Washington County MD Votes 4-1 for 12-Month Data Center Moratorium Over Infrastructure Cost-Shift Concerns

Washington County, MD commissioners voted 4-1 on June 30 to impose a 12-month moratorium on new data-center applications, extending a previously proposed six-month pause after residents raised concerns about water supplies, electric infrastructure, and who bears the cost of bespoke grid upgrades. Commissioner Leatherman cited cost-shifting directly, saying he wants future data centers to pay for necessary infrastructure rather than shifting costs onto existing residents.

The vote is part of a broader early-July wave of datacenter resistance actions: Arizona’s three-year moratorium on state data-center tax exemptions took effect July 1, Illinois halted its incentive program the same day, and county moratoriums are advancing in DeSoto County, FL and Missoula County, MT. Washington County is also an active detention-fight county — the same jurisdiction is litigating ICE’s Williamsport warehouse NEPA violation (2026-04-15–judge-halts-williamsport-ice-construction-nepa — corrected 2026-08-27 from a dangling wikilink to a nonexistent 2026-02-23--washington-county-md-warehouse-nepa-lawsuit-102m file; this is the corpus’s actual entry point for that litigation) — making it a site where both the datacenter and detention buildouts are simultaneously contested.