Texas Gov. Abbott says data centers should be barred from ‘rural neighborhoods’
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said AI data centers must be prohibited from being built in rural neighborhoods.
Speaking Tuesday at a campaign event in Bullard, Abbott said he has already made it clear that data centers wanting to build in Texas need to bring their own money, power, and water.
“We must prohibit them from building AI data centers in rural Texas neighborhoods, and we must eliminate the tax break they are getting,” Abbott said at the event.
In a June 10 letter, Abbott ordered state regulators to shield Texans from the electricity costs related to data centers. He also said data centers must be built water efficient technologies and large ones must report annual water and electricity use to the Public Utility Commission of Texas.
“Everything the Governor said tracks with his June 10th letter. As the Governor said in the letter, he will work with lawmakers to ensure local communities are not adversely impacted,” Abbott spokesperson Eduardo Leal said.
Data centers have been a recurring topic of discussion in North Texas with advocacy groups in Fort Worth calling for a moratorium.
“The public deserves answers,” said Ann Zadeh, a former City Council member and the executive director of Community Design Fort Worth, an urban planning nonprofit organization, following a council meeting on June 2. “Data centers are a major industrial facility with real impacts on water, energy, noise, and long-term land use. Cities across the country have paused approvals to study these issues. That’s simply good planning.”
Parker County commissioners approved a resolution on June 9. that established 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.”
Willow Park, a town of 4,000 people on the western fringes of Fort Worth in Parker County, is one of many rural communities in Texas weighing options to limit the development of data centers.
As the city works toward writing a new charter, some city leaders have proposed adding language that would define and possibly limit data center developments in the city.
Ten miles to the west, the city of Weatherford has taken steps to prohibit data centers inside its borders — but that didn’t stop a company that is developing a data center in Fort Worth from purchasing over 2,000 acres of land just outside city limits.
Officials in these rural cities and counties are looking to each other for advice, said Weatherford City Manager James Hotopp. Guidance from the state could help drive those conversations.
“We 100% agree that legislative changes to counties’ authority to regulate data centers would help people have confidence that those things are going to be done safely, and can be regulated, and I think that’s what people have concerns about,” Hotopp said.
This story was originally published July 1, 2026 at 2:36 PM.
