Angry residents filled the courtroom of the Archer County Courthouse Thursday with one unanimous message to county leaders — they don’t want a data center.
County leaders said they don’t want it either, but there’s little they can do about it.
“We’re looking at any tool we can use to protect our residents,” county Judge Randall Jackson said at a meeting of the county commissioners court billed as a workshop on the potential construction of Google’s Project Raptor data center on Three-Way Road just southwest of Wichita Falls and a solar/battery facility just south of the Archer City airport.
Most of the attention and anger was directed at the data center.
“We damn sure don’t want it,” one resident said. “We gotta fight on some level here.”
He and others urged the commissioners to follow the lead of Hill County and enact a moratorium on data centers.
But County Attorney Jordyn Berend said the county does not have the authority to issue a moratorium.
“Even if the commissioners did approve and put in a moratorium that doesn’t stop them from building,” she said. “That private property is just like private property you bought.”
Berend said unlike cities, which can enact ordinances, counties have virtually no authority over what landowners can build.
“None of us here want this,” she said.
Precinct 1 Commissioner Wade Scarbrough said the only leverage a county can have is through an abatement agreement. He handed out sheets with examples of how other counties worked abatement agreements with stipulations that ranged from setbacks from property lines to funding of fire departments.
He emphasized Archer County has not yet reached any abatement agreements with Google.
Berend said a tax abatement is not an invitation to developers to come into Archer County.
“The tax abatement negotiations is the only way we can have any control over what they do on that property that’s near your home,” she said.
She said the commissioners have told the developers, “Look, we don’t want you here, but we’re going to protect our constituents.”
Berend said, “You may see Wichita Falls with their projects going on. They actually invited these industrial projects into Wichita Falls and offered tax abatements. That is not the case here.”
When Jackson asked for questions from the public, the response was adamant and emotional.
“I want to raise my kids in a conservative, amazing city like Holliday. Now you’ve got all this coming in,” one resident said.
A truck driver said anytime he drives from Amarillo, he sees the lights of data centers under construction.
“There’s Vernon. There’s Childress. There’s Quanah. There’s Claude. They’re just trickling all over (U.S. Highway) 287,” he said.
“I’m hearing this is an AI goal, or how we fight China, or keep ahead of technology. It doesn’t have to be near neighborhoods,” another man said.
Another resident said he doesn’t care about the property tax revenue the data center could bring to the county.
“I care about the community. I want the community protected,” he said. “If you want to talk about taxes and money in this county, you’re gonna lose it. Nobody’s gonna want to be here.”
One woman was almost in tears.
“We’re going way too fast on this. The language in this room sounds like it’s a done deal,” she said. “It scares me. Do I put my house on the market now? Do I just get the hell out of here while I can? How do we work together to stop this? What do we need to do?”
“Nobody has answers to this monster,” a man said.
Scarbrough said data centers will be a hot topic in the next session of the Texas Legislature.“Hopefully, legislators can put some teeth into it,” he said.
He said he understands the Google project has not yet received its power allotment from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which is a requirement. Scarbrough also said the center is expected to be similar to that planned by Skybox Datacenters in the Wichita Falls Business Park.
A handout provided to the county by Google said the Archer County site will be a potential multi-phased development on about 2,800 acres that represents a $1 billion investment.
This article originally appeared on Wichita Falls Times Record News: Google’s data center plans stir anger among Archer County residents
Reporting by Lynn Walker, Wichita Falls Times Record News / Wichita Falls Times Record News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
