On September 21, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas signed a letter written in the language of command. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the agency that decides what may go into the state’s air and water, was to “halt all permits sought by data centers.” The state’s water and power agencies would audit the projects, and the commission was to “pause the issuance of all permits related to data center projects” until the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the grid operator everyone calls ERCOT, finished its review. The reason, the governor wrote, was that “the goal is to put Texans first.”
A month later, the commission’s own public database tells a different story. That, at least, is what the people who read it say.
The ledger
Two nonprofits, Public Citizen and the FracTracker Alliance, went through those records with local activists. As Matthew Gault reported for 404 Media, they found an agency still at work: reviewing documents and assigning engineers to data center permits after the pause. Public Citizen counted more than 15 such permits. FracTracker counted 35. In documents the outlet examined, the commission had issued air-emission limit certificates to a large data center in Houston, approved stormwater coverage for construction at data centers in Abilene, Barstow and Royse City, and fast-tracked gas power plants for more than a dozen data center projects.
Part of this is the calendar. A data center needs dozens of permits, not one, and some of the paperwork may have been filed before September 21. Much of it was filed later. Of 14 applications for gas plants and generators, 12 were filed in October, and eight were handled through expedited review. One was an air permit for engines and turbines to power a data center in Irving, a suburb of Dallas. The builder asked for expedited review on October 6. A commission engineer finished the initial review two days later.
Two days. Governments announce their priorities in letters, but they show them in how fast the files move.
Austin answers
The governor’s office denies that anything has been approved. “No permits have been approved,” said Andrew Mahaleris, Abbott’s press secretary. “In line with the Governor’s directive, TCEQ has not taken and will not take any proactive actions related to the approval of data center permits. Likewise, no other state agency will approve data center-related permits until the Public Utility Commission, ERCOT, and the Water Development Board have the information they need to make informed decisions. Texans must come first.”
Asked why several data center stormwater projects appear in the system as “approved,” the governor’s office sent the question to the commission. The commission replied: “The Commission has not issued any permits related to data centers and is complying with Governor Abbott’s directive.”
Kathryn Guerra of Public Citizen, speaking at a press conference on Monday, saw it differently. “The TCEQ’s own data indicates that it’s business as usual for data centers and affected communities were promised a freeze,” she said. What those communities got instead, in her words, was “another reason to distrust the TCEQ and ultimately ineffective attempts to govern by press release.”
The notice of intent
Sam Law, a researcher and communications manager at FracTracker, said the commission had given him “a more exacting interpretation of their own situation”: it was accepting applications but not reviewing them. “That was shown to not be true,” he said.
The stormwater approvals, Law explained, come through a loophole. The state approves one generic construction stormwater permit, and developers join it by filing a notice of intent. That permit covers raising and levelling the ground. “It’s often the final approval needed to move forward to prepare the site to actually build the physical structure,” he said. Where there is no zoning, or the land lies outside any city, it is all a company needs to start building. “The Caldwell Technology Park [...] the Stargate facility, and a bunch of other very large hyperscale facilities have gotten regulatory approvals in the form of this notice of intent, so it’s not like a real pause,” Law said. He believes the governor wants to be seen opposing data centers without doing the regulatory work.
Abilene
Several projects are under way in Abilene, among them OpenAI’s Stargate. According to the commission’s records, it issued a water quality permit for the Abilene data center on September 23, two days after the pause. Residents have received letters from the commission about a gas plant and what it may do to the air. They fought for, and won, the right to testify at public hearings.
Riley Rodriquez, an Abilene resident and Democratic candidate for the state senate, expects little from those hearings. “We are, in fact, going to get a massive gas turbine plant right to people’s houses,” he said. Even with the best comments and “500,000 people behind me,” he said, “they’re going to flip that switch because they put the money on it anyways.” People there learned about Stargate too late to fight it: “‘It was built, concrete’s poured, generators are going in, boys. Sorry.’”
“Guess what? They’re still putting in that power plant, and there ain’t nothing me and my people can do about it. We’re just going to have to keep that boot on our neck. It ain’t right.”
The scale and the money
Texas may become the data center capital of the world. About 300 already operate in the state, 100 are under construction and 200 more are planned. They include Meta’s $14 billion project in El Paso, a smaller one in Taylor on land meant for a public park, and Fermi’s nuclear-powered campus in Amarillo. The backlash has turned into a major issue for Texas voters, and it is spreading, from rallies in Washington state to warnings from Amazon about moratoriums.
On the day the nonprofits released their findings, the Texas Tribune reported that Abbott had taken in about $9 million from donors tied to data centers since July 2025, about 13 percent of what he raised in that period. 404 Media described all of that money as coming from developers and owners. The Tribune’s own breakdown is narrower: about $5 million from donors who develop, own or operate data centers, and $4.1 million from donors with indirect ties. After Abbott paused grid approvals for data centers in August, he received another $2.8 million from the industry, his largest monthly haul from it this election cycle. A spokesperson called the reporting a “disingenuous attempt to manufacture controversy out of information that is not new.”
According to an analysis by the law firm Troutman Pepper Locke, the order gave the commission until October 19 to report its compliance to the governor’s office and set no fixed end date for the pause. Attorneys at Bracewell said ERCOT’s audit is expected to finish in mid-December. Until then the governor says nothing moves. The commission’s records show that files are still moving.