Fort Worth's Data Center Commission Hands the Council 19 Rules — and the 90-Day Pause Cannot Start Before February
The Fort Worth Data Center & Infrastructure Commission delivered its final report on Tuesday: 19 recommendations covering power, water, land use and tax incentives, from closed-loop cooling to a 350-foot setback from homes. The council took no action. The recommendations are advice, not law — and the proposed 90-day moratorium on new data centres cannot legally begin before a February vote.
FORT WORTH — Fort Worth now has its data center report. On Tuesday, the Data Center & Infrastructure Commission the City Council created in August delivered 19 recommendations for how the city should handle the power-hungry server farms arriving with the AI buildout — and the council, at the same meeting, took no action on any of them. The recommendations are exactly that, the city stresses: advice, not adopted rules or policies, with every zoning, noise, water and tax idea still needing its own vote.
The commission, chaired by TCU's Mike Slattery with eleven voting members, worked four areas — electricity, water use, land use and neighbourhood impacts, and economic impacts — and its list runs from the technical to the neighbourly: closed-loop cooling systems to cut local water use, a separate study of noise from existing facilities, and a setback that would put a data centre at least 350 feet from a home or other sensitive property, farther if the building is taller. The split, as the Dallas Patriot counted it, is two recommendations on electricity, five on water, eight on land use and neighbours and four on incentives; eight continue what Fort Worth already does, five build on the draft rules the Zoning Commission voted down in July, and six are new.
The moratorium is a separate, slower track, and state law sets its pace. A 90-day pause on new data center applications — the city would stop accepting, processing or approving new rezoning and permit requests — requires two public hearings, two ordinance readings and a three-fourths council vote. Tuesday evening's session was the first hearing. The tentative calendar puts the second hearing and first reading on January 12, 2027, and the vote on February 23; a yes would start the 90 days that night, running to May 24, extendable once, after another hearing, to August 22, 2027. Nothing is paused before February, FOX 4 reported, and projects already in the pipeline would be exempt.
The stakes are counted in buildings. A June staff presentation counted four data centres operating in Fort Worth, another under construction and four more in the pipeline, and the pressure is felt first by neighbours — concerns have surfaced near Weston Gardens in south Fort Worth, where a data centre has been proposed nearby. The commission itself exists because the ordinary process failed: the Zoning Commission voted 7 to 4 in July to deny the rules staff had proposed, and the council answered in August by starting the moratorium process and appointing the commission in the same week. What Fort Worth decides will be watched across North Texas, where the same server farms are knocking on every suburb's door — and where Dallas's own state-level fight over the data centre tax break, filed by this desk on Wednesday, runs on a separate track in Austin.
