Don’t Be Fooled: the Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project Is a Corporate Land Grab

The name “Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project” is a masterclass in Orwellian branding. It sounds like public service—what it really delivers is environmental destruction, labor exploitation, and corporate profit at the public’s expense.

My name is Karyn Strickler, and my family farm lies directly in the path of this 70-mile transmission line. Located in Carroll County, Maryland, our farm has been in agricultural preservation for decades. My sister, her family, and my 95-year-old father live on the land. The third generation is now growing up here. Our roots stretch back to the early 1700s in America—and 500 years before that in Switzerland.

We preserved this land for farming. Not for it to be bulldozed by a private utility company.

The MPRP is part of a growing national trend where energy infrastructure is being redirected to power unregulated, fossil-fueled data centers—putting local communities and ecosystems at risk across the country, not just in Maryland.

The Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project (MPRP) isn’t about homes or communities. It’s about servers—giant fossil fuel-powered data centers in Northern Virginia. And while these billion-dollar corporations get the power, Marylanders get the pollution, the grid drain, and the bill.

Public Service Enterprise Group couldn’t meet the labor standards required by New Jersey for a wind project. So they ran to Maryland—where wage protections are weak, enforcement is inconsistent, and union labor is often ignored. Meanwhile, construction jobs are temporary, low-wage, and often filled by undocumented workers with no protections.

This project is a textbook case of environmental injustice. It would carve through preserved farmland and forests, pollute streams and wetlands, and destroy habitats for the bog turtle and the Baltimore checkerspot—Maryland’s own state insect. These species are already threatened. MPRP could push them further toward extinction.

And let’s be clear: This isn’t about my family alone. There is widespread grassroots opposition across Carroll, Frederick, and Baltimore counties. We are farmers, homeowners, business owners, and residents who see this for what it is: a high-voltage land grab disguised as progress.

The MPRP is part of a growing national trend where energy infrastructure is being redirected to power unregulated, fossil-fueled data centers—putting local communities and ecosystems at risk across the country, not just in Maryland.

This is not reliability. It’s recklessness. It’s time Maryland lived up to its promises of equity, sustainability, and dignity for workers. The bulldozers are warming up—but so is the resistance.