Fort Worth's Data Center Reckoning Gets Its Roadmap: 19 Recommendations, a Possible 90-Day Moratorium — and No Decision Before February
The city-appointed Data Center & Infrastructure Commission delivered 19 recommendations to the Fort Worth City Council on Tuesday after studying power, water, land use and economic impact. No action was taken; the next public hearing is January 12, 2027, and the earliest a 90-day moratorium could take effect is February.
FORT WORTH — Fort Worth now has a plan for deciding what to do about data centers — it just does not have a decision yet. On Tuesday, the Fort Worth Data Center & Infrastructure Commission, appointed by the City Council in August, delivered 19 recommendations on data center development after studying four areas: electricity, water use, land use and neighborhood impacts, and economic impacts, FOX 4 reported.
The recommendations could lead to a 90-day moratorium on data center development in the city — a pause that would let Fort Worth review the findings and decide whether its zoning rules and development codes need to change. No action was taken on the commission's findings at Tuesday's meeting. Commission chair Michael Slattery told FOX 4 the recommendations would give the city a roadmap and give developers much more certainty about how to move forward, while acknowledging they would not please everybody.
Some residents at Tuesday's meeting said the recommendations do not go far enough. Resident Julie Waters told the council that two months is not enough time to consider all of the issues involved with a data center, and other speakers pressed the council to listen to the residents who have asked, meeting after meeting, for a moratorium.
The timeline now runs into next year. Fort Worth currently has four operating data centers, with at least four more in development. City staff say the next public hearing is planned for January 12, 2027, and the earliest a moratorium could be enacted is February 2027 — and existing sites and projects already moving through the application pipeline would be exempt from it if the policy is adopted. The fight that began last summer, when the zoning commission voted against new restrictions in early July and five council members called for a moratorium days later, now has a calendar: January for the hearing, February at the earliest for the pause.
