What rural Texans should know about the Granbury data center fight
Scout Moseley rides bulls for a living. He runs cattle in Johnson County, raises two kids in Cleburne and describes himself as a lifelong opponent of big government. Now the 26-year-old is printing bumper stickers that read “Keep Texas green” — and he says he’ll vote for anyone, Democrat or Republican, who stands against data centers coming to rural Texas.
“I want my cows to have clean pastures and plenty of water,” Moseley said. “We may eat that cow eventually, but we want them to live a dang good life before that.”
That sentiment is spreading across Hood, Johnson, Parker and Palo Pinto counties as landowners watch a fight unfold in Granbury that could reshape how — and whether — the state’s rural communities are able to push back against the industrial buildout coming with artificial intelligence. Here’s what ranching families and multi-generational landowners need to know.
The project at the center of it all
The flashpoint is Project Patriot, a proposed power plant and data center campus on roughly 2,000 acres of the former Knox Ranch, straddling Meadow Wood Road between U.S. 377 and Paluxy Highway south of Granbury.
The developer is Dallas-based Bilateral Energy LLC. According to Star-Telegram reporting, the concept plan made public in June shows five data center buildings, storage and administrative structures, and more than a dozen unlabeled spaces. In 2025, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality approved an emissions permit for eight simple-cycle power turbines and 87 linear generators at 1225 Meadow Wood Road.
Granbury annexed the land in January. In April, the City Council voted to rezone it for industrial use, which allows power plants and data centers.
Why longtime property owners are alarmed
Craig Jackson lives 300 feet from the Project Patriot site. He’s one of four Granbury-area residents suing the city, and he says he no longer trusts the party he’s been aligned with his whole life.
“It’s just frustrating that I’m seeing a party that I’ve been aligned with just welcome an infrastructure that is harming people,” Jackson said, according to the Star-Telegram. He supports a moratorium on data centers to allow time to study their impact on water, air and neighboring property values.
In nearby Mitchell Bend, Cheryl Shadden tried to incorporate her community as a way to regulate noise and pollution from Mara Digital Holdings, a cryptomining operation near her home. The incorporation vote failed. She’s not backing down.
“The whole community is behind us. We will absolutely flip our votes,” Shadden said. “We’ve gotten to the point where we feel like we’ve been bulldozed over by Texas politicians. It’s about time now that the politicians listen to their constituents.”
The transparency fight
Residents say the deeper problem is that city officials weren’t straight with them. When the January annexation came before the Granbury City Council, leaders said they had no knowledge of plans for the Knox Ranch land.
Hood County Commissioner Nannette Samuelson says that isn’t true. During an April commissioners court meeting, she displayed documents Granbury’s economic development office received in June 2025 describing Project Patriot — then called Project Horizon — as “a data center campus and power generation development.”
“For him to say he didn’t know where Project Patriot was or what it was is inconsistent with the facts,” Samuelson said of City Manager Chris Coffman, according to the Star-Telegram. “Is this incompetence or purposeful deception on the part of the city attorney and the city manager?”
An April 6 lawsuit filed by attorney Steven Dias makes similar allegations. It claims city leaders violated the Texas Open Meetings Act when the mayor, council members and city staff toured a Dallas data center days before the January annexation vote. Internal emails cited in the suit show Granbury’s former economic development director suggesting the tour be staggered “even two minutes behind” to avoid a quorum.
The suit seeks a permanent injunction, a jury trial, reversal of the annexation and compensation for lost property values.
A complaint to the Texas Rangers
Hood County resident Kellie Chewning filed a complaint with the Texas Rangers alleging Granbury violated state codes when it rezoned the 2,100 acres. Chewning says the zoning notice listed a single address that didn’t reflect the true size of the tract, and that no notice was published in a newspaper, on the city website or on a meeting agenda.
“Property owners within 200 feet have the right to protest even if their property is outside city limits,” Chewning stated in the complaint, according to the Star-Telegram. A Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman confirmed the Rangers are reviewing the information but have not opened an official investigation.
Residents move to remove their leaders
The pushback has now escalated to two petition drives.
More than 800 Granbury residents backed a petition calling for a vote of no confidence to remove City Manager Chris Coffman and City Attorney Jeremy SoRelle.
On July 13, residents also filed formal recall petitions against Granbury Mayor Jim Jarratt and several council members. Under Granbury’s home rule charter, a recall petition must be signed by an amount of registered voters that is equal to at least 15% of the city’s eligible voters. If the officials don’t resign, the council must order an election at the earliest date state law allows.
“The efforts of the community came together to voice how they felt about the city council, and we did that by getting signatures on a petition recall for every single council member minus one, which is Angela Parker,” said Granbury resident Janet Logsdon, who helped organize the recall. “Our team consisted of different political views, and we worked together. We were united.”
Logsdon had previously campaigned for Jarratt. She said the irony wasn’t lost on her.
A landowner writes the rulebook
The same day the recall was filed, the Granbury Planning and Zoning Commission recommended a new ordinance requiring data center developers to obtain a special use permit and adhere to a 1,000-foot setback from property lines.
The proposal was drafted by Nikki Sopchak, a Hood County resident with a master’s degree in urban planning who owns property in Granbury. Commissioners weighed a version with contributions by by city staff, but recommended Sopchak’s for council approval.
Where the governor stands
Speaking at a July campaign event in Bullard, Gov. Greg Abbott said AI data centers “must be prohibited from being built in rural Texas neighborhoods,” and that tax breaks for them “must be eliminated.”
In a June 10 letter, Abbott ordered state regulators to shield Texans from electricity costs tied to data centers. He also vowed to work with state lawmakers to require large facilities to annually report water and electricity use to the Public Utility Commission of Texas.
Parker County commissioners approved a resolution in June barring county-level tax incentives for data centers within their jurisdiction. Weatherford has moved to prohibit them inside its borders. Willow Park is weighing charter language to limit them.
According to the Texas Tribune, half of the 248 data centers planned in Texas will be built in rural areas — places where counties have limited authority to say no.
For Moseley, Jackson, Shadden and thousands of other landowners across North Texas, that’s the whole point of the fight.