Council President Brad Young says these facilities can be beneficial to residents.
Frederick, Md (KM) Strong opposition was expressed against data centers during a two days of testimony this week before the Frederick County Council. . Many were concerned that data centers could go up anywhere in the county. Council President Brad Young says the county has regulations covering the location, size and other aspects when it comes to data centers.
“We have the toughest data center regulations anywhere around . We’ve tried to do the things to protect and make sure that the neighbors aren’t impacted by them,” :says Young.
The Council is considering a bill to set up an overlay which restricts where data centers can be located in the county. “Frederick County is around 400,000 acres for the total county So this overlay would allow them 2400 acres which is primarily right in the area of the old Eastalco industrial site where the infrastructure is,” he says.
Construction of data centers is underway at the former Eastalco site in Adamstown, and Young says local laws would restrict these facilities to that site.
The County’s ordinance allows data centers to be located on less than one percent of the county’s total land mass, and has restrictions to keep them away from residential areas.
There’s a proliferation of data centers in northern Virginia which are very noisy. Young says the County has provisions in its laws that help mitigate the noise. When it comes to generators, Young says the county would require data centers to use tier-four generators. “In northern Virginia, there’s using the tier-two generators which are much louder. So we did put things in place to mitigate their noise,” He says. “There are noise levels which are above the property line, they have to be taken care of.”
During testimony, some citizens said this overlay would allow for more data center to be constructed in Frederick County. Young says that’s not the case. “If we don’t change anything,, there’s 5,000 acres where they could be built including in LI and GI zoned property in the county . So we’re not adding. What we’re adding to is what the Planning Commission recommended. But we’re reducing over 50 percent the amount of area where data centers can be built from where they can be built right now,”: he sys.
The Planning Commission has proposed that a 1585-acre overlay.
LI and GI are Limited Industrial, and General Industrial. Data centers can be built on properties with these two zoning classifications.
Once this overlay is adopted, Young says the County will be work with the data center developers to provide some benefits to the Adamstown community. “We get this agreement overlay passed., then we can work with the developers to do a community agreement to do lots of benefits for the Adamstown area. But we can’t do that until this is done. So I’m looking forward to putting this to rests,” says Young.
Young was a guest recently on WFMD”s “Morning News Express.”
By Kevin McManus