by Taylor Goldenstein and Emily Foxhall
This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center.
Data center developers can use nondisclosure agreements and shell companies to shield the details of their deals from the public. Even state officials also say they need more transparency from the industry.
BELLS — Last year, Mason McCallister saw survey markers on a property near his home in a rural community about an hour north of Dallas.
He suspected it might be for a new data center he’d heard about from a neighbor.
But information hasn’t come easy.
He found no project announcements and saw nothing on county agendas. Several local officials told him they knew nothing of the project.
The 34-year-old realtor searched property records. He knocked on neighbors’ doors to ask what they knew.
His wife, also a realtor, asked the surveyors who was buying the land, and his grandma chased a neighbor down at church to ask if he sold his property.
Eventually, McCallister mapped companies contracting with landowners all around him including Black Mountain, an energy and digital infrastructure group based in Fort Worth.
He dug up a permit for a power plant from a company with the same address as Black Mountain, indicating the data center could build its own power source.
Then in March, after months of searching for answers, McCallister drove 100 miles to a town hall in the Fort Worth area where he learned Black Mountain’s CEO, Rhett Bennett, would be speaking about a different project.
After the presentation, McCallister confronted the CEO and got his confirmation: Yes, Black Mountain was exploring a data center near his home.
“Deep down I was always hoping that I was wrong,” said McCallister, after getting his answer.
As data center proposals are popping up across Texas, local residents have grown increasingly frustrated by how difficult it can be to get information about the projects that they say threaten to disrupt their communities. Armies of concerned neighbors, such as McCallister, have become their own private detectives in search of signs or confirmation about data center plans in lieu of public disclosures, pestering local officials at meetings or in the grocery store and sharing their findings across Facebook groups with thousands of members.
“Knowledge is power, right?” said McCallister, whose family has owned the property in Bells for roughly 150 years. “Everyone’s being so quiet about it, and everyone’s being so secret about it. If it was so good for the community, they would be screaming it from the rooftops.”
Black Mountain officials declined comment.
Homeowners aren’t the only ones operating in the dark. Local officials say they’ve been blindsided by data center projects or asked to consider approval without adequate information. For example, The Texas Tribune reported that Hood County was sued by a data center developer after they rejected a concept plan, citing lack of information about where the facility would draw its water from.
In other cases, nondisclosure agreements prevent local officials who are negotiating deals with companies from sharing what they know. In other cases, tech giants use shell companies to shield their identity in public filings.
Oftentimes, locals and even county officials say they don’t learn of the project until it’s too late to try to stop it.
Indeed, officials with Crusoe, a developer building a massive data center in Abilene, shared in a presentation to state electric grid officials this year that local outreach typically begins after securing land, contractor selection and financing begin.
At least 34 Texas counties have formally called on the state to make more information available, including Grayson County where McCallister lives, according to a tracker kept by Public Citizen, an advocacy organization which has worked with grassroots data center opposition groups.
“Nothing in no way, shape, form or fashion has ever been presented to the government of Grayson County,” said county Commissioner Art Arthur.
“I don’t know that there has to be. That’s the scary part.”
Residents spoke at a Taylor City Council meeting in June about a data center project they worry will overconsume water and power and cause air and noise pollution. An organizer of the opposition group, Halt Taylor Data Centers Coalition, has said they need easier access to water and power information. Leila Saidane for The Texas Tribune
Community members gathered for a potluck hosted by Halt Taylor Data Centers Coalition at Heritage Park across from Taylor City Hall before the June meeting where they presented a petition opposing the data center. “Because they’re just going to take, if no one puts a limit on them,” said Sarah Winters, an organizer with the Halt Taylor Data Centers Coalition. Meanwhile, state leaders are calling for tougher laws in the coming legislative session to make data centers report more information.
Last week, Gov. Greg Abbott called to halt approvals for data centers seeking to connect to the state’s grid until state regulators and the grid operator can audit them.
In an Aug. 3 letter that reinforced how even the state is struggling to get information from data centers, Abbott said proposals should be denied unless they provide details on tax breaks the data center companies will receive, power use and generation, water use and cooling operations, efforts to reduce impacts on local communities and ownership of the facility.
This comes as Texas is rivaling Virginia as the new national leader in data centers fueling an artificial intelligence boom. The Texas Tribune reported there are at least 248 data center projects planned in the state. Those projects were identified in part by combining databases compiled by companies that track the industry, as the state does not publicly track data center development.
Data center companies say they are sharing information and trying to make it easier for the public to see their environmental impact. Google publishes site-specific water consumption for its data centers annually. Microsoft has a Texas fact sheet touting its creation of more than 500 jobs, commitment to renewable energy and efforts to lower light pollution. Crusoe in a statement said it was investing in “earlier and more consistent community engagement,” such as through blog posts, local liaisons and open houses.
Data center developers say they are taking steps to communicate with the public. Developer EdgeConneX holds a third town hall in June in Bastrop County regarding data centers under construction in the county, at the Bastrop County Community Center on June 18, 2026. Leila Saidane for The Texas TribuneThe EdgeConneX Cedar Creek Campus under construction in Cedar Creek on June 18, 2026. Leila Saidane for The Texas Tribune
Dan Diorio, vice president of state policy at the Data Center Coalition, the largest industry trade group, said their main concern when it comes to transparency measures is market rivalry.
“This is a very competitive industry, and the technology moves very fast,” Diorio said. “Your technology, related to cooling, related to electricity use and efficiency, is going to be your competitive edge in the marketplace.”
Tracy Hester, an environmental law professor at the University of Houston, said data centers don’t appear to be more secretive than any other major private industry.
But transparency has become a heightened issue because of the nature of how new the industry feels and how widely the resource-intensive facilities are proliferating all at once.
He compared it to the fracking boom in the 2010s, when the industry faced heavy blowback from environmental activists and local residents over water usage and pollution concerns. The industry ultimately made concessions such as agreeing to disclose what chemicals they use but not the exact concentrations.
“The velocity and the scale is what’s the issue; it’s not the nature of the operation,” Hester said. “That does make the seams show, but that’s not just because it’s a data center, because they have a special ticket, it’s just they’re moving really fast, and the system’s straining to keep up.”
NDAs and Shell Companies
Julie Waters, a Dallas attorney, felt alarmed to learn of a data center planned in her hometown of Crowell, a 600-person town in North Texas where her parents still live.
The local utility is already at Stage Four water restrictions for her area, meaning each resident must decrease their daily use by 40% and refrain from using sprinklers, washing cars and filling pools.
“We need to know how they are going to affect our water, how they’re going to affect our electricity, how they’re going to affect our health, and what’s going to happen to our agricultural land,” said Waters, who created a Facebook group called “Texans United Against Data Centers” that boasts more than 35,000 members. “You know, what’s going to happen to the cattle, what’s going to happen to the crops.
So that’s why transparency is so key.”
Data centers can consume millions of gallons of water per year, necessary to cool their equipment. But publicly available information about their water consumption is often difficult to find.
There is no uniform reporting system for data center water usage in Texas, so a resident in search of information about a data center’s water use would have to know which entity has oversight. That could be a local utility, river authority, groundwater district or city.