Hood County, Texas, is set to reject a proposal to incorporate one of the area’s communities as a city in order to curb data center noise.

Yesterday, County residents voted to determine whether to incorporate the Mitchell Bend neighborhood as a city. This would give the neighborhood power to create noise ordinances that would limit the sound levels of a nearby cryptomining data center.

But unofficial results posted by Hood County on Clarity Elections – an election results publishing software – indicate that voters, by a 25 percent margin, have decided against the incorporation of the Mitchell Bend neighborhood into a separate city.

The data center, operated by cryptomining company MARA Holdings, is located at the former Wolf Hollow Gas plant in Granbury, which is Hood County’s main city.

The county is located southwest of Fort Worth, a major city and data center hotspot in north central Texas.

MARA has fought back against the incorporation proposal. Since taking over the site in January 2024, the company has tried appeasing residents with noise mitigation measures. It has extended an existing soundproofing wall and claims that it has converted most of the data center’s noisier air cooling to quieter immersion cooling.

The company has also cited two third-party noise studies conducted in July and November 2024, both of which found that the data center was operating below the 85 decibel noise limit set by the Texas Penal Code.

The July study found that the data center generated around 58 decibels of noise on average, and the November study, commissioned by Hood County, found that sound levels ranged from 35 to 53 decibels.

However, the November study also stated that it “could not be confirmed that the mine was operating in a typical fashion during the measurement and monitoring period,” and noted that the limit set by the Texas Penal Code was “very permissive compared to most local-level noise ordinances around the country.”

Fears that the proposal would be voted through led MARA to ramp up its methods in the lead-up to yesterday's vote. In late October, the company filed a 47-page complaint against the incorporation proposal in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas, stating that the proposal violated certain provisions in the Texas Local Government Code. This was thrown out the day before the vote on November 3.

Last week, MARA also released internal county communications obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request, claiming that the emails were proof that the officials had violated “statutory requirements and constitutional rights” in the process of approving the incorporation petition for a vote.

It is unclear whether further measures will be taken by residents opposed to the data center.

MARA is one of the largest Bitcoin miners in the US and predominantly utilizes stranded energy assets to power modular mining units. Several of the company’s facilities are located in Texas, and in April of this year, it fully energized a 25MW modular cryptomine facility powered by flared natural gas in the state and North Dakota.

Update:

A MARA spokesperson issued a statement to DCD, saying:

“We’re pleased that Hood County voters saw through the sham incorporation effort and rejected it at the ballot box. As we’ve said from the start, this was an unlawful attempt to weaponize municipal incorporation against law-abiding businesses like MARA.

The outcome confirms what was clear all along: this effort had no legitimate purpose and presented unnecessary risks for residents.

We remain focused on creating jobs, supporting local communities, and being a responsible neighbor.”