Officials Powerless to Stop 8 New Data Centers That Could Transform This Small Texas County
“All of this would be buildings,” Laura Crawford said, looking across her 118‑acre property in Hood County, Texas.
Her husband, Brian, added two more words: “A slab of concrete.”
That’s the future the Crawfords and their neighbors are staring down. About 600 yards from their garden, past the live oaks just beginning to flower, past the two enormous donkeys named Little Joe and Hoss, developers want to put eight new data centers. The site would cover 7,600 acres. Twelve square miles of farmland and open space turned into windowless warehouses humming with servers.
And here’s the part that has everyone in Hood County pulling their hair out: local officials say they have no legal power to stop it.
Not a single one of those eight projects has been blocked. Two attempts to pass a temporary moratorium? Failed, after a state senator warned the county would be acting illegally. Rejected a developer’s concept plan because they couldn’t say where the water would come from? The county got sued. Tabled another vote? Sued again.
So while residents pack meeting halls and town halls, commissioners sit with their hands tied. “I was elected by the people to represent their opinion,” Hood County Commissioner Kevin Andrews said. “But I also have to follow the law … and not get the county sued”.
Let me walk you through exactly what’s happening in Hood County, because it’s not an isolated story. It’s a preview of what could come to dozens of other small Texas towns.
“A Slab of Concrete”, The Stunning Scope of Hood County’s Eight Proposals
Let’s start with sheer size, because that’s what makes this so hard to wrap your head around.
7,600 acres , that’s twelve square miles. The largest proposed facility, called the Comanche Circle project, would sit on 2,100 acres all by itself. To picture it: that campus would be nearly six times the size of the University of Texas at Austin’s main campus.
The developer hasn’t even publicly named which tech giant will run the servers yet. They’re just Florida‑based real estate players who saw cheap land and loose rules.
Power consumption that dwarfs a city
Nobody knows exactly how much electricity all eight data centers would draw. But we have numbers for the Comanche Circle project plus two smaller ones from the same developer: 3 gigawatts at full capacity.
Three gigawatts powers roughly 3 million homes , more than the entire state of New Mexico. To put that in perspective, the all‑time peak demand on Texas’s entire power grid is around 85 gigawatts. ERCOT recently reported that large projects requesting grid connections total 439 gigawatts of capacity , five times higher than that all‑time peak.
Some of that power would come from a new on‑site gas plant. The rest from the state grid. Either way, it’s a jolt that a rural county’s infrastructure was never designed to absorb.
Water: 95 million gallons to “flush and fill”
Data centers run hot. Really hot. The servers that power AI and cloud computing generate enormous heat, and keeping them cool takes water, sometimes staggering amounts.
The Comanche Circle project alone would need an initial one‑time “flush and fill” of 95 million gallons during its seven‑year construction phase. Then, once operational, 150,000 gallons per day , equivalent to the average daily use of 500 U.S. households.
(The developer later told the Texas Tribune those numbers were “incorrect” and claimed his three data centers combined would use “less than 50,000 gallons per day.” But those corrected figures were provided only in an email, not in any public meeting or sworn testimony.)
Meanwhile, Hood County sits in a region that already faces water stress. Texas is regularly plagued by drought, and rural West Texas groundwater supplies are declining. Where will the extra millions of gallons come from? That’s a question no one has answered yet.
Why Officials Are Sitting on Their Hands: The Texas Unincorporated Loophole
Here’s the legal twist that makes this whole story possible, and it’s one that most news reports gloss over.
In Texas, counties do not have general zoning authority. They cannot decide what gets built on unincorporated land. Cities can zone. Counties cannot. It’s a quirk of Texas law that dates back more than a century, and it leaves county officials with almost no land‑use regulatory power.
So developers have figured out a clever workaround: build in unincorporated areas. No city zoning. No public hearings that matter. No way for county commissioners to say “no” without getting sued, which is exactly what happened in Hood County.
The results are staggering. A Texas Tribune analysis found that at least 248 data centers are planned statewide , and nearly half are located in unincorporated areas where county authority is minimal.
Greg Harrell, chair of the Hood County GOP, put it bluntly at a town hall: “We love liberty and love a lack of regulation. Data centers are taking advantage of it… They saw an opportunity”.
Hood County Commissioner Dave Eagle was even more direct: “They were trying to take advantage of country bumpkins.”
What Eight Data Centers Mean for Hood County
Beyond the numbers, what does this transformation actually look like for people who live there?
Higher electricity bills
When a massive industrial facility plugs into a rural grid, everyone else’s rates tend to go up. Residents in other Texas counties with data centers have reported electric bills rising up to 23% higher, along with frequent outages caused by the strain on local infrastructure.
A single large data center can use as much electricity as tens of thousands of homes. Multiply that by eight, and you’re looking at a recipe for brownouts and rate hikes, unless expensive grid upgrades are paid for. And guess who usually ends up paying for those? Ratepayers, not the tech companies.
Water competition
Rural Texas is already water‑stressed. The Panhandle faces declining groundwater. West Texas endures regular droughts. The Rio Grande Valley has its own supply challenges.
Data centers compete with farmers, ranchers, households and ecosystems for the same limited water. Once a data center goes in, that land is rarely returned to agriculture.
Noise, pollution and health concerns
These aren’t quiet facilities. Backup generators run. Cooling systems hum 24/7. And some residents worry about more serious effects.
“Data centers have a million different issues, rare cancers, birth defects, miscarriages, polluting the air,” said Daniel McCoslin, a resident in Leon County, at a town hall discussing a proposed data center near his home.
Property values and way of life
Laura Crawford didn’t move to the Paluxy River Valley to live next to an industrial campus. She and her husband bought 118 acres of paradise, complete with African antelope they inherited when they bought the property. Now that view could become “a slab of concrete”.
That loss, of quiet, of darkness at night, of a rural character that people moved there to find, is harder to quantify than megawatts or gallons. But it’s the reason residents keep packing meeting halls even when officials tell them nothing can be done.
Could Other Texas Counties Face the Same Fate?
Short answer: yes, and many already are.
The eight Hood County proposals are just one part of a statewide surge. Here’s what’s happening elsewhere:
- McLennan County , A proposed $10 billion data center on 520 acres of farmland north of Waco has drawn organized opposition with a petition of 3,000 signatures and a dedicated website.
- Somervell County , Commissioners voted to send a resolution to Austin asking for a pause on new data center applications and more county zoning power after approving tax breaks for an Amazon facility near the Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant.
- Caldwell County , Officials are complaining to the state that their hands are tied too much as multiple large‑scale data center campuses are proposed.
- Haskell County , Two data centers are part of Google’s $40 billion investment in Texas, with residents hopeful but cautious.
- Sulphur Springs , A staggering 30 data centers are planned for this small East Texas town.
- Matagorda County , Officials have stated flatly that Texas law places strict limits on county authority in unincorporated areas, and that counties cannot legally block lawful private development just because of public opposition.
This is not a Hood County problem. It’s a Texas problem.
How Citizens Are Fighting Back, And Winning Small Battles
If county officials can’t stop the data centers, can anyone?
The answer is complicated, but there are tools, even if they’re limited.
Lawsuits and public pressure
In Granbury, which is inside Hood County but incorporated, residents sued the city after officials approved rezoning 2,100 acres for a potential data center. The lawsuit alleges procedural violations, including a “walking quorum” that skirted Texas Open Meetings Act requirements. The case is ongoing.
That’s the paradox: inside city limits, residents have legal standing and zoning protections. Outside city limits, in the unincorporated areas where nearly half of Texas’s planned data centers sit, they have almost nothing.
Failed moratoriums, and one that passed
Hood County tried twice to pass a moratorium on data center construction. Both efforts failed. State Senator Phil King warned the county that it had no constitutional or statutory authority to impose development moratoriums, and he urged the state to intervene if the county tried.
But one rural Texas county recently did something different. In May 2026, a rural county approved a one‑year pause on data center construction in unincorporated areas, citing public safety and public health concerns. County Judge Shane Brassell said the temporary pause would allow officials time to study the effects of data centers before projects move forward.
That county is taking a legal risk, but it also sent a message that some local leaders are willing to fight back.
The 2027 legislative fight
The real battlefield is the Texas Legislature, which meets again in January 2027. Multiple counties, including Hays County, have called on Governor Greg Abbott and lawmakers to give counties more power to regulate zoning, major developments and utilities.
State Representative Erin Zwiener established a Hays County working group to address data center concerns, water use and the authority of cities and counties to respond.
The question isn’t whether data centers will keep coming to rural Texas. The question is whether the Legislature will give counties the tools to say “yes” on their own terms.
Data Center Pros vs. Cons, Honest Look at the Trade‑offs
I promised you an honest article, not a one‑sided rant. So let’s look at both sides of the ledger.
The case for data centers
- Construction jobs , Data centers create thousands of temporary construction jobs, which can be a lifeline for rural economies.
- Tax revenue , Facilities pay property taxes, and some communities have negotiated direct benefit agreements.
- Infrastructure upgrades , Developers sometimes pay for grid improvements and fiber optic buildouts that benefit the broader community.
- Essential for modern life , As Google’s energy development manager Liz Schwab noted, “You’re checking your email. You’re checking your social media. You’re streaming your favorite service. You’re doing your online banking or health care. All of that relies on data centers”.
The case against data centers
- Very few permanent jobs , Once built, data centers employ relatively few people compared to their size. A massive hyperscale facility might have two dozen onsite staff.
- Massive resource consumption , Water and electricity demands strain rural infrastructure and can raise bills for everyone else.
- Tax breaks eat into revenue , In Texas alone, projected losses from data center tax exemptions ballooned from $157 million to over $1 billion in less than two years. Some facilities get 85% property tax abatements.
- No accountability , Texas does not require most data centers to report their water usage. Many negotiations happen behind closed doors.
The Brookings Institution, after a symposium on rural data centers, summarized the tension perfectly: “The central question is not simply whether data centers are ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ but how benefits and risks get allocated”.
Right now, in unincorporated Texas, that allocation heavily favors developers. That’s what Hood County residents are fighting to change.
What You Can Do If Data Centers Are Coming to Your Town
If you live in a rural Texas county, or any rural area facing data center proposals, you’re not completely powerless. Here’s a checklist:
- Find out if you’re in an incorporated city or unincorporated county land. This one fact determines almost everything about your legal standing.
- Attend every public meeting , even the ones where officials say they can’t do anything. Public pressure matters, and developers hate bad PR.
- Organize with neighbors. Hood County residents have packed county meetings, created watchdog groups and coordinated testimony. Strength in numbers.
- Demand transparency. Ask who the developer is. Ask for water and power estimates in writing. Ask who pays for grid upgrades.
- Contact your state representative and senator. The 2027 legislative session is the real lever. Let them know this is a voting issue.
- Explore legal options. If your city is considering a data center, residents in Granbury have shown that lawsuits over procedural violations can at least slow things down.
- Consider incorporation. If you live in unincorporated land targeted for development, residents can explore incorporating as a city, which would give you zoning authority. It’s a long shot, but it’s been discussed in Hood County.
Now he’s looking at a future where all of that becomes “a slab of concrete.” And the officials he elected can’t do a thing about it, unless the law changes.
Texas is about to have a very important conversation about who gets to decide what rural communities look like. Will that conversation happen before the concrete is poured, or after?
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