New Era for the Dickerson Power Plant Property
Dickerson power plant property
Updated July 13, 2023 — A company called Terra Energy in August 2022 bought 740 acres at the site of the Dickerson power plant, waste incinerator and compost facility.
Terra describes itself as a “real estate development and asset management firm started in Montgomery County” that “focuses on the creative development of challenging or unusual properties.”
The 740 acres encompasses two zoning categories: Heavy Industrial (HI) and Agricultural Reserve (AR). Some 255 acres of the 740 are currently zoned HI and 485 acres are zoned AR. The former coal fired power plant – decommissioned in 2020 – sits on HI zoned land. However, a mix of support buildings, utility facilities, power lines, access roads, and railroad tracks exist on both HI and AR land within the 740 acres.
External to the 740 acres on roughly an additional 250 to 300 adjacent acres are a gas-fired power plant, a waste incinerator and the county-run compost facility.
Terra’s owners have kept SCA, Montgomery Countryside Alliance (MCA), the Sierra Club and others apprised of their plans for this large parcel of land in Montgomery County. Those plans have evolved over the past year and will likely continue to evolve as the new owners scope out regulatory requirements and limits, and meet with county and state officials and assorted business partners and other groups.
Importantly, Terra plans to be the property’s landlord. It will not itself build a business on the property. Instead it will lease land to other companies to create businesses on the property.
SCA, MCA and a representative from the Sierra Club met with one of Terra’s new owners on July 10. A county official was also present. Here are the companies’ latest plans:
Demolition of the coal fired power plant. This will include tearing down all of the smoke stacks—which have been part of the landscape in the Dickerson area for decades. They can also be seen from Virginia. Metal salvage and recycling will precede the demolition. The largest smoke stack has transmitters on it that serve the county’s emergency communications needs (fire, rescue, ambulance and police). A metal tower will be constructed in the same area to preserve the existing communication network. The demolition of the power plant could begin this year. The process will be complex (and costly) since asbestos exists throughout the buildings. It will take a year to 18 months. Terra pledges a thorough, professional and environmentally sound demolition by top firms. State and county officials will be involved in oversight of the process. We will keep the community informed of timing and any concerns.
Retention of existing energy-related infrastructure—and there’s a lot of it. That includes large-scale transmission lines and stations. Much of this infrastructure is still owned by Pepco, the original owner of the property, beginning in the late 1950s.
Data Centers. Terra seeks a partner, or more likely multiple partners, to build an as yet unspecified number of data center buildings near the site of the now defunct coal fired plant. Data centers are proliferating nationwide; Virginia is home to a fast-growing number and a large data-center campus (around 2,000 acres) is under construction near Adamstown and Frederick. That Maryland based center will connect with those in Virginia via a 43 mile fiber optic loop. (See “The Fiber Optic “QLoop” Project in Montgomery and Frederick Counties” on this site.)
Data centers store and transmit data, serving the internet at large and the needs of IT companies and tech heavy industries—and ultimately everyone who uses the internet, smart phones, steaming services and the like. They are essential to the modern economy and modern life. Data centers are really nothing more than large buildings containing tens of thousands of computer servers and related equipment. But, as such, they require large amounts of reliable energy and have specific and detailed security, cooling and other infrastructure needs.
As yet unclear is how many individual data center buildings the property could accommodate. The new owners envision six to ten. Similarly murky is the acreage required. It could be 100 to 150 or more acres—with support infrastructure, space between buildings, parking areas, and buffer zones. Terra’s owners say they may have to ask county officials to use some AR land adjacent to HI-zoned land, which could require the removal of some trees. The scope of that is currently uncertain but would likely be less than 30 to 40 acres, Terra’s owners say. SCA and MCA have concerns about the rezoning of any AR land, and county officials may as well.
The coal power plant used Potomac River water for decades for cooling. The data centers will need some water as well. The details on that are still to come but the new owners claim the impact on the river will be minimal if not negligible; some local warming of the river will occur.
Dependent entirely on the ultimate scope of the project, the data centers could generate tens of millions of dollars per year in tax revenue, Terra claims. Data centers yield significant revenue for their owners. We assume the estimated tax revenue to the county would be from corporate taxes but that was not clear from Terra’s presentation. Noteworthy, however, Montgomery County imposes an excise tax on energy consumption. Terra plans to ask the county to either nix that tax or grant an exemption to data centers given the tax revenue they would generate. The outcome of such consideration, which would require legislation, is unknowable at present.
An energy storage facility. This proposed facility would store energy taken from all sources feeding into the regional electricity grid (natural gas, solar, wind and other) in batteries. Not just any batteries but the latest technology being developed by Tesla and other firms. The purpose of such a facility—and it could be one of the largest in the country—is to stabilize the supply of energy for peak-use times and stress on the system. Such high-tech storage facilities are an emerging industry made possible by fast-improving battery technology. The battery storage facility would also serve as a back-up source of electricity for the data centers, which can’t ever “go down” due to power disruptions from grid malfunction, excess power usage or sabotage.
As presently conceived, the facility would require around 30 acres of land and consist of some 580 shipping container-sized units, all of which are about 10 feet high. These, too, need to be reliably cooled. Terra says the units would be on HI zoned land but may require security fencing and buffer space that goes into AR land.
Solar. Terra’s initial plans included a roughly 100 acre solar array on a portion of its 740 acres. The company acknowledged in early 2023 that a sizable chunk of that would be on AR land. SCA and MCA pushed back on that idea. For its own reasons and due to possible community and county opposition to rezoning AR land, Terra now says it will not seek a solar power company to build such an array. However, one of the data center companies Terra is in talks with has said it will place a solar array on the roof of its building. The array would not provide enough energy to power the center.
Terra shared a preliminary site map of the entire 740 acres. We will post that on this page when we get a clean copy and annotate it. The company is also sampling soils in the 740 acres and will make those results publicly available by fall.
Conclusion: SCA will continue to closely monitor Terra’s plans. We applaud the company’s transparency to date. Terra has pledged to continue that transparency. The company must provide detailed plans to county authorities and obtain permits, which could take a year or more. A first step in that journey will be to seek approval for some “conditional uses” – that is, use of the property that does not comply with existing zoning or regulations, and/or requires special attention and approval. Public hearings on the project will occur at some point. We will keep you apprised.
SCA and MCA believe that the state of Maryland and Montgomery County should launch an immediate initiative to assess the benefits and risks of data centers, across multiple criteria including environmental concerns. That initiative should focus on regulations to guide and approve applications for such centers. No such specific state or county regulations exist now. At a community meeting on June 15 held by SCA, MCA and Sugarloaf Alliance, a Frederick County-based citizen and environmental group, there was a broad consensus that such an initiative is needed.
Related to this piece, we will post a brief history of the Dickerson power plant property in the next couple of weeks.