Chesapeake Beach MD townwide data center prohibition (2026)
Chesapeake Beach, Maryland — Ordinance O-26-14 Removes Data Centers From the Maritime Commercial Zone and Adds Them to the EXPRESSLY PROHIBITED Uses Table, Barring Them Townwide (August 20, 2026)
Chesapeake Beach, MD · Town of Chesapeake Beach, Md. Ordinance O-26-14 (adopted August 20, 2026)
- Status
- In effect
- Took effect
- August 20, 2026
- Applies to
- Any developer proposing a data center anywhere in Chesapeake Beach — the use is expressly prohibited in every zoning district
- Enforced by
- Town of Chesapeake Beach zoning administration / Chesapeake Beach Town Council
Data centers are no longer permitted anywhere in Chesapeake Beach. The Town Council approved ORDINANCE O-26-14 without opposition on August 20, 2026, after a public hearing, prohibiting the facilities in every town zoning district. The mechanism is worth understanding because it is cleaner than most prohibitions in this dataset. The ordinance does two things at once: it REMOVES data centers from the list of uses permitted in the town's Maritime Commercial zone — the only district where they had been allowed — and it ADDS them to the section of the land-use table covering EXPRESSLY PROHIBITED uses. Data centers were already not permitted in any of the town's other zoning districts. Deleting the one permission and simultaneously naming the use as expressly prohibited closes both halves of the question: a developer cannot argue the use is permitted somewhere, and cannot argue it is merely unaddressed and therefore allowable by analogy to a similar use. That second argument is the one that has caught out jurisdictions whose codes were simply silent — Clayton, Ohio adopted a moratorium precisely because its code had no definition and a data center could arguably enter as a warehouse. Chesapeake Beach is a small town on the Chesapeake Bay in Calvert County, Maryland, and this is a permanent prohibition rather than a pause.
Who is protected: Chesapeake Beach residents in Calvert County, Maryland, including the Maritime Commercial zone on the Chesapeake Bay
Legal detail
Town of Chesapeake Beach, Md. (Calvert County) — ORDINANCE O-26-14, approved WITHOUT OPPOSITION by the Town Council on AUGUST 20, 2026 following a public hearing, prohibiting data centers in EVERY TOWN ZONING DISTRICT. TWO-PART MECHANISM, and the reason this entry is instructive: (1) the ordinance REMOVES data centers from the list of uses PERMITTED in the town's MARITIME COMMERCIAL zone; (2) it ADDS them to the section of the land-use table covering EXPRESSLY PROHIBITED USES. Data centers were not permitted in the town's other zoning districts before the amendment. DOING BOTH IS THE POINT. Deleting the single permission alone would leave the use unaddressed, and an unaddressed use invites the argument that it is permissible as analogous to a listed use \u2014 the failure mode recorded on Clayton OH 365-day data center moratorium (2026), where the code had no definition and staff noted a data center could be read as a WAREHOUSE-type use, and on Palm Springs Data Center Moratorium (2026), whose municipal and zoning codes contained no data center definition at all. Naming the use as EXPRESSLY PROHIBITED forecloses that reading. INSTRUMENT CLASS: a permanent zoning prohibition with no sunset, in the same category as Cherry Hill NJ data center prohibited-use ordinance (2026), Woodford County KY permanent data center ban (2026) and Escambia County FL large-scale data center ban (2026), and distinguishable from the moratoriums that dominate the 2026 municipal record. NO SIZE OR LOAD THRESHOLD is reported \u2014 the prohibition appears categorical rather than limited to large-scale facilities, which distinguishes it from Escambia County's 'large-scale' ban and is the point to confirm against the ordinance text. MARYLAND CONTEXT: this dataset separately indexes Worcester County MD data center + cable landing moratorium (2026), Montgomery County MD 18-month data center moratorium, Howard County MD S.M.A.R.T. Siting Act data center moratorium (2026) and Baltimore Data Center Moratorium; more than half of Maryland's counties had acted on data centers by September 2026.
Key facts
| Jurisdiction | Chesapeake Beach, MD |
|---|---|
| Level | City / local |
| Strength | Stronger |
| Enacted | August 20, 2026 |
| Citation | Town of Chesapeake Beach, Md. Ordinance O-26-14 (adopted August 20, 2026) |
| Private right of action | No, agency enforcement only |
| Penalties | Data centers are an expressly prohibited use townwide; no permit may issue |
| Topics | data-center siting and energy · consumer protection · government use of AI |
| News report | Chesapeake Beach Data Center Ban Prohibits Facilities Townwide — The BayNet |
Related data-center siting and energy rules elsewhere
- Superior WI Data Center Moratorium (1-year) · In effect
- Dane County WI Hyperscale Data Center Moratorium · In effect
- Madison WI Data Center Moratorium (1-year) · In effect
- Manitowoc County WI Data Center Moratorium · In effect
- WA SB 5982 (Data Center / Clean Energy) · In effect
- Dayton OH data center moratorium (180-day, Apr 2026) · In effect
See something wrong or out of date? Submit a correction. Every entry must carry a verifiable source.