Charles County, MD Commissioners Scrap Data Center Zoning Amendment After Year of Pushback

Charles County, MD’s Board of Commissioners voted July 21 to withdraw a pending data center zoning amendment rather than advance or deny it, citing the need for expert guidance and unclear state direction. Any future zoning change must restart from scratch, requiring new Planning Commission review. Data centers remain a non-permitted use in the county. Board President Reuben B. Collins said a task force with an outside consultant will be formed while a state report is awaited. The withdrawal follows more than a year of sustained community pushback in a county that borders Prince George’s County — one of the nation’s densest data center corridors.

Charles County’s withdrawal-to-task-force route produces the same practical outcome as neighboring Prince George’s County’s formal two-year moratorium (2026-07-06–prince-georges-county-md-2-year-datacenter-moratorium-vote) — no new data center construction proceeds — but via regulatory paralysis rather than an affirmative vote, a distinction that matters for how durable and legally challengeable the pause is.