What's been reported.

KLTV-7’s April Pierdant reports that more than 2,500 people have signed the Save Cedar Creek Lake petition, as residents near the reservoir describe a lake sitting three feet low, with exposed lakebed and boats that can no longer launch. Their worry: a proposed data center across the road that could draw up to 5 million gallons of water a day during a Stage 3 drought.

“The water is three feet down… A lot of people on the Cedar Creek Reservoir cannot get their boats out.”— Stacy Farmer, Trinidad resident, who built her home on the lake 17 years ago

Farmer says road markings appeared back in May, and a public information request later confirmed that discussions over the 759-acre Diode Ventures site had been underway for more than a year, even though many homeowners only recently found out. Yard signs have since spread across the area as neighbors work to spread the word.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s Matthew Adams reports on records obtained by attorney Ashley Cook showing that Diode Ventures asked to pull up to 5 million gallons a day — nearly 1.825 billion gallons a year, potentially rising to 20 million gallons a day — from Cedar Creek Lake, the Tarrant Regional Water District reservoir that helps supply Fort Worth, Arlington and Mansfield.

“Frankly, the current public sentiment is that data centers are wasteful when it comes to water. Prove that is not the case.”— A TRWD representative, in a March email to Diode’s engineer, after calling 5 million gallons a day “a large volume of water”

For scale: all of Fort Worth used an average of 216 million gallons a day in 2025, and per-capita use across Dallas–Fort Worth runs around 200 gallons a day per person. A TRWD spokesperson confirmed the agency “has not entered into any new contracts, specifically to serve data center projects.”

The developer isn’t walking away, though. Cook told the Star-Telegram she saw TechServ trucks on Diode-owned property within the past two weeks, and she believes the developer still intends to proceed despite the public resistance and the water-access hurdles. Henderson County Commissioner Wendy Spivey’s May resolution opposing high-water-use data centers passed but is largely ceremonial, since state law limits counties’ power to stop these projects. Construction has not begun — cattle still graze the site.

“No one in the county wants this.”— Ashley Cook, attorney & Cedar Creek Lake property owner, founder of Save Cedar Creek Lake

The Star-Telegram article is behind a paywall.

The Fort Worth Report’s Nicole Lopez lays out what the records show: Diode Ventures wants a pipeline drawing raw water from Cedar Creek Lake — a Tarrant Regional Water District reservoir that supplies most of Fort Worth’s water — and has kept the community, and the local utility, in the dark from the start.

When the Cedar Creek water utility district first asked, in April 2025, where the data center would go, Diode’s representative said the exact location couldn’t be disclosed because of an “exclusivity agreement” — and offered more detail only if the district signed a mutual non-disclosure agreement. District officials did not acknowledge the request to sign an NDA.

“If you have a fear of public knowledge, then we are not the district for you, as we will not break the rules for any development to meet behind closed doors.”— Kenneth Malin, general manager, Cedar Creek-area utility district, in emails obtained by the Fort Worth Report

The reporting also notes the raw-water line “would only be used for your development,” as the utility’s manager put it — a private pipeline off a public reservoir — and it lands as Cedar Creek residents are being asked to conserve amid drought, with lake levels down and boats already dry-docked. A Diode spokesperson said the company is still evaluating whether the Henderson County site is suitable, and would give residents and officials a chance to learn about the project if it moves forward.

KETK/FOX51 featured Sunday’s Save Cedar Creek Lake Town Hall on its 10 o’clock news. More than 250 neighbors filled the Oran White Civic Center in Tool to organize against the proposed data center that could tap the lake’s water.

Coalition leader and attorney Ashley Cook used the town hall to sign up volunteers and renew the call for a one-year moratorium on new data centers, so state lawmakers can understand their impact before projects move forward. Organizers urged every attendee to recruit five to ten more neighbors, and many planned to carry their “Stop Data Center” shirts to the Governor’s event in Canton the next day.

“It’s going to take a lot of people making a whole lot of noise for us to be able to get it across on a state level that this is really important.”— Ashley Cook, attorney & Cedar Creek Lake property owner

KETK/FOX51 covered the Henderson County workshop on the proposed data center near Key Ranch Estates on Cedar Creek Lake — and the volunteer coalition’s push to pack this Sunday’s Town Hall.

Ashley Cook, an attorney and Cedar Creek Lake property owner helping lead the volunteer effort to inform the community, is calling for a one-year moratorium on new data centers so lawmakers can understand their impact on communities before any project moves forward. She told KETK that stopping the project will take a groundswell of residents speaking up — and that the coalition has scheduled a Town Hall for June 28 to bring neighbors together and get the facts in front of as many people as possible.

“It’s going to take a lot of people making a whole lot of noise for us to be able to get it across on a state level that this is really important… We need people to understand that this is a serious issue.”— Ashley Cook, attorney & Cedar Creek Lake property owner

KETK/FOX51 visited Triple N Winery in Trinidad, where Nan Michelle Anderson tends a vineyard and a 70-head Longhorn herd on land her mother bought in the 1980s — now feet from the proposed AI data center site.

Anderson is urging fellow Texans to call Gov. Greg Abbott and their elected officials, and to ask for a 12-month statewide pause on new data centers until their impacts are fully understood. For her, this is about more than a business — it’s whether her family’s legacy survives.

“We elect these people and they’re being negligent to their constituents… letting outside corporations come in and we’re losing our way of life.”— Nan Michelle Anderson, owner, Triple N Winery

WFAA-TV brought the Cedar Creek Lake fight to the entire Dallas–Fort Worth market, spotlighting the family ranch directly across the road from the proposed site...airing the same week Texas lawmakers took up data-center water use at the Capitol.

The segment lays out the core of our case: a Kansas company, Diode Ventures, wants to build a data center on more than 700 acres in Henderson County that could draw up to 5 million gallons of water a day from Cedar Creek Lake.  It features Nan Michelle Anderson, who raises Texas Longhorns at the 70-acre Triple N Ranch directly across the road from where the company wants to build.

“You think about something as precious as water, we have to know what you’re going to consume.”— Rep. Brad Buckley, Texas House District 54, in the WFAA report

It aired as the House Natural Resources Committee studied data-center water use and conservation statewide.  The same hearing Cedar Creek neighbors have been urged to weigh in on. A Dallas-market broadcast puts this fight in front of 1.2 million North Texans who drink this water too.

Dallas Morning News Watchdog columnist Dave Lieber traveled the state to report on the wave of citizen opposition to industrial data centers — and made Cedar Creek Lake the centerpiece of his story.

The column features lawyer Ashley Cook — one of our neighbors helping lead the effort at Save Cedar Creek Lake, lending her legal experience, filing records requests and writing to elected leaders, all without charging a fee — along with our website, SaveCedarCreekLake.com. She’s one of many neighbors giving their time to protect the lake.

“We’re killing ourselves letting the data centers in. You’re basically turning a rural residential peaceful community into an industrial corridor.”— Ashley Cook, Cedar Creek Lake resident, quoted in the column

Lieber’s reporting lays out the same stakes this coalition has documented: a Diode Ventures proposal less than 400 yards from the lake, cooling water drawn from a reservoir already in a level-3 drought, and unincorporated land where local officials have little control. He follows the money, too — noting a Meta-funded PAC’s seven-figure giving to state leaders — and warns the real test comes when the 2027 Texas Legislature convenes.

On June 10, 2026, Governor Greg Abbott sent a directive letter to state regulators calling for new rules on data centers, and one of his priorities is exactly what Cedar Creek neighbors have been asking for: setbacks, noise-reduction technology, and real weight given to the concerns of neighbors.

That is our fight in the Governor’s own words. For months, lake residents have said an industrial data center on our shoreline means noise around the clock, no buffer from homes, and neighbors with no say. Now the State’s top official has put setbacks, noise limits, and the concerns of neighbors on the list of protections Texas should require.

“Data centers must operate in ways that reduce costs for residential electricity customers, do not drain water needed for our communities, and take into consideration the needs of our neighborhoods.”— Gov. Greg Abbott

The letter goes further on cost and water, too: it orders the PUC to require data centers to fully fund the electric infrastructure needed to serve them so those costs aren’t passed to residential ratepayers, sets a July 17, 2026 deadline for a joint PUC–ERCOT ratepayer-protection memorandum, and pledges 2027 legislation on water-efficient cooling and mandatory water and electricity usage reporting. All of it helps. But the neighborhood-impact standard above is the one that speaks directly to life on this lake.

Why it matters here: the State’s top official is now on the record that data centers must answer to their neighbors, the exact case Cedar Creek residents have been making. It strengthens every comment headed to the June 23 Natural Resources hearing — so tell the committee what setbacks, quiet, and neighbor protections mean for your home.