Fort Worth's Data Center Fight: What the City's 90-Day Moratorium Would Do

On August 11, 2026, after a long public hearing that ran into the night, the Fort Worth City Council voted unanimously to begin the process of enacting a 90-day moratorium on new data centers, a temporary pause on building them. The same evening, the council took two related votes, each passing 10 to 1, to create an advisory commission and to tighten the rules a data center application must meet. The Fort Worth data center moratorium would not take effect until early 2027, but the August vote set the timeline in motion and gave residents who had spent months packing council meetings their first concrete result.

If you have landed here because you searched your own city's name next to "data center," some background first. A data center is a large, mostly windowless building full of computer servers, the machines that store data and run websites, apps, and the artificial intelligence tools now driving a wave of new construction. Cities and towns fight them because the biggest ones draw enormous amounts of electricity and water, run cooling equipment that neighbors can hear, and sit uneasily next to homes.

Why This Fight Matters

Fort Worth is the country's 11th-largest city and part of a North Texas metro area that has become a magnet for data center construction. The August 11 votes matter because they mark the point where a fast-growing city decided to slow down and write its own rules. The pattern is repeating across the country, from Virginia to Georgia to Kansas: a large data center is proposed near a neighborhood, residents raise questions about power, water, and noise, and a city or county board has to decide how much say it wants over what gets built. Fort Worth is worth following because the record is public, the calendar is set, and the city has chosen to study the questions before, not after, the next project breaks ground.

What the Council Actually Voted On

A moratorium is a temporary, legal pause. It does not cancel projects already approved. It stops the clock on new ones while a government decides what rules should apply. Fort Worth's council did not enact the pause on August 11. It voted to start the process the law requires before a pause can take effect.

According to the city's published timeline, that process runs through a series of public steps: a first public hearing on November 10, 2026, a second on January 5, 2027, a first reading of the proposed ordinance on January 12, and a final adoption vote on February 16, 2027. If adopted, the 90-day moratorium would take effect that day and expire on May 17, 2027. State law allows one 90-day extension, which could push the end date to August 15, 2027. The Fort Worth Report and KERA News both reported that the final ordinance would require a three-fourths supermajority of the council to pass.

The two related measures that passed 10 to 1 dealt with the machinery around the pause. One created a Data Center and Infrastructure Commission to study the issues and make recommendations. According to Community Impact, District 7 council member Macy Hill cast the lone no vote on the commission, and District 10 council member Chris Jamieson cast the lone no vote on the code amendment that tightened application requirements. A separate measure aligned the city's approach with a state law signed by Governor Greg Abbott, which the Fort Worth Report reported requires data center applicants to show approval from Texas grid authorities before proceeding.

Who Will Study the Questions

The Data Center and Infrastructure Commission is the body that will do the technical homework during the pause. According to Community Impact, it will be led by Michael Slattery, a Texas Christian University professor who directs the university's Institute for Environmental Studies. The commission's job, as the city has described it, is to produce evidence-based recommendations on how, and where, data centers should be allowed to operate.

What the City Says It Will Weigh

City officials and council members have named the specific concerns the moratorium is meant to study. In their own words, reported across local outlets, the list includes "noise produced by data centers," the "impact on local water supplies, long-term water availability," and "compatibility with land uses and infrastructure." Officials have also pointed to the strain large facilities can place on the electric grid and on ratepayers, the households and businesses that pay utility bills, and to lighting and the distance between data centers and homes.

Data centers draw scrutiny on those points for physical reasons. The largest ones, a class the industry calls hyperscale, meaning campuses built to run computing at massive scale, use as much electricity as a small city and rely on water or large mechanical systems to keep servers from overheating. Fans and cooling equipment run around the clock, which is the source of the low, constant hum neighbors describe.

State Rep. Vikki Goodwin, a Democrat from Austin who spoke on the issue, argued the concerns reach beyond utilities to who pays for the growth. She said it "behooves the legislature to put in place some regulation, transparency of energy and water use," and raised the prospect of data center costs being shifted onto ordinary households. A tax incentive, or abatement, is a deal in which a government agrees to collect less tax to attract an investment; Goodwin's comments, as reported, put such incentives among the tradeoffs Texas lawmakers should examine.

The Project That Brought Residents Out

Much of the public pressure has centered on a specific proposal. According to CBS Texas, a data center project by Black Mountain Energy is planned in south Fort Worth behind Weston Gardens, a historic property more than a century old that hosts weddings and events.

Sue Weston, who owns Weston Gardens, told CBS Texas she feared the construction and operation would disturb the property, asking, "What's it going to do to the birds?" and worrying that "the vibrations will just end up cracking all the rocks." She described the garden as a place that "means peace, it means serenity." Other residents spoke at the council's public hearing. KERA reported that Gary Hogan objected to a proposed 200-foot minimum setback, the required distance between a facility and neighboring property, as too small, and that Kent DeCardenas criticized the city for moving slowly.

The Case On the Other Side

The public record also contains a defense of the Black Mountain Energy project from the council member whose district includes it. According to CBS Texas, Councilmember Chris Nettles said the project "will not affect the garden," pointed to a 300-foot buffer between the facility and the gardens, and noted that the council had "unanimously voted for it a year and a half ago." His comments underline a point city officials have made repeatedly: the moratorium is aimed at future projects and the rules that will govern them, not at unwinding approvals already granted.

Council Member Elizabeth Beck, addressing residents at the meeting, framed the city's posture this way: "We are here to work with you on this. We aren't your enemy in this fight." Assistant City Manager Jesica McEachern walked the council through the application requirements the new rules would add. Beyond those statements, the developer's own position on the specifics is not laid out in the local reporting reviewed here, and this post does not characterize the company's plans beyond what has been publicly reported.

Fort Worth is no stranger to these facilities. Community Impact noted that Meta has operated a data center in north Fort Worth since 2015 and expanded it in 2022, an example of the kind of development the city now wants to study more closely before approving more.

What Happens Next

As of early September 2026, nothing is settled. The council has started the clock, not stopped construction. The Data Center and Infrastructure Commission has work to do. Two public hearings, a first reading, and a final three-fourths vote stand between the August decision and any actual pause, and the earliest the moratorium could take effect is February 16, 2027. Whether the council tightens its rules, and how far, will be argued in public over the winter.

The Bottom Line

Fort Worth is a big city, but the questions it is now asking are the same ones surfacing wherever a large data center meets a neighborhood: how much power and water it will use, how loud it will be, how close to homes it should sit, and who gets to decide. The council has chosen to study those questions before approving more projects, on a calendar that stretches into 2027. The developer of the project that drew the crowds has its defenders on the council, and the residents who filled the room have a formal process to press their case. The rest will be settled the way these fights usually are, one public meeting at a time.