This week the moratorium moved from a Trumbull County story to a national one. Three Ohio townships, the Montgomery County (MD) Council, and 225 people at a Pennsylvania town hall all told their local governments the same thing in the same five days: slow down on data centers.
Jackson Township trustees outside Columbus voted unanimously on May 12 for a 12-month pause on data centers, joining Pleasant Township, Sunbury, and Washington Township in the central-Ohio cluster. Grove City Council is considering its own. A Texas company, Stream Data Centers, wants to build off Rensch Road in territory that straddles Jackson and Pleasant — and Grove City's attorney told council on May 4 that data centers aren't permitted under the city's code today.
Two hours northeast, Bazetta Township trustees in Trumbull County voted Tuesday for a 180-day moratorium even though no company has asked to build there yet. “This is just to get ahead of the development,” trustee Mike Hovis said. Hubbard Township, where trustees passed their own 2-1 moratorium in February, used Tuesday's meeting to walk residents through why they moved early. Trustee Jason Tedrow named Lordstown and Jerome Township as cautionary tales: when companies applied for permits before the local rules existed, the litigation threat made the rules harder to write later.
In Maryland on Wednesday, Montgomery County Councilman Will Jawando went further. At a Rockville press conference he introduced a two-year moratorium on new data-center building permits — four times the length of Councilman Evan Glass's six-month version from the prior week. The named flashpoint is a proposed five-building campus on 700 acres in Dickerson, co-located with the community's old coal-power plant. “Hyperscale data centers that seek to enrich Big Tech at Marylanders' expense are not welcome in Montgomery County,” said Jomar Lloyd, Maryland organizer for Food & Water Watch.
And in Pennsylvania late Wednesday, about 225 people watched a two-hour online town hall convened by the Better Path Coalition. More than 20 speakers laid out resistance to the state's data-center build. Gov. Josh Shapiro was a frequent target. Karen Feridun, who started the Pennsylvania Data Center Resistance Facebook group in January with a few dozen members, said it now has more than 12,000. The state has nearly 60 data centers proposed, approved, or under construction. A February Quinnipiac poll found 68% of registered PA voters would oppose one in their community.
Sources: Anna Lynn Winfrey / Columbus Dispatch; Brandon Cantwell and Amanda Smith / Tribune Chronicle and Vindicator; Food & Water Watch release / Targeted News Service; Jon Hurdle / InsideClimate News.
When Sen. Jon Husted was appointed to the U.S. Senate at the start of 2025, one of his first hires as senior adviser was Sean Dunn — a longtime utility lobbyist who, per Ohio Lobbying Activity Center disclosures, lobbied for Virginia-based AES Ohio from 2009 until February of this year. AES, which serves 527,000 customers in the Dayton region, was part of the Ohio Valley Electric Corporation consortium that benefited from the coal-plant bailout written into HB6 — the 2019 law a federal prosecutor called “likely the largest bribery and money-laundering scheme ever in the state of Ohio."
Subsidies stopped flowing to FirstEnergy after the 2020 FBI arrests. They kept flowing to AEP and AES for five more years. AES's share, per the Ohio Consumers' Counsel scorecard, was $77 million. The consortium's total: $670 million in customer-paid subsidies since 2017. Gov. DeWine didn't sign the bill ending those subsidies until May 2025. While AES “pleaded poverty” to justify the bailout, CEO Andrés Gluski made $9 million last year.
"It's tone deaf because he's an elected official who doesn't see how cozy relationships can compromise his decision making,” said Catherine Turcer of Common Cause Ohio. “Or he sees a benefit to these very cozy relationships.” Dunn made $895,000 in the 15 months before joining Husted's office and was owed between $1 million and $5 million by his old firm.
Source: Marty Schladen / Ohio Capital Journal.
The public advocates from Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, and Rhode Island filed a joint FERC complaint Tuesday over Eversource's X-178 transmission rebuild — a 49-mile, 580-pole project through New Hampshire's White Mountains. Their argument: Eversource classified the work as an “asset condition project,” which sends it through ISO-NE's lighter Planning Advisory Committee process instead of the full regional transmission planning track. “By Eversource's own admission, fewer than 10% of the poles involved in this project are in need of replacement,” said Maine Public Advocate Heather Sanborn. The complaint cites a February 2024 Eversource presentation finding only 41 of the 594 poles had anything more than “minimal defects."
"I do not understand why Eversource is so afraid of scrutinizing its plan to rebuild the X-178 line,” said New Hampshire Consumer Advocate Donald Kreis. “We are simply aware that Eversource has recently asked federal regulators to approve a lavish, 11.39 percent return on equity for its transmission investments — an amount so lucrative that Eversource has every incentive to spend with abandon.” Eversource says a follow-up October 2024 survey found 40% of structures need replacement, the project cost has been revised down to $360.6 million, and rebuilding the whole line at once is more efficient. New England transmission rates could rise from $184/kW-year today to about $220/kW-year by 2030 — a 20% jump — driven largely by asset-condition work that consumer advocates say isn't getting enough scrutiny.
Source: Robert Walton / Utility Dive; Maine Morning Star.
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