If your concern is not on this list, contact us. We will add it — and answer it directly, in writing.
These are the concerns residents have raised most often, and the specific, measurable commitments engineered into the project to address each one. They are not aspirations. They are recorded against the land, enforceable through the Special Development designation and the Community Benefits Agreement.
The campus is engineered around closed-loop and air-cooled systems. No millions of gallons drawn from local supplies. No process discharge into the public sewer. Strict prohibitions on PFAS “forever chemical” pathways in cooling, fire-suppression, and process equipment.
Watershed protection: the Mountain Branch stream and its tributary wetlands flow into the Bush River and ultimately the Chesapeake Bay. Site layout is engineered by a nationally recognized civil and environmental firm to comply with Maryland Department of the Environment standards and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wetlands and waterways requirements. Independent water-quality monitoring before, during, and after construction — results made public.
Maryland residents already feel grid pressure in their electric bills. A conventional data center adds massive new load to that grid. We designed Mountain Branch to do the opposite: primary operating power generated on-site through advanced fuel-cell technology, behind the meter. The project is designed not to draw routine operating electricity from the local BGE grid.
Ratepayer shield. Because operating power is generated on-site, BGE customers are not asked to fund grid upgrades for our operating load. No socialized infrastructure costs. No rate-base subsidies for the project. The cost of building this campus — including its on-site power capacity — is borne by the project, not by Harford County families and small businesses.
A nighttime noise limit of 45 dBA at the nearest occupied home. A 300-foot residential setback measured from the property line — not from the nearest house. A separate 500-foot setback for power generation equipment. Lighting, screening, and visual buffer commitments enforceable through the Special Development designation. These standards meet or exceed every adopted Maryland data center ordinance.
For every acre that becomes part of the campus, five acres are permanently preserved through qualified entities like the Harford Land Trust. At the scale of the Mountain Branch property, that commitment could permanently protect approaching 1,400 acres of farmland, woodland, and stream buffer. This is a net gain for Harford County's rural character — not a loss. The 5:1 ratio is recorded in the CBA and runs with the land.
The campus is engineered for a small permanent operations workforce, not constant industrial truck flow. Construction-phase traffic management plans are part of the public record. Vegetative screening and architectural treatments are designed so the campus is invisible from the surrounding road network at residential lines of sight.
Conventional data centers rely on acres of diesel backup generators that idle for testing, roar during outages, and emit smog-forming pollutants. Mountain Branch is engineered around solid-oxide fuel-cell technology, which generates electricity through a quiet electrochemical process — not by burning fuel. The result is a continuously operating campus with virtually no NOx, SOx, or particulate emissions and none of the industrial noise that local residents associate with conventional data center backup power.
No diesel cathedral. No constant generator testing. A clean, quiet 21st-century neighbor.
Every commitment on this page is enforceable. They are not goodwill statements. They are recorded against the property through a Special Development designation and a legally binding Community Benefits Agreement. Both run with the land. Both bind every future owner.
A site-specific designation that ties every protection in this campus to the land. Enforceable through the County's existing zoning and code-enforcement authority.
A Community Benefits Agreement recorded against the property. Enforceable in court — not a goodwill statement, not a press release.
Survives every sale, every refinancing, every change of operator. A future owner inherits every commitment.
A moratorium does not write any of this into the land. A binding CBA does. That is the difference between asking a County to wait, and asking a County to lead.
The County Council is considering Bill 26-005 — a 90-day moratorium on data center development. We are asking the Council to reject Bill 26-005 as introduced and adopt strict, enforceable standards instead.