Fort Worth City Council is pressing ahead with a proposed 90-day pause on new data-center construction, a process that began with a unanimous vote in August and has now reached the stage of public hearings. The council on Tuesday took up community impacts of the fast-growing industry, continuing a debate that has stretched across months of meetings in the city.
Back on Aug. 11, 2026, council members unanimously approved the first step toward implementing the 90-day moratorium, according to Fort Worth Report. If ultimately adopted, the moratorium would halt decision-making on applications to rezone land or obtain permits for data centers, the outlet reported — a pause on new approvals rather than an immediate halt to existing projects.
During that window, city staff would evaluate noise produced by data centers, their impact on local water supplies, land-use compatibility and related infrastructure needs, per the same Fort Worth Report account. The same day, council members voted 10-1 to create the Fort Worth Data Center & Infrastructure Commission, with District 7 Council Member Macy Hill casting the lone no vote, according to Community Impact.
Who's Running the New Commission
The 11-member commission would be led by Michael Slattery, a TCU professor and director of the university's Institute for Environmental Studies, Community Impact reported. Its mandate covers four broad areas: electricity and energy, water use and local resources, land use and neighborhood impacts, and economic development and fiscal effects, according to the outlet.
City leaders set a detailed timeline for the process. Fort Worth Report reported that the commission was scheduled to present its studies and findings to council in a work session on Nov. 3, with the first public hearing on the proposed moratorium set for Tuesday, Nov. 10. The process requires two public hearings and a three-fourths council majority for final passage, the outlet noted.
Under the schedule given to council, the proposed ordinance's first reading would come Jan. 12, 2027, with a second reading and possible adoption by council supermajority on Feb. 16, 2027, Community Impact reported. Assistant City Manager Jesica McEachern told council the moratorium, if enacted, would not apply to projects already planned or approved, or those with zoning applications already submitted, according to the same report.
Separately, NBC DFW reported that a new Fort Worth ordinance requires data-center developers to provide the city with proof of approval from either the Public Utility Commission of Texas or the Electric Reliability Council of Texas for grid interconnection before moving forward.
Why Fort Worth Is Under Pressure
The scrutiny comes as Texas sees a historic wave of data-center development. A review by industry-tracking firms and The Texas Tribune identified at least 248 planned data centers statewide, including 86 in North Texas, with the Dallas-Fort Worth region emerging as a major market for the industry.
The strain on the power grid has been dramatic. ERCOT received 519 requests to connect large electricity users over the past two years, compared with just 24 the year before, and roughly 90% of that proposed demand came from data centers, the Tribune reported. Texas-wide interconnection queue requests have climbed to about 474 GW — more than five times ERCOT's record peak electricity demand, according to Utility Dive.
Water has become a parallel flashpoint. KUT reported that all of Texas's data centers currently use less than 1% of the state's water, though estimates of possible annual use by 2030 range from 29 billion to 161 billion gallons. Fewer than a third of the state's 341 data centers responded to a survey asking about their own water and energy use, per the same report.
Public frustration has been a near-constant backdrop to the debate. Just about any meeting regarding data centers in Fort Worth has drawn hours-long public comments from residents and activist groups throughout the year, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.
Other Cities Are Moving Faster
Fort Worth isn't alone in weighing a pause. Romulus City Council, outside Detroit, voted unanimously Monday to impose an immediately effective 180-day moratorium on data-center proposals while that city studies regulation, according to ClickOnDetroit. Council members there amended the measure to cover data centers of every size, rather than just those requiring at least one gigawatt of electricity, and directed the city's Planning Commission to study electrical demand, environmental impacts and zoning rules.
In Texas, San Marcos City Council denied a rezoning request in February that would have cleared the way for a proposed data center behind a Hays County ranch, effectively blocking the project, per KUT's reporting. That decision offers one example of how a Texas city council has already used its zoning authority to stop a data-center project outright, even as Fort Worth continues working through a longer, multi-step process toward its own potential pause.
