The city of Fort Worth, Texas, has introduced a data center moratorium.

Fort Worth City Council this week issued a temporary 90-day ban on new data center developments amid concerns about data center water usage, noise, and impacts on nearby communities.

The proposal for a moratorium was put forward by several city council members following the Fort Worth zoning commission's vote against amending the city’s zoning regulations around data centers.

An organization to investigate impacts and specific issues related to data center developments in the city and act as an advisory body is also being established. The group will be called the Fort Worth data center & infrastructure commission (DCIC).

In a city council meeting on August 11, members unanimously voted to initiate the moratorium process and voted 10-1 to create the DCIC.

In the same council meeting, an ordinance to amend Chapter 14 of the Code of the City of Fort Worth on the filing process for data centers wanting to connect to the Texas electrical grid was passed 10-1. This follows Texas governor Greg Abbott’s directive that state regulators must audit data center projects intending to connect to the state’s electric grid.

Under Texas state law, city authorities cannot enforce a moratorium until the municipality leaders meet to discuss and show written evidence of why existing regulations are insufficient in preventing potential harm to welfare, public health, and safety. Exploration of potential issues, which the DCIC will carry out, may result in new and/or amended data center regulations. Fort Worth will investigate problems such as noise, mechanical infrastructure, building scale, water supply, and land-use compatibility.

The moratorium will not come into effect immediately, as Texas law requires a process involving public hearings and submissions of evidence first. Moratoriums are permitted to last 90 days, with a possibility to extend for a further 90 days provided there is sufficient evidence to do so. After passing one, the law states that another moratorium cannot be passed for the next two years.

Fort Worth council members created a provisional timeline in which the DCIC will deliver its report to the city council work session, expected on November 3. Following this, the first moratorium public hearing will take place on November 10, followed by a second public hearing and a proposed ordinance, before a 90-day moratorium begins on February 16, 2027, which may be extended for a further 90 days until August 15.

Data center regulations could be adopted at any point during the moratorium and commission’s process, provided there is enough evidence and city council members agree to move forward with them.

In-progress data center construction projects with zoning applications submitted pre-moratorium will be exempt. Similarly, for existing or in-development data centers, compliance with new regulations (if they are adopted as a result of the moratorium and DCIC’s work) would be voluntary.

DCIC was proposed to the city council as an 11-member group led by Dr. Mike Slattery, director of the Institute for Environmental Studies at Texas Christian University, with members from various backgrounds such as environmental and resource management, economic development, utilities, data center operations, and Fort Worth residents. The commission will focus on four areas: electricity and energy, water use and other local resources, land use and neighborhood impacts, and economic development and fiscal impacts. It would operate as an advisory body guided by its findings.

Following Abbott’s announcement, the amendment of Chapter 14 requires data center projects to show proof of approval to connect to the grid from the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) or the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), at multiple stages of the development process.

Texas, and specifically the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, is one of the world’s major data center hubs. According to Data Center Map, there are 537 data centers listed in Texas and 253 data centers across Dallas-Fort Worth.

However, concerns around data center impacts on the environment and nearby communities, such as energy and water usage, have led to proposals for new regulations, illustrated by Fort Worth’s moratorium, Dallas’s consideration of issuing one, and Governor Abbott’s new regulations related to ERCOT and PUCT.