ADAMSTOWN, Md. — Thirty-five environmental organizations are blowing the whistle on the Quantum Loophole mega data center development in Frederick County, Maryland after a new batch of pollution violations were reported by county and state inspectors.
According to the reports, the drilling of a 41-mile fiber optic tunnel has resulted in the repeated release of harmful drilling mud into creeks leading to the nearby Monocacy River.
“Taken in total, these violations all suggest a corporate climate of disregard for environmental protection," the environmental organizations wrote in their open letter to Governor Wes Moore and other state and county leaders. "This culture of environmental disregard seems to have also been continued through the work of Quantum Loophole's subcontractors."
Sugarloaf Alliance President Steve Black is a sharp critic of Quantum Loophole’s development plans in Frederick County. He said the company should be further scrutinized by state and county regulators.
"We don't want to see a repeat of the mistakes that other locations have made," Black said. "Data centers are a fixture of modern life..... but just like all those industries before data centers, we need to think through carefully about where to put them and how to manage their impact on the environment and the surrounding community.”
A package of inspection documents from Maryland's Department of the Environment cite alleged pollution violations from at least 19 locations in rural Montgomery and Frederick counties, where sections of a 41-mile fiber optic tunnel are being drilled to link Northern Virginia data centers to the proposed Quantum Loophole development in Frederick County.
The violations were documented on site visits at various locations that occurred on April 4, April 10 and April 25. Many of the violations involve so-called "frac-outs", which is the unintentional release of the mud used in drilling operations and fracking.
The mud is mostly bentonite, a fine-particle clay that is one of many materials used in fracking.
Photos in the state reports show the drilling mud fouling creeks and document other sediment control violations.
Streams affected include Class 1 waterways that flow into the nearby Monocacy and Potomac Rivers.
Class 1 waters are considered high-quality streams suitable for water contact recreation and the protection of non-tidal warm water aquatic life, according to Maryland regulations.
Bentonite is a life-choking, fine clay that stands to completely smother critical aquatic life in the impacted sections of streams and foul the Monocacy and Potomac with cloudy water, environmentalists say.
Quantum Loophole is planning a "gigawatt-scale" data center development on a former Alcoa Aluminum Plant Property in southern Frederick County. The property is more than 2,000 acres, rivaling the size of the Newark Airport outside New York City. Roads and buildings will cover an area three times the size of the National Mall, according to Quantum Loophole's planning documents.
The site has been plagued by previous environmental violations and stop work orders related to construction.
As of Monday afternoon, Quantum Loophole representatives had not issued an immediate response to the letter from the environmental organizations released earlier in the day.
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