If Washington County Wants to Pause Data Centers Over Infrastructure and Environmental Concerns, Then Why Didn't It Pause the ICE Detention Center?

As questions linger about secret land deals, NDAs, and infrastructure planning, Washington County is suddenly proposing a six-month pause on data centers.

A draft ordinance prepared for consideration by the Washington County Commissioners on June 30 would impose a six-month moratorium on new data center projects throughout the county while officials study their impacts on infrastructure, water resources, roads, public facilities, and the environment.

The three-page draft ordinance, titled “An Ordinance to Provide for a Moratorium Concerning Data Centers in Washington County,” appears to have been prepared by the County Attorney’s Office and would temporarily halt the acceptance, review, and approval of new data center projects while county officials evaluate what the ordinance describes as the economic, social, and environmental risks associated with such developments.

According to the ordinance, county officials are concerned about high energy consumption, strain on utility infrastructure, significant water usage, environmental impacts, road and infrastructure demands, and the effects large-scale projects can have on public facilities and surrounding communities.

Ordinarily, a proposed data center moratorium would have little to do with the ongoing controversy surrounding the proposed ICE detention center in Washington County. The ordinance never mentions DHS, ICE, the warehouse, Hopewell Road, Wright Road, or the detention center itself. Yet the concerns cited throughout the ordinance closely mirror many of the same concerns residents, environmental groups, state agencies, and DHS itself have spent months debating in connection with the warehouse project.

Questions about wastewater capacity, water consumption, environmental impacts, emergency services, road infrastructure, and the strain on local resources have been central to the detention center debate from the beginning. The State of Maryland raised many of those same concerns in its lawsuit challenging the project. DHS ultimately acknowledged that the facility required a formal environmental review because of its potential impacts. Residents have spent months asking county officials to take those concerns seriously.

Now the county is arguing that similar concerns justify putting an entire category of development on hold while additional study is conducted.

That alone should be newsworthy. What makes the document particularly interesting is the context in which it appears.

Through Maryland Public Information Act requests, we at Hagerstown Rapid Response and Washington County Indivisible previously obtained a copy of the non-disclosure agreements signed by Washington County officials in December 2025 concerning a confidential land deal. Those agreements were executed just weeks before the public learned DHS was purchasing the warehouse and before county officials publicly acknowledged the project. While the County has never publicly confirmed that the NDAs were related to the warehouse transaction itself, their timing raised significant questions about what county officials knew, when they knew it, and what discussions were taking place behind closed doors during the same period. Those questions have never been fully answered.

Public records obtained through separate MPIA requests have also shown that Washington County economic development officials were actively marketing the warehouse property before DHS purchased it. Those records reveal discussions with brokers, conversations about infrastructure improvements in the Wright Road corridor, and efforts to attract major occupants to the site. More recently, the Washington County Commissioners approved a controversial consulting agreement with former County Administrator Greg Murray during a special session that generated significant public criticism. Murray’s contract specifically authorizes him to advise the county on water and sewer deficiencies, growth impacts, infrastructure concerns, and related matters affecting the warehouse corridor.

One reason that special session is so controversial is because Commissioner President John Barr cast the deciding vote after the commission deadlocked - a vote that could benefit his family considerably. That special session reinforced a growing concern that Washington County Commissioners are conducting important public business behind closed doors, limiting transparency, sidestepping meaningful public input, and creating the appearance of conflicts of interest in decisions that affect the entire community.

Taken individually, these facts may not appear connected. Taken together, however, they show county officials engaged in ongoing discussions about development, infrastructure, growth, water, sewer capacity, and land use at the same time they were conducting confidential discussions and approving consulting contracts related to those very issues. Against that backdrop, the sudden appearance of a proposed data center moratorium raises an obvious question: why are county officials concerned enough about data centers to draft legislation halting them, and what prompted that concern in the first place?

What prompted county officials to begin drafting legislation focused specifically on data centers?

Was there a particular proposal under consideration somewhere in Washington County?

Were county officials receiving inquiries from developers interested in large-scale projects?

Were county officials already discussing potential data center development somewhere in Washington County before this ordinance was drafted?

Or is the timing entirely coincidental and unrelated to any of the discussions that occurred during the NDA period?

Moratoriums rarely appear without a reason. Local governments typically do not just begin drafting legislation to halt an entire category of development unless there is development pressure, a pending proposal, inquiries from developers, or broader concerns about projects that may be on the horizon.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the ordinance has nothing to do with data centers at all. It’s that Washington County’s stated justification for the moratorium is that data centers can have significant impacts on utility infrastructure, water resources, roads, public facilities, and the surrounding environment. County officials argue that those impacts deserve additional study before new projects move forward.

Now that’s rich. It is also strikingly similar to the position residents, environmental advocates, and the State of Maryland have been urging Washington County to take with respect to the proposed ICE detention center.

For months, residents have raised concerns about wastewater capacity, water consumption, infrastructure demands, environmental impacts, traffic, emergency services, and the strain a facility housing up to 1,500 detainees could place on local resources. Many of those concerns ultimately became part of Maryland’s lawsuit against DHS. DHS itself eventually acknowledged that the project required a formal environmental review.

Yet when residents raised those very concerns about the ICE detention center, county officials suddenly found no need for caution. There was no call for a pause, no proposal for a moratorium, and no insistence on further study before moving forward. Most remarkably, they denied the public any meaningful opportunity to be heard. To this day, Washington County residents still have not been allowed to comment before their elected officials on one of the most consequential projects in the county’s recent history.

Now, in the case of data centers, the Washington County is proposing exactly that.

If infrastructure demands, water consumption, environmental impacts, and public facility concerns justify halting data center development until additional analysis can be completed, why did those same concerns not justify a similar pause when DHS announced plans to convert an 825,000-square-foot industrial warehouse into a detention facility designed to hold up to 1,500 people?

The ordinance never addresses that contradiction. But once you notice it, it becomes difficult to ignore.

The ordinance does not answer every question raised by its existence. We know the warehouse was being marketed before DHS purchased it. We know county officials were discussing infrastructure improvements in the area. We know county officials signed NDAs concerning a confidential land deal just weeks before the public learned DHS was purchasing the warehouse. We know the Washington County Commissioners approved the hiring of Greg Murray to advise the county on growth, infrastructure, water, and sewer issues affecting the warehouse corridor. What we do not know is what prompted county officials to begin drafting legislation focused specifically on data centers, whether a particular proposal triggered concern, or how long those discussions have been taking place.

The answers are unlikely to come from press releases or carefully crafted public statements. They are far more likely to be found in emails, planning documents, meeting notes, communications with developers, and internal county records. The proposed moratorium does not reveal where any potential data center project might be located or whether any specific proposal exists at all. What it does do is raise new questions about why county officials suddenly believe data centers warrant a six-month pause, what discussions led to that conclusion, and whether those discussions reveal another chapter of a story the public still does not fully understand.