The data center fight in Denton, Texas
As of October 1, 2026, Denton, Texas has a data center moratorium under consideration (action taken Aug 5, 2026).
Status is derived, not stored — a pause with a documented end date flips to Expired on its own — and the source is right next to the claim.
Status today
Council voted 4-3 to proceed with a possible 90-day moratorium; public hearings tentatively Sep 22 / Oct 27, final adoption Dec 2
SourceNews
read 2026-08-13
An expiry date is the earliest a pause could have ended — extensions are common, so confirm with the clerk before citing it.
The project on the table
CoreWeave Denton TX —
Operator: CoreWeave · Owner: CoreWeave · Tenant: OpenAI · Size: 262 MW
Chip types: B200. Epoch AI estimates ~262 MW.
Next: Already operating — the leverage now is enforcement: noise and water conditions, tax revenue tracking, and any expansion filing, which reopens the record.
Latest in the record
- 2026-08-05 — Denton City Council voted 4-3 to direct staff to proceed with a possible 90-day data center moratorium and stricter development code amendments; public hearings were tentatively set for September 22 and October 27, 2026, with final adoption targeted for December 2, 2026. · source
- 2026-05-07 — Community Impact reported the Core Scientific campus holds a lease on 78.85 acres of city land with up to 394 MW of power allocation and a $6.1 billion real property investment; the expansion begun in November 2024 is expected to be completed by 2027. · source
- 2026-04-03 — The Denton Record-Chronicle reported growing community debate over data center development, with residents raising concerns about noise, environmental impact, and the pace of growth at Core Scientific's facility and other proposed sites. · source
- 2026-01-14 — CoreWeave reported deploying more than 16,000 GPUs at the Denton facility for OpenAI workloads, recovering from construction delays that had left only a few racks delivered as of November 2025; over 2,000 GPUs were brought online in a single day in December 2025. · source
- 2025-10-30 — Core Scientific shareholders voted against the $9 billion CoreWeave merger at a special meeting; the merger agreement was terminated immediately and Core Scientific remained an independent public company. · source
- 2025-07-07 — CoreWeave announced a definitive agreement to acquire Core Scientific in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $9 billion, gaining access to roughly 1.3 GW of data center capacity including the Denton site. · source
Full dated timeline on the project tracker.
Source. Read 2026-08-14.
Recent news
9 stories tracked since 2026-08-21 across 6 outlets. 6× Local officials are moving to pause or block the project. 2× A community is pushing back on a nearby data center. Most recent: “Amendments to strengthen data center rules in Denton’s development code now head to the City Council” (Denton Record-Chronicle, 2026-09-27).
- Amendments to strengthen data center rules in Denton’s development code now head to the City Council
- Denton officials weigh data center moratorium during first public hearing
- Denton holds first hearing on a data center moratorium as Core Scientific eyes more land
- Denton holds first hearing on a data center moratorium as Core Scientific eyes more land
- Denton holds first hearing on a data center moratorium as Core Scientific eyes more land
- Denton leaders to decide on a possible moratorium on data center projects
- Denton residents support moratorium as city weighs future data center development
- Denton residents call for city council to impose temporary restriction on data centers
- Denton City Council starts legal process for data center moratorium
Automated news aggregation, not human-verified — follow each link to the original outlet. Part of the story tracker, 9 headlines archived.
What to do next
- Questions to ask at the hearing — force specific answers onto the record.
- Estimate the impact — electricity, water, and rate pressure for any facility size in Texas.
- Model CBA clauses — copy-paste language communities have actually won.
- Texas briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts, and every fight in the state.
Nearby in Texas
- Lewisville (13 mi) — Enactedno end date — permanent
- Fort Worth (34 mi) — Proposedterm not documented
- Princeton (36 mi) — Enactedno end date — permanent
- Lavon (42 mi) — Enactedexpires soon — 2026-11-05
- Mesquite (43 mi) — Proposedterm not documented
- Forney (50 mi) — Proposedno end date — permanent
- Hood County (68 mi) — Rejectedterm not documented
- Hill County (83 mi) — Rescindedterm not documented
All 23 tracked actions in Texas are on the state page.
As of August 2026 (2m ago) · changes weekly — re-check before citing
Illustrative rather than exhaustive — dozens of localities churn weekly, and this tracks the ones we have read a source for. **Each row carries its own provenance.** Rows showing a verification date link to the ordinance, the enacting body's own page, or a datable report of the vote, and were read on that date. Rows marked *unverified* came from bulk compilation and have not been checked against a primary source — the locality, the year, and the status may all be off. Verify one of those with the town clerk before citing it as precedent. **Expiry is derived, not asserted.** A row with a documented end date flips to *Expired* on its own once that date passes. A time-limited moratorium whose start date was never documented keeps showing as enacted — that is a known gap, not a claim that it is still in force. Moratoriums are also routinely extended, so an expiry date is the earliest it could have ended, not proof that it did.
Part of the U.S. data center moratorium tracker — open data, CC BY 4.0.