‘Fight like Texas men’: Parker County residents decry data center development
The Parker County Courthouse was standing room only on Tuesday, June 9, as over 100 people crowded into the pews for a special Commissioners Court meeting to discuss data centers.
More than an hour after the meeting began, Jessica Shulman approached the microphone with her young boys, including her baby, sleeping gently against her chest in a carrier.
“I was not planning on speaking today, so forgive me,” Shulman said. “I’m very nervous. I actually came straight here from being laid off.”
Shulman lost her job earlier that day, she said — to be replaced by artificial intelligence.
“This is going to demolish our futures,” Shulman said as the courtroom erupted in applause. “Fight like men, like Texas men, fight like rabid dogs … I’m begging you, for the sake of my children, for their future, for my future, and everybody else. Fight like Texas men. Make your mamas proud.”
Shulman was one of dozens of people who had waited to speak to the commissioners about data centers following the news that the company behind a proposed data center in Fort Worth is considering a Parker County site. Half an hour before the meeting started at 9 a.m., there was a line out the door and up the courthouse’s worn wooden stairs.
By the end of the meeting, commissioners had approved a resolution to establish a countywide policy not to approve, grant, or execute any tax abatements, economic development agreements, or “other county-level tax incentives” for proposed and existing data centers “within the jurisdiction of Parker County.”
“If everyone in this room wants to speak, you will speak,” Parker County Judge Pat Deen told the crowd before the discussion began.
“What you need to understand is the county government is very weak,” Commissioner Larry Walden said. “We have things that we can control, and we have things that we have no control over.”
Commissioners said that they spoke with representatives in Hill County, which recently rescinded its data center moratorium and replaced it with a checklist after being sued for $100 million by a developer.
“We will be making every effort that we can to make sure that we make the correct move for you, the taxpayers of Parker County, so that we don’t wind up in a situation where we’re getting $100 million lawsuit against us, and so we don’t wind up in a situation where we are unable to do anything,” Walden said.
Doug Shaw, general manager of the Upper Trinity Groundwater Conservation District, told commissioners that applicants requesting to use more than 50 million gallons of groundwater per year are now subject to expanded study requirements, and told residents about the process for contested case hearings for groundwater usage.
“We’re very aware of this influx of these large commercial projects,” Shaw said. “We will treat every single applicant the same, but when it comes to large permit requests, we do have some extra hurdles to cross.”
Michael Hoke, a representative from the Public Utility Commission of Texas, told commissioners that in the past, years-long processes to build chemical plants or other facilities aligned with equally long processes to build power infrastructure to handle those developments.
Data centers, Hoke said, are working on a different timeline.
“Data centers don’t need years,” Hoke said. “We’re finding that it’s not quite as fast — it’s not the six months that we feared — but still, these projects are moved very quickly.”
Hoke said that the PUC and ERCOT are establishing guardrails to prevent the overbuilding of power infrastructure for data centers and other large load developers.
Amanda Garner, a representative for Republican state Rep. Mike Olcott of Weatherford, read a statement from the lawmaker.
“I will do all I can to delay the development of data centers in our district until lawmakers return next session and have the opportunity to properly draft legislation that protects all Texans from the seen and unforeseen harms that these centers could potentially cause,” Olcott’s statement said. “While I am opposed to overregulation by the government, I’m also opposed to trampling the rights of our citizens and compromising our property values and our access to adequate and affordable resources like water and energy.”
Parker County resident Kathleen Bronstad heard about the data center proposal on Facebook, she told the Star-Telegram, and decided to get involved by helping gather signatures for a petition against the proposal.
“I don’t think I’ve ever signed a petition before, and I have never done anything like this, so I thought, ‘This might be my one way to help today,’” Bronstad said. “I never thought of myself as political.”
Bronstad comes from a family of Republicans, and has never identified as political, she said — until now.
“I’m kind of upset with myself for being such an uninformed, kind of stupid voter, but I’m going to fix it now,” Bronstad said, tears welling up in her eyes. “I’ve just always voted that way, but now I’m not going to just vote the way my family always voted.
The commissioners discussed holding another meeting on the issue of data centers at a larger location in the evening, but that was not confirmed during Tuesday’s meeting.
