Data centers in 18 counties, including Tarrant, are being investigated by the Texas attorney general’s office, which is demanding the developments report water usage as required by law.
Attorney General Ken Paxton is launching the investigation into data centers that have yet to respond to the Texas Water Development Board’s water survey, according to a news release published Thursday.
Under state law, the water board — the agency that plans for future water needs and accounts for resource demands — requires all recipients to fill out the survey. Those recipients include entities that use ground and surface water supplies for municipal, industrial, power generation or mining purposes, the release states.
The water board’s survey targets facilities that use more than 10 million gallons per year, The Texas Tribune reported.
The application collects annual water use data across the state for the board’s regional planning and resource management, according to the water board’s website.
Data centers across Tarrant and 17 other counties — Harris, Montgomery, Travis, Dallas, Smith and Bexar being among them — will also undergo an initial investigation, according to the release.
Data centers in the following counties will be investigated:
- Harris
- Montgomery
- Travis
- Dallas
- Tarrant
- Smith
- Bexar
- Tom Green
- Potter
- Randall
- Lubbock
- Midland
- Ector
- Wichita
- Victoria
- Brazos
- Nueces
- El Paso
Governments or companies that fail to submit the surveys lose eligibility for financial assistance from the water board and water rights permits.
The release does not specify which Tarrant County data centers are being investigated.
Data centers planned or currently in development in Tarrant County include facilities headed by Black Mountain, Edged Data Centers and Circle T. Two data centers are proposed in Fort Worth’s extraterritorial jurisdiction on Robertson Road.
The move comes after Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the state water board earlier this month to crack down on major water users, including data centers, that do not report their consumption.
“Data centers must share the duty to protect Texas water,” Abbott said in a Sept. 14 news release.
Abbott’s office directed the water board to refer to county and district attorneys for prosecution and notify the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to halt the issuance of permits.
A week later, Abbott directly ordered the state environmental commission to stop issuing new permits for data centers until an audit of the developments looking to build in Texas is completed. The audits are to include information about planned data centers’ tax exemptions, power usage and generation, water use and cooling methods, ownership and how operators will mitigate impacts to local communities.
In the past few years, only a percentage of data centers were reporting their water use, according to The Texas Tribune. That includes 30% of a total of 329 data centers that were surveyed last year, according to the report.
The survey’s 2025 results show the QTS and Meta data centers in Fort Worth are among the state’s facilities that use the most water.
Like other communities across the state, Fort Worth and Tarrant County are seeing a booming interest from developers to build data centers.
This has prompted outcry and advocacy from residents, many of them citing concerns about a lack of transparency and little information about how much water and electricity the hubs would use.
Nicole Lopez is the environment reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at nicole.lopez@fortworthreport.org.
The Report’s environment coverage is supported by the Marilyn Brachman Hoffman Foundation.
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