Wes Moore’s Next Signature

Before reading this story, check out Part 1 of the TeraWulf series.

On July 29, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission signed off on TeraWulf’s purchase of the retired Morgantown coal plant on the Potomac, an early step toward turning it into one of the largest data centers in Maryland — running on a gigawatt of new natural gas.¹

If you read the approval closely, you’ll discover that FERC judged one thing: whether the sale of the plant would raise power costs. They decided it wouldn’t, so every objection about the data center, the gas, the air, the water, and the strain on the grid, was waved off as “beyond the scope” of review.¹ So the agency that just blessed the transaction refused, on the record, to weigh the harm. But the decisions that will actually determine whether a gigawatt of gas gets built on the Potomac are still ahead.

Nearly all of them run through Wes Moore.

I laid out the first half of this story last month.² In December, Moore’s environment secretary signed TeraWulf a private promise to fast-track its permits, including the gas pipeline rights-of-way, months before the public was told. The company’s owner, an Easton restaurateur named Paul Prager, had maxed out to Moore’s reelection campaign eleven months earlier. Moore’s office says the letter was only about cleaning up a contaminated site. The letter says otherwise, in writing.³ But the letter was only the first favor. There are three now, and together they add up to a plan to build a fossil-fueled data center on a stack of government favors.

Favor one: the permits, pre-cleared.

Favor two: the money. Last session, a bill to repeal Maryland’s data-center tax exemptions died, and the exemptions lived.⁴ TeraWulf had a $40,000 lobbyist working that session, that very bill among his assignments.

Favor three: landed on June 24, and almost nobody noticed.

That day, the Charles County commissioners voted to nominate five census tracts for the federal Opportunity Zone program, which hands investors a tax break on the capital gains they pour into designated areas. Their third priority is Census Tract 8512, Newburg and Morgantown. The county’s own letter names the asset it is built around: “the decommissioned Morgantown Generation Station.”⁵ The letter is addressed to a state housing official and copied, first on the list, to the Honorable Wes Moore, Governor of Maryland.⁵

That copy line matters, because an Opportunity Zone is not the county’s to grant. The county nominates. The governor decides which tracts Maryland forwards to Washington and under the 2025 tax law that revived the program — the One Big Beautiful Bill that President Trump signed last summer — he can put forward only a quarter of the eligible ones. The Treasury certifies the final list and Maryland’s picks are due to the Treasury by September 28.⁶⁷ The letter went out over the signature of Commissioner President Reuben Collins, who this year entered the race for the same congressional seat that covers Morgantown.⁵

So the governor whose administration wrote TeraWulf its permit letter must now choose, from a capped list, whether the Morgantown site makes Maryland’s cut for a federal capital-gains haven. His office says he grants no special treatment. He is about to have a very specific chance to prove it.

Opportunity Zones were sold to the country as an anti-poverty tool, a way to steer money into communities the market forgot. Look at the tract the county wants to wrap around a gigawatt gas plant. Median family income: 69.3 percent of the area’s, a hair under the 70 percent ceiling that makes it eligible. Poverty rate: 6.3 percent.⁶ Why does a contaminated power-plant site in a low-poverty waterfront tract need a program built for the poor? It doesn’t. The program needs a poor-enough number, and Morgantown squeaks under the bar. An anti-poverty tax break, aimed at a fossil data center. That is a hell of a thing to call economic justice.

None of this is subtle once you see who is steering it. The office that nominated Morgantown is the Charles County Economic Development Department, run since last August by Jim Chandler.⁸ Chandler came up through sixteen years in Hyattsville and then senior economic-development posts in Prince George’s County before Charles County hired him.⁸ He has been open about the pull: there is “interest in building data centers in Charles County,” he told a county meeting last fall, and he pointed to a separate 432-acre data-center proposal near the county landfill.⁹ His department’s job is to attract capital. A federal capital-gains break at Morgantown is exactly the lure.

Secrecy is the through-line. TeraWulf’s purchase price is sealed. Moore’s promise stayed private for seven weeks. The Opportunity Zone nomination moved through a June meeting most residents never saw. And it fits a pattern up and down Maryland and Virginia, where local governments have signed nondisclosure agreements with data-center developers that hide a project’s size, its power and water demand, sometimes even the name of the company moving in next door.¹⁰

You cannot object to what you are not allowed to know. That is the design.

Give the other side a modicum of credit. FERC said costs won’t rise. The county says an Opportunity Zone is just a financing tool, open to any investment in the tract, not a gift to one company, and the commissioner who signed the nomination takes no money from TeraWulf or any data-center firm; his campaign account is small and local.¹¹ The commissioners actually declined, earlier this month, to rezone the area for data centers, choosing to study it instead.¹ All true. And all beside the point.

You do not nominate a contaminated gas site for an investor tax break because you are dreaming of a bait shop. You do it because someone means to spend a fortune there, and the fortune already has a name and a $19 billion investment. The zoning study buys time. The Opportunity Zone builds the runway.

Across Maryland, the people closest to these projects are hitting the brakes. Montgomery County just passed a longer, stronger data-center moratorium. Baltimore County is weighing an extension of its own.¹² Charles County’s own planning commission recommended denial, twice. The public keeps voting to slow down. The state keeps finding new ways to speed this one up.

So here is what to demand, before October. Tell Wes Moore to keep the Morgantown tract off Maryland’s Opportunity Zone list until TeraWulf’s full plan faces public review, its price is public, and its permits are earned in the open rather than promised in December. Tell the Charles County commissioners that a study is not consent. And tell your own legislators that a data center wrapped in three government favors is not economic development. It is a bill, and you are the one who pays it.

Editor’s Note: Special thanks to reader Jackie Moore, who reached out to me with information and has been working on the ground in Charles County to fight back.

1. The Baltimore Banner, “Feds approve sale of Potomac River power plant to data center developer” (Adam Willis, July 29, 2026): https://www.thebanner.com/economy/growth-development/charles-county-coal-data-center-ZHX6HMX5BNDS7HH6X42MKV7A4A/

2. The Baltimore Banner, “A data center developer wanted a power plant. He needed Moore’s help” (Adam Willis, June 20, 2026): https://www.thebanner.com/community/climate-environment/terawulf-data-center-paul-prager-wes-moore-C4IG5HRMYRGC7EJ7SVAK5UDY3Y/

3. Maryland Department of the Environment, letter of support from Secretary Serena McIlwain to Paul Prager, December 11, 2025 (full text): https://static1.squarespace.com/static/696faaa0c3b11975cca24e4c/t/69ba98a33275ed41a5a8b9c3/1773836451868/MDE+Letter+of+Support.pdf

4. Nature Forward, “Data Center Bills for MDGA2026” (fate of HB560 and the 2026 data-center bills): https://natureforward.org/data-center-bills-for-mdga2026/

5. Charles County Board of County Commissioners, Opportunity Zones 2.0 recommendation letter, President Reuben B. Collins II to MD DHCD, June 24, 2026 (Census Tract 8512.00 Newburg/Morgantown named Priority #3; cc: Gov. Wes Moore). Charles County public record.

6. Charles County Economic Development Dept. & Planning & Growth Management, “Opportunity Zones 2.0 Overview” presentation, June 9, 2026 (Tract #5 Newburg/Morgantown 8512: median family income 69.3%, poverty rate 6.3%; designation timeline). Charles County public record.

7. Internal Revenue Service, “Treasury, IRS provide guidance to States for nominating census tracts as qualified opportunity zones under the One, Big, Beautiful Bill” (governors nominate up to 25% of eligible tracts; nominations due to Treasury by Sept. 28, 2026; new map effective Jan. 1, 2027): https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/treasury-irs-provide-guidance-to-states-for-nominating-census-tracts-as-qualified-opportunity-zones-under-the-one-big-beautiful-bill

8. The Southern Maryland Chronicle, “Charles County Appoints Jim Chandler to Lead Economic Development” (Aug. 8, 2025): https://southernmarylandchronicle.com/2025/08/08/charles-county-appoints-jim-chandler-to-lead-economic-development/

9. SoMdNews (Maryland Independent), “Concerns over data centers voiced at meeting in Charles” (Chandler on data-center interest; 432-acre Billingsley Road proposal): https://www.somdnews.com/independent/news/local/concerns-over-data-centers-voiced-at-meeting-in-charles/article_dc82907e-26f7-476e-b84e-0d6926eb7065.html

10. The Washington Informer, “Prince George’s Leaders, Advocates Call for Transparency in Data Center Developments” (nondisclosure agreements concealing data centers’ size, power and water demand, and identity): https://www.washingtoninformer.com/prince-georges-county-data-centers-concerns/

11. Maryland State Board of Elections, MDCRIS campaign finance database, committee “Collins, Reuben Friends Of” (reviewed July 30, 2026; no contributions from TeraWulf, the Pragers, or any data-center/energy firm): https://campaignfinance.maryland.gov/public/cf/contribution

12. The Baltimore Banner, “Montgomery County passes a longer — and likely stronger — data center moratorium” (July 28, 2026): https://www.thebanner.com/politics-power/local-government/montgomery-county-data-center-moratorium-passes-JGFIVPQ3UZDYFMBU2WV2DD5CMQ/