Recent dueling commentary in the Baltimore Sun highlights the continuing debates and controversy surrounding the Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project.
The Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project (MPRP) is a proposed transmission initiative designed to enhance grid reliability and meet growing electricity demand in northern Virginia. The project spans approximately 70 miles through Baltimore, Carroll, and Frederick counties and involves building a new 500 kV overhead transmission line. Developed in coordination with PJM, the multi-state regional grid operator, the project aims to reduce the risk of power disruptions and support long-term system resilience. Since its inception, MPRP has garnered significant controversy and was a key focus point during the Maryland General Assembly’s 2025 legislative session. Recently, the Baltimore Sun ran two commentary pieces that underlined the thinking of those on both sides of the issue.
On May 19th, frequent contributor David Plymyer, a former Anne Arundel County Attorney, wrote in the Sun that Maryland urgently needs new power infrastructure, warning that the state generates only about 60 % of the electricity it consumes and could face rolling outages by 2027. PJM’s proposed Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project has met fierce local resistance, largely in his estimation over aesthetics and land‑use fears. Plymyer contends that critics overlook the benefits of PJM’s multistate grid, which lets Maryland retire coal plants and rely on shared resources, and notes that objections to supporting Virginia’s data‑center growth ignore the economic value those centers bring to Maryland’s tech‑driven economy. Citing minimal impacts on farmland and conservation acreage, the Plymyer urges the Public Service Commission to weigh statewide reliability and economic interests above localized opposition when deciding the project’s fate.
On June 16th, citing Plymyer’s piece, Karyn Strickler, an environmental advocate impacted by the project, wrote a rebuttal outlining her counterarguments. Strickler’s rebuttal contends that PJM’s Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project is an “unsightly, unnecessary, and unjust” transmission line that would carve 13‑story towers through Carroll, Frederick, and Baltimore counties primarily to serve Northern Virginia’s booming, lightly regulated data‑center industry. She contends that Plymyer downplays the impact: beyond 514 acres of protected land, the route threatens hundreds more acres of high‑quality watersheds, forests, riparian buffers, wetlands, and over 1,300 acres of farmland—assets Marylanders painstakingly conserved to safeguard clean water, climate goals, and local agriculture. They argue Maryland would shoulder environmental and land‑use costs while tech companies elsewhere reap the benefits, calling the reliability‑or‑blackouts framing a false dilemma. Instead, she urges the Public Service Commission to require a transparent, independent review and to prioritize distributed renewables, demand management, and smarter siting so the grid can be modernized without sacrificing the state’s farms, forests, and climate commitments.
The MPRP will likely remain contentious as it progresses through a series of review and approval processes. This issue is just the latest in a growing list of tensions state lawmakers must contend with as multiple energy priorities compete with one another.
