water supplies, the electrical grid or rate payers — especially low-income rate payers — from the wide-ranging damaging impacts of large and hyper-scale data centers.  If we allow even a fraction of the proposed hyper-scale data centers now proposed to be built and powered with fossil fuels, we will blow any chance of meeting critical climate goals,” said Greg Smith with Sustainable Hyattsville. “Instead of locking ourselves into a disastrous race to the bottom, weakening our environmental and public health laws, serving of up massive tax breaks to some of the wealthiest, most powerful people and corporations on the planet, and allowing them to hide behind non-disclosure agreements, we must impose a hard moratorium now on large and hyperscale data centers, ban their use for human surveillance and oppression, and enact and enforce laws that place people over profits, ensure full transparency, and fully protect the public interest.”

There has been widespread movement through Maryland to pause data center development, with about a dozen Maryland counties having some kind of order or legislation temporarily halting the development. Baltimore City passed a six-month moratorium in May, Harford County passed an indefinite ban in June, and Prince George’s and Montgomery Counties both passed moratoriums in July.

Last October, Food & Water Watch became the first national organization to call for a nationwide moratorium on the approval and construction of new data centers. In a letter to Congress sent at the beginning of summer, more than 520 organizations from 48 states echoed this call.