Emails show company corresponded with county officials
One day before the Worcester County Commissioners imposed a moratorium on data centers and cable landing stations, an Amazon lobbyist asked the county to exclude cable landing stations so the company’s Fastnet transatlantic cable project could proceed.
“We respectfully ask that the Cable Landing Station language be taken out of the resolution proposed for this week,” wrote John Fiastro, an Amazon lobbyist. “Alternatively, we’d be happy to work on language with you that accomplishes the larger aims of the Board of County Commissioners whilst also facilitating the Fastnet project.”
Emails obtained by OC Today-Dispatch show Amazon had already devised a smaller alternative at the Ocean City Municipal Airport before the moratorium passed – while also considering another, smaller cable landing station elsewhere in Worcester County.
At the time, Virginia-based Globalinx was proposing a 25,000-square-foot cable landing station on five acres along Route 611 outside West Ocean City. It would have connected Amazon’s undersea cable with land-based telecommunications networks.
The project drew fierce opposition over its size, power demands, proximity to homes, and proposed location beside a historic African American cemetery.
That’s right, let’s keep all industry out of the Eastern Shore. That way we can remain a suppressed area. Locals don’t have a chance for prosperity here since all the people coming from New York and New Jersey with their high paying internet jobs are running the cost of housing to unaffordable for us locals on Eastern Shore wages.