Amazon abandoned plans for a data center campus on the grounds of a Maryland nuclear plant — and within days, the county commissioners who replaced the ones voters threw out passed a six-month freeze on every new data center project. A North Carolina planning board voted to kill a rezoning for the second time. A Wisconsin well-permit hearing ended with the chairman banging his gavel and threatening to clear the room. And new BloombergNEF numbers put the gas plants being built to feed AI data centers at 318 million tons of CO₂ a year. Here's what actually moved.
COMMUNITY — The Calvert County, Maryland Board of Commissioners unanimously approved a six-month moratorium on new data center projects, days after Amazon abandoned plans for multiple campuses on the grounds of the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant. The Amazon proposal covered three campuses across roughly 200 acres — eight data center buildings totaling about 2.4 million square feet with up to 500 MW supplied by Constellation Energy, which operates the plant. Residents first learned of the proposal in February. By the June primary it had become the defining local issue, and three incumbent commissioners who had opposed a moratorium were defeated. The pause gives leaders time to weigh zoning changes or an outright ban.
⚖️ LEGAL — The Stokes County, North Carolina planning board voted 5–2 to recommend that commissioners deny the rezoning behind Project Delta, a large data center proposal near Walnut Cove. It is the second rejection at that stage. Commissioners approved the rezoning in January, but the approval was declared null and void in April after a lawsuit argued the public hearing notice failed to meet state requirements. Developer David Couch submitted a new rezoning application in July. Supporters cite a projected 250 to 500 permanent jobs. Commissioners had already rejected a proposed six-month moratorium on a 3–2 vote, leaving the rezoning as the decisive question.
COMMUNITY — The Coweta Coun
