You'll hear these. Here's what's true.

Not outright, but on capacity grounds it can, and on May 21, 2026 it did. West Cedar Creek MUD's District Statement confirms that under Texas Water Code Chapter 49 and Chapter 13, a CCN-holding Municipal Utility District must serve all lawful land uses in its area, including data centers, and may not deny service based on the type of business or projected demand alone.

But the same law lets a district delay or condition service where capacity, pressure, fire-flow, or drought reliability haven't been established, and that is the lever WCCMUD pulled. Its Board adopted a resolution temporarily suspending new service commitments to "High-Intensity Water Customers", any project projected to exceed 250,000 gallons per day or to materially strain pressure, storage, treatment, or drought capacity, while it completes engineering studies and writes binding standards. It is an interim measure that expires April 15, 2027 unless extended, and the proposed data center's 5-million-gallon-a-day request is roughly 20 times that threshold.

Because the suspension is capacity-based, not business-type-based, it fits squarely within what state law allows, which is why it holds up where a flat "no" would not. It buys time; it is not a permanent ban. Read the adopted resolution (PDF) →  ·  the District Statement →

The proposed site sits in unincorporated Henderson County. In Texas, counties do not have general zoning authority over unincorporated land, that authority belongs to cities, within their corporate limits. So "ask the County to rezone it out" is not actually an option in this case.

The Cedar Creek-area cities (Gun Barrel, Mabank, Tool, Seven Points and the rest) do have zoning power inside their corporate limits, but that authority generally stops at the city line. ETJ, the extraterritorial jurisdiction outside city limits, gives Texas cities limited authority over subdivision platting, not over general land use, and recent state law has narrowed it further.

That's why our campaign does not ask for "county zoning", it asks for the things the County, the cities, and the State can actually do:

1. Henderson County: deny any Chapter 312 tax abatement, oppose at TCEQ, condition any subdivision or platting authority the County does hold.
2. Lake-area cities: adopt zoning that prohibits large-scale industrial and data-center facilities outright, annex the lake-shore corridor where developer activity is concentrated so that zoning reaches it, and pass standing resolutions opposing industrial water use upstream.
3. Texas Legislature: grant Henderson and similarly-situated counties limited siting authority for hyperscale water-using facilities, or set state-level siting rules directly.
4. TCEQ & TRWD: condition every permit and every raw-water contract.

The construction phase creates 200–800 temporary jobs for 18–30 months, most filled by traveling specialty trades, not local labor. The permanent operation employs 30–200 people total, technicians, security, facility management, drawing from existing tech-industry talent pools, typically DFW or out-of-state.

Loudoun County, Virginia, with the largest data-center concentration in the world, reports that data centers represent over 30% of county property-tax revenue but less than 2% of county employment. The jobs case is real, but small, and is the headline number every developer presentation leads with.

Only if the county refuses tax abatements. Most Texas data-center projects come with Chapter 312 abatements at the county level, Chapter 313 (now Chapter 403) at the state level, and special manufacturing-equipment exemptions on the servers themselves. After abatements, the property-tax contribution can be a fraction of the headline appraised value.

Meanwhile, the school district and county roads bear the load: heavier truck traffic, school-attendance pressure from construction families, and infrastructure costs absorbed by the taxing entity, not the developer. Without a binding clawback for noncompliance, abated benefits do not return if jobs or investment numbers come in short.

Closed-loop cooling exists. It is also significantly more expensive to operate, because it uses more electricity to chill water mechanically rather than evaporating it. Developers choose evaporative cooling whenever they can, and Cedar Creek's combination of water availability plus rural land prices is exactly the environment where they choose it.

Any moratorium or ordinance needs to require closed-loop cooling by permit condition, not rely on the developer's preference. Without that requirement, you get the cheaper option. We have asked for the explicit requirement in writing.

True, and not in dispute. We are not asking to override a private sale. We are asking the County and the cities to do what zoning and ordinances are designed to do: regulate land use after the sale, so industrial activity is sited where infrastructure exists for it and not on rural lakefront.

Property rights run in both directions. When a hyperscale campus drops 8–15% of value off the assessment of every home within a mile, those neighbors' property rights are also at stake, and they had no seat at the table when the parcel changed hands under NDA.

AI does need computing power. The question is where the compute goes, not whether it exists. Data centers are sited where resistance is weakest, that's the explicit logic of the industry. Communities that organize push them somewhere else.

Cedar Creek Lake is not the only place in Texas where servers can live. There are existing industrial corridors with the infrastructure, the workforce, and a community that has explicitly invited them. Our request is not that the technology stop, only that it doesn't get built on top of our drinking water.

This is a real and common offer. The structure matters. A binding community-benefits agreement with measurable obligations, third-party enforcement, and clawback provisions is one thing. A letter promising "good neighbor" donations is another, and is what's typically on the table.

Ask for the agreement in writing, with timelines and dollar figures. Ask who enforces it. Ask what happens if the data center is later sold to another operator, these campuses change hands. Ask all of this before approval, because there is no leverage after.

Possibly. That is the developer's strongest leverage and they will repeat it often. It is also the same line used in every county before this one, and the answer doesn't change with the geography.

The question is whether we want this use of this land. The answer is the same answer Henderson County gave on May 12: not without rules in writing. If a developer is unwilling to operate inside enforceable limits, the project was never a fit. If they are willing, then we have a basis for negotiation and the rules protect everyone.

"NIMBY" is a useful word for dismissing a community without engaging with its actual argument. The argument here is not "build it elsewhere because we don't like it." It's: build it where the infrastructure exists, where the rules protect the water, and where the affected community has consented through their elected officials.

That is not NIMBYism. That is what zoning, environmental review, and public process were designed to produce. We are using them as intended.

Correct that the resolution does not by itself prohibit any project. It is a statement of County intent, directed at the Texas Legislature, the TCEQ, the PUC, and the Tarrant Regional Water District. The binding step is ordinances and zoning, which is what we are working toward next.

What the resolution does do is establish the public record: every commissioner went on record. Every City Council in the lake-area cities can now adopt similar language. And it sends a clear signal to developers who use political risk as a siting criterion, which they all do.

You usually don't, by design. Data-center developers approach landowners through special-purpose LLCs with neutral names, and routinely require non-disclosure agreements as a condition of offer discussion. The same names show up in courthouse filings across multiple counties, and matching them is how the industry's footprint gets traced.

If you are approached:

• You are not obligated to sign anything to receive an offer.
• Ask for the ultimate corporate parent in writing.
• Ask for the intended land use.
• Tell your neighbors. Tell us. We are tracking the pattern, savecedarcreeklake@gmail.com.

The proposed site is in unincorporated Henderson County, where Texas counties don't have general zoning. So we are not asking the County for something it can't do. We are asking each level of government for the specific thing it can do:

1. Henderson County Commissioners Court: deny any Chapter 312 tax abatement; oppose every TCEQ permit application during public comment.
2. School & hospital districts: deny any Chapter 403 / school-district value-limitation that would shift facility costs away from the developer.
3. Texas Legislature: grant counties limited siting authority over hyperscale water-using facilities, or set state-level setback, water-use, and noise standards directly.
4. TCEQ: condition every water-rights, wastewater, air, and noise permit on closed-loop cooling, a 55-dB property-line standard, and minimum 10-mile setbacks.
5. TRWD & PUC of Texas: condition raw-water contracts on closed-loop cooling; require developer-paid transmission cost recovery.

Join the Fight, these are the asks it carries.