Rowan Bauxite III data center, Frederick County, Maryland

Bauxite III is the third data center Rowan Digital Infrastructure is building at Quantum Frederick, a 2,100-acre data center park on the former Alcoa Eastalco aluminum plant near Adamstown, in Frederick County, Maryland. The county's Planning Commission voted 5-0, with one abstention, for its site plan in December 2024: three buildings totaling 591,913 square feet on 55 acres, next to Rowan's Bauxite I and Bauxite II.

Rowan says the three Bauxite sites together will deliver more than 630 megawatts, with Bauxite I substantially complete in 2025 and Bauxite II and III advancing toward delivery in 2026 and 2027. The site plan includes an auxiliary water building, a guard booth, water storage and parking, and Bauxite III alone would need 297,000 gallons of cooling water a day. Rowan, formed in 2021 by Quinbrook and Birch Infrastructure, says the three projects will bring $19 million a year in county taxes.

Bauxite III is the only one of the three inside the campus's soil management area, which is why Commissioner Carole Sepe abstained; Rowan is working with the Maryland Department of the Environment on an environmental plan for the site. The land has a contamination history: cyanide and fluoride turned up in groundwater in 1983, and five old waste disposal sites were found between 2003 and 2005.

Water is the other constraint. The county's agreement caps the park's first phase at 1.3 million gallons a day of cooling water, and the three Bauxite buildings alone would use 1.081 million. "There is no data to substantiate the water allocations for this facility," said Adamstown farmer Steve Black of the Sugarloaf Alliance. "It's just a number that came from nowhere."

Commissioners Sepe and Joel Rensberger pressed Rowan on why no solar power was in the designs. Rowan said it plans to buy a 13-acre parcel on the campus for a community solar array to be run by a third party.

Aligned Data Centers is separately building a four-building, 260-megawatt campus on 75 acres of the park, and Amazon Web Services and Rowan are developing a 300-megawatt AWS campus on another 151 acres. As of June 2026, none of the park's data centers had opened, though all three developers had broken ground.

Frederick County Executive Jessica Fitzwater turned down a $110 million community benefits deal with the park's site developer on September 15, 2026, after residents objected that it would lock in county zoning for eight years. That declined package had included a $30 million Carroll Manor Elementary School renovation and a new Adamstown park. Fitzwater extended the county's data center moratorium, first ordered in July 2026, to freeze new data center applications until July 1, 2027, while the state completes its impact study.

Bauxite III's own site plan already has county approval, so the new moratorium covers future applications rather than its existing permits; it still needs sign-off from Maryland environmental regulators on its soil management plan. Frederick County voters go to the polls in November 2026, with several county council races contested over data center policy.