Save Cedar Creek Lake
Henderson County · Texas
Victory Diode Ventures has pulled out. Key Ranch is safe. The fight for the lake’s water goes on.

Cedar Creek Lake is not a server farm.

We did it. After eleven weeks of packed meetings, thousands of petition signatures, and a community that refused to look away, Diode Ventures pulled out of its plan to draw millions of gallons a day from Cedar Creek Lake. In its letter to the Henderson County Commissioners Court, the company said why:

“The perspectives shared by residents, local leaders and stakeholders led us to conclude that the site under evaluation, in particular its close proximity to the rural residential community of Cedar Creek Lake, does not meet the higher standard…”Rachel Attebery & Josh Johnson, Diode Ventures, to Henderson County Judge McKinney and the Commissioners Court

But the water is still for sale. Tarrant Regional Water District owns the lake’s water and could contract it to the next data center that comes along. We’re a coalition of neighbors, business owners, and lake residents making sure that never happens.

Join the Fight Read what happened

3,200+ members and growing · goal 10,000 · 1 data center stopped

Sunset over Cedar Creek Lake with a private boat dock in the foreground
Cedar Creek Lake

The drinking-water source for more than 2.5 million North Texans. One data center already tried to tap it and backed off. The water district could still sell to the next one.

What Diode wanted

The ask that woke up the lake.

Diode walked away, but its request is worth remembering, because it shows what any data center can ask for. Tarrant Regional Water District still owns Cedar Creek Lake’s water and could sell it to the next one, anywhere it operates.

5MGD
Raw water Diode asked to draw from Cedar Creek, every single day. TRWD still owns that water.
TRWD correspondence, Feb–Mar 2026
85dB
The cooling-fan and gas-turbine noise a campus like this puts out at the property line, the volume of a busy freeway, 24/7.
EPA noise guidance
80k
The electricity one large data-center campus needs, equal to 80,000+ Texas homes, generated on-site by burning natural gas.
ERCOT load forecast, 2025
−50%+
“A data center across the road can cut what a lakefront home is worth in half. Buyers come here for the water and the quiet, not an industrial plant next door.”
— Local Cedar Creek Lake real estate agent
Where it would go

They picked a site in the neighborhood.
That is exactly why it failed.

The Diode Ventures campus was slated for the west side of the lake, on the former Key Ranch property bounded by Highway 274, Old River Road, and Key Ranch Road, about 350 yards from Cedar Creek Lake and directly across the road from family homes. It was never a remote industrial park. It was on the water, in the neighborhood, and the community stopped it. Here is what made it the wrong place for any data center.

≈ 350 yds
From the property line to the water it would draw from, about three football fields.
Across the road
Family homes sit directly across Key Ranch Road from the proposed fence line.
5 MGD
Raw water the applicant has asked Tarrant Regional Water District to supply, every single day.

The site is the publicly identified parcel bounded by Highway 274, Old River Road, and Key Ranch Road, with homes directly across Key Ranch Road; the distance to the lake (~350 yards) is approximate.

Why Cedar Creek, why now

This lake was built for us. We have to keep it that way.

Cedar Creek Reservoir is 33,750 acres of water across Henderson and Kaufman counties, completed in 1965 to supply Tarrant Regional Water District. For sixty years it has been the heart of an entire economy, bass tournaments, marinas, weekend houses, retirees who came here for quiet, families who came here for room to grow.

The lake's value depends on one thing: the water staying in it. Property is desirable here because the lake is full. The economy works because the lake is full. The communities of Gun Barrel City, Mabank, Seven Points, Tool, Payne Springs, Trinidad, Eustace, Log Cabin, Caney City, Enchanted Oaks all depend on the same thing.

Hyperscale data centers don't fit here. They don't fit anywhere they get built, they just go where the resistance is weakest. Diode learned that Cedar Creek was not weak, and pulled out. But the lake’s water is still for sale, so we are not done.

See the local impact map →

One lake, many straws

Everyone around this lake drinks from the same reservoir.

West Cedar Creek MUD is the district being asked to serve the data center, but it is not the only one drawing on Cedar Creek. Every retail water provider around the lake pulls from the same finite supply. A straw this big does not stop at one shoreline.

The shared source

Cedar Creek Reservoir

33,750 acres, impounded by Tarrant Regional Water District, the single raw-water supply that every district below draws from.

West shore

West Cedar Creek MUD

~19,000 residents · ~9,000 homes · Tool & western Henderson County

The district being asked to serve the data center
North & east banks

East Cedar Creek Fresh Water Supply District

~20 square miles of northwest Henderson County · the Mabank side of the lake

Kemp area

Country Club Water Supply Corp.

Serves the Kemp community on the north end of the reservoir

Lake towns

City & community systems

Gun Barrel City, Seven Points, Trinidad, Eustace & neighboring utilities

Service-area figures are drawn from public utility records and should be confirmed against each district's latest TCEQ Consumer Confidence Report. The point holds regardless of the exact counts: one reservoir, many communities, a single shared limit.

Around Cedar Creek Lake, land value depends on the water. A facility that burns gas around the clock and draws millions of gallons from the lake could permanently change this place, by lowering the very thing that makes it worth living here. Adapted from public testimony, Henderson County Commissioners Court · May 12, 2026

Three things you can do

We stopped one. Now we stay ready.

Diode counted on a rural community being too busy and too scattered to organize. They were wrong. The next developer will try the same thing, so the answer is to keep growing. Pick one.

01

Join the Fight

Add your name and email at SaveCedarCreekLake.com. Signing puts you on record against an unchecked data center, and it's how we stay in touch, you'll get an email the moment a hearing is scheduled, a vote is called, or the fight needs neighbors in the room. One quick sign-up keeps you in it.

Sign up & stay involved
02

Write Austin

The county has little power here, the real rules get written in Austin. Write your Texas state representative, your state senator, and Governor Abbott, and tell them data centers must pay their own way on water and power, and never at the expense of a lake that supplies 1.2 million Texans. We've drafted a 30-second script and listed who represents Cedar Creek.

Find your State Rep & Senator ↗ Tell Gov. Abbott →
Get the script
03

Show up

Show up to meetings and events. Commissioners Court, City Council, and TRWD board meetings are open to the public, that's where the decisions get made, on the record, and our community events are where we organize between votes. We'll go together, wear blue.

Take action
Henderson County
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On The Lake

savecedarcreeklake.com

Free yard signs for the coalition.
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