Many homeowners in Baltimore, Frederick and Carroll counties are worried that a New Jersey company’s plan to build a 70-mile transmission line through their land by 2027 is going to harm their property values. For Moses Wedaj, though, those fears have already been realized — on the day that the sale of his six-bedroom home was supposed to close, the buyers backed out after hearing about the $424 million project.

Wedaj found himself with an empty $1.05 million house in Frederick County, a family resettled in their new place in Sacramento, California, and a lot of questions about a project he’d never heard about.

He looked up the Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project, saw that elected officials were holding a session Wednesday night with executives from the company, PSEC, at a Frederick County high school, and rushed over in hopes of getting some answers. Like many of the more than 700 residents who packed into the school’s auditorium with him, he left disappointed.

“I was surprised. I was speechless,” the National Institutes of Health project manager said of his reaction to the company officials’ responses. “In the 21st century, who does this? Who brings that kind of worry to the community? You expect a new technology investment to benefit the people, not hurt them.”

The project has been in the works since December, when PSEG landed a contract to build the 500-kV line from PJM Interconnection LLC, which is the regional transmission organization that coordinates the movement of wholesale electricity through all or parts of 13 states, including Maryland. Yet most of the affected landowners, and the state senators and delegates who represent them, only learned of the project weeks ago, when word of it spread through neighborhood Facebook groups. Concerned farmers, environmentalists, vintners and homeowners flocked to meetings in the three counties, where PSEG and PJM employees stressed that the project was in the early stages and most of their questions could not be answered.

That didn’t satisfy senators and delegates representing Frederick County, who quickly organized yesterday’s question-and-answer session with Jason Kalwa, a project director for PSEG. The meeting became heated as questions went on for three hours. Sen. William Folden, a Frederick County Republican, admonished the crowd that he would call in the county sheriff if they didn’t stop yelling.

Like Wedaj, most residents were frustrated that PSEG could not provide more helpful answers. It was PJM, not PSEG, that identified the need for the project, and PJM officials declined to participate, according to Del. Jesse Pippy, who organized the forum. PSEG could only answer questions about how they typically proceed as transmission operators.

Kalwa reiterated that the power generated from the project is necessary for grid reliability, as Maryland now imports 40% of its power from other states and has been retiring its coal-fired power plants. But he also acknowledged that PJM had told PSEG that the project was needed for data centers in Maryland and Virginia. Maryland has no data centers yet; the only project in the pipeline is a data center complex being developed by Quantum Loophole in Frederick, and it is moving forward with existing capacity from a different utility.

“QL has nothing whatsoever to do with the PSEG/Piedmont Project,” wrote Gerard and Hayley Evans, Annapolis lobbyists, in a letter to state lawmakers.

That information led many opponents to believe the power from the Piedmont project would fuel existing data centers in Northern Virginia, at ratepayers’ expense. The day before Wednesday night’s meeting, PSEG issued strong second-quarter numbers — $434 million in earnings and $2.42 billion in revenue. Its stock has outperformed the S&P 500′s gain of 14.5%, adding about 25.8% since the beginning of the year.

“PSEG is experiencing an increase in new business requests and feasibility studies from potential data center customers across our service area compared with 2023 activity,” PSEG CEO Ralph Larossa announced on July 30.

Only a week before that call, David Lapp, the people’s counsel for Maryland utility customers, wrote to PJM voicing concerns that the regional organization was not distinguishing between future business demands from “speculative” industries, such as data centers, and the needs of the average customer. That lack of distinction is creating a “distorted load forecast” that might create the impression the state needs more transmission lines when it may not.

Lapp’s office said he was not speaking about the Piedmont project specifically, but more about future projects that forecast needs for developments not yet here.

PSEG owns 50% of the Peach Bottom Nuclear Generating Station in Delta, Pennsylvania, just north of Baltimore County. The proposed routes for the transmission lines cross environmentally sensitive and protected lands, including the Prettyboy Reservoir and Gunpowder Falls State Park. Much of the land is under state protection, with easements that allow farming.

Kevin Sellner, a longtime former director of the Chesapeake Research Consortium who now teaches at Hood College, asked why the grid operators couldn’t prorate power so residential customers only paid what they used and the Northern Virginia data centers paid for their own power. Like many questions, Kalwa said that was one for PJM to answer. He did clarify that landowners within 550 feet of the proposed route would receive letters informing them of the company’s plans to build.

Utilities often seize land using eminent domain procedures, arguing that the taking is for a greater good. PSEG’s web site says it “may seek to use the power of eminent domain using the process set forth by the state of Maryland to acquire the necessary property rights.” But Kalwa emphasized that his company’s regular practice is to negotiate with the property owners.

“I can’t remember the last time we’ve ever used that,” he said of eminent domain.

PSEG’s next step is to file an application with the Maryland Public Service Commission, which Kalwa said it will do in the fall.

In the meantime, the Baltimore County Farm Bureau is hosting a town hall at the Maryland State Fairgrounds from 6:30 to 8 p.m. on Aug. 8. Del. Nino Mangione, a Republican representing northern Baltimore County, is planning for a meeting in his district in August. And the Carroll County Board of Commissioners has already vowed to oppose the project.

All of those efforts are of little comfort to Moses Wedaj. His family, and all of their belongings, are in Sacramento. He has no idea when he will be able to sell his home now.

“I just cannot believe what I heard yesterday. They have no answers,” he said. “I was trying to grab all the answers, and the answer is, over and over, ‘I don’t know.’”

This story has been updated to correct David Lapp's employment history. He works for Maryland utility ratepayers.