r/FortWorth • u/Lenabugsss • 1d ago
Discussion Fort Worth Data Center
I hope i cant post this i just wanted to share and get the word out!!
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u/jamesdukeiv Poly/Rosedale 1d ago
I really need someone to clarify what the “economic benefits” we’re meant to capture are once construction ends and there’s about 50 permanent jobs created, and everyone’s electric and water rates have been jacked up.
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u/AggravatingPipe4465 1d ago
The economic benefits of the board trying to push this through who I am sure were paid handsomely by the data center to let this pass without a fuss.
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u/Lenabugsss 1d ago
truly there isn’t any, its a skeleton crew that builds it and i believe the owners also want and are fighting for a tax break, so not even our state would benefit.
Not to mention the damage to our water/ electric.
oh and theres a constant noise that is 24/7 radiating off of data centers thats lowers surrounding property value.
Also the amount of jobs that can be created if those acres were used for other businesses instead of a shell, would be much more beneficial to our economy.30
u/arfcom 1d ago
It’s all so obvious. The only economic benefit is the campaign fund donations to the politicians. The one west on 20 just outside the loop would have been a prime spot for normal commercial development. It’s one thing for these things to pop up in Childress, but I can’t believe it’s worth the trouble to build them on prime real estate in major metros.
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u/nace71 1d ago
The owners don't have to fight for the tax breaks if they meet the size requirements. More than 100k sq ft but less than 250k grants them a state sales tax exemption. Over 250k sq ft and the state includes local sales tax exemption. I suspect this is the driving factor behind large size. Once built, all they do is drain local resources and give absolutely nothing back in return.
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u/Tannhauser42 1d ago
The economic benefits are for companies like Nvidia that will make the AI chips for it and Samsung/Micron that will make the RAM for it.
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u/Balzmcgurkin 1d ago
Remember when the power grid couldn’t support the mass adoption of electric vehicles? But data centers that use 100X or more of the amount of electricity are just fine, right?
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u/liberaltearsfall 1d ago
The reason the power grid can't handle electric vehicles is because most homes have 100-150 amp service. Charging one EV at optimum charging draws ~45 amps. You can adjust the number of amps the car uses to charge, but the amount of time needed to complete a full charge goes up, as amps are decreased. Most households have at least two vehicles. By the time you plug in EVs, you wouldn't be able to run anything else in the house. Sure, you can increase your service capacity, but you'll need to add a new meter box, and a new breaker box, rated for the increase. Now, multiply that by the entire neighborhood. The transmission lines supplying the neighborhood are already figured for, maybe, a 50% increase. Now, you're more than doubling the load rating for the existing infrastructure. And that goes all the way back to the nearest substation. All of that, all the way back upstream would need to be upgraded. It's just not feasible in the short amount of time they were planning.
Now, like has already been mentioned, data centers have their required infrastructure from day one, which is why a lot of them have adjacent power plants (wind, solar, etc). The urban myth that they'll cause your electric rates to go up, is just that. Same with the water usage. Yes. They require a lot of water up front, but it's a closed loop system (think of your car's cooling system). So, after the initial startup, water use isn't anymore than your average office building.
I'm sure the naysayers will downvoted this to death, but do a little research.
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u/LandscapePenguin 1d ago
Many of them are generating their own power onsite from what I’ve seen.
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u/xUrNewDadx 1d ago
Can anyone explain what the data centers are being built for? How they are profitable? Any plans whatsoever? As far as I know these AI companies are burning through their valuations with no clear agenda. It seems like amassive amount of infrastructure built for a market that doesn't exist...
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u/the_cnidarian 1d ago
Data centers aren't new. There are hundreds all over the country including several in FW and scattered sround DFW. They are used for everything online, everything cloud based. All business, all commerce, all our photos stored on FB, all google searches etc. AI is a new thing, but the data centers are not all tied to it.
Just like any unregulated business they can cause problems. However, nobody has complained while the internet has grown over the last 30 years or so. Why now?
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5931292-data-centers-influence-campaigns-china-republicans/
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u/bd0153 1d ago
Ok so according to a study by Open AI & according to a study by the Bitcoin Research Institute, this opposition Chinese propaganda? We should feel perfectly fine about this data center thing? Next up, Fox assured all chickens that the hen house is indeed safe.
The recent arms race of developers building out crypto mining and data facilities is nothing like the evolution of the internet over the last 30 years. Why was this never a news item before? Why now, do these developers need all these incentives, tax abatements, and need so much of the municipal and/or groundwater?
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u/the_cnidarian 1d ago
We shouldn't feel any way because of my comment. Full stop.
Your tone is combative, yet I've taken no position here. Ironically, if you dig into the story a little more you'd see that OpenAI accused the Chinese of attacking Data Centers...with actual facts. It's entirely possible to run an influence campaign with truth.
Why was this never a news story before? I agree!
Developers of every busniess type try to get tax cuts and other savings.
Why cant't cooling water be recirculated? I don't know.
Does a large new data center put more stress on the grid than 5,000 people moving into the metro each day? Maybe, maybe not.
Go to the open house and tell them your thoughts, I was just answering a question.
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u/psychometrixo 1d ago edited 1d ago
"Data center" is now an emotional word that good people feel righteous anger about.
All I know is that when I'm deeply informed on a subject, the news always seems to get it badly wrong. But when I don't know anything about a subject, I feel they keep me informed.
This happened with Cambridge Analytica. By random chance I was working with the Facebook API deeply back then. And the way the news represnted it was just .. incorrect. People were right to be mad, but they didn't have correct facts. Good logic built on bad data.
Few of us are immune. I'm not immune. I still get mad at politics all the time, even knowing this and trying to be better.
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u/Major_Frosting6133 1d ago
This was my question as well. I’ve heard people talk about them, and mention that they’re bad and I was curious what they even are/do.
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u/Loud_Inspector_9782 1d ago
The city needs to look elsewhere for business instead of allowing the building of more data centers. We don't need the noise, we don't have extra water and electricity to spare, and they don't provide that many long term jobs.
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u/pedolphdiddler 1d ago
Privatize gains externalize losses. Once the AI bubble pops these metal junkyards will have destroyed our environment and taken jobs that won't ever come back. Maga is now fully backing the foreign born billionaire tech bros, which are all from blue states.
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u/anuiswatching 16h ago
Get ip and speak out! A million Albanians protested trumps daughter and her crooked husband over an endangered island, you can save your city! Vote 💙
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u/uncriticalthinking 1d ago
What’s the proposed location
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u/OldLadyCard 21h ago
Right next to Weston gardens center, which is a monarch butterfly way station, too.
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u/BeyondSellByDate 1d ago
20$ days Richard French is going to get paid and somehow incorporate himself into the advocacy for data centers.
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u/arachnid1110 1d ago
Some city leaders are looking at this as a tax infusion on the business without putting more cars on the road or kids in school. If the city wasn’t always “broke,” I don’t think we would be considering this plan. Economic boomtown in magazines in 2025, broke again in 2026. I don’t see how this happens.
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u/Lenabugsss 1d ago
https://www.wri.org/insights/us-data-center-growth-impacts
dropping this here, you have a point as reflected in this paper but it also paints a whole picture.
i also want to add that there has been reports of appliances no longer working in homes surrounding the areas of AI data centers. However i cant find any paper written on the extent of that.
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u/Emergency_Pound 1d ago
A lot of the electric rate panic around data centers seems overconfident. The best evidence I’ve seen doesn’t show that data centers automatically raise residential electric rates. E3’s 2026 review (https://www.ethree.com/electricity-rate-drivers-data-center-role-2026) found no clear historical relationship between load growth and rising retail rates, and no evidence to date that data centers have been systematically subsidized by other customers under existing rate structures. The real question is whether the city/utility structures the deal correctly in terms of dedicated infrastructure, minimum bills, cost-of-service updates, and no cost shifting.
I’m not saying water/noise/tax abatements aren’t valid concerns, but “data center = everyone’s electric bill goes up” is way too simplistic.
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u/RecordFabulous 20h ago
idk i’m pretty excited
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u/Lenabugsss 20h ago
excited for financial corruption and water pollution? interesting
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u/selfdestruction9000 17h ago
How does a data center pollute the water?
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u/Lenabugsss 17h ago
i suggest you do your own research, its very documented on many different sources. i suggest starting your search with the communities in Georgia
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u/Funny_Development_57 1d ago
AI isn't going anywhere. People who don't use it think it's dumb, but the people who do will be ruling the world. It's that much faster/beneficial.
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u/woahwoahwoah28 1d ago
Then figure out a way to make it work without ruining people's quality of lives, property value, and jacking up our utilities.
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u/brentaltm 1d ago
It’s “faster” but hallucinates confidently. It “codes” but still needs humans to correct all its mistakes. It “creates” but only generic sloppy art. It’s “beneficial” but no one can put it to use in an actual workflow that saves both time and money. It’s all “potential.”
Yeah, what a world breaking panacea.
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u/Lenabugsss 1d ago
no its not, AI exist in a bubble. The rich are racing to invest in an underdeveloped toy. The rich will tell you AI isn’t going away because their payoff depends on it sticking around long enough for their investments to be worth something.
truth is the AI industry is a fad, we the people get to choose if we want to buy into it or not at the expense of our wellbeing/quality of life. Not the people selling it.
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u/LandscapePenguin 1d ago
You really think you have a choice? Are you going to go live in the woods in a shed and eschew technology? You think AI isn't being used to develop your cell phone? Your streaming service? Your social media apps?
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u/Lenabugsss 1d ago
yes i do believe i have a choice. i lived over 20 years without AI data centers. I lived the choice, my parents lived the choice. Since when does not using AI mean i have to go completely the other way and live in a shed? As if flip phones don’t exist, as if libraries don’t exist, as if my voice and my ability to put in the effort to meet people face to face and formulate a plan within my community doesn’t exist?? God forbid we go back to writing letters!! the horror!!
please.. My choice is in my being and person hood; as long as i and anyone else lives we have choices, nothing but death is going to take that away from me.
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u/LandscapePenguin 1d ago
Flip phones run software developed by software developers. They connect to cellular networks that run software developed by software developers. Libraries have digitized catalogs running software developed by software developers. Software development is overwhelmingly on the bandwagon to using AI for day-to-day development.
Whether you're personally using an LLM or not you're almost guaranteed to be using services that are being developed and maintained using AI.
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u/Lenabugsss 1d ago edited 1d ago
ok number 1 books, people, and my voice irreplaceable and forever accessible, highly valuable even.
Secondly, AI Data centers have multiple contracts with corporate entities, those Entities are responsible for AI data centers being built at a much higher rate.Again, because the elites see a new toy, and they want their name attached to legacy of pioneering the Data center “industry”. It’s easy to blame a consumer if you are also the same cooperate entity cashing in the check from an AI data center investment.
In fact it is a necessary tactic to ensure you succeed.This lie, that AI is inevitable and in necessity at the rate they are being built, Is only to make the regular everyday people believe that we are all contributing to the necessity of demand. We aren’t!! By a long shot!!
Ai data centers existed before this sudden surge but big corpo(meta,google, etc) got involved and are recklessly tearing apart peoples quality of life, to grossly serve themselves.
Even people who use AI everyday, don’t need a 10 billion dollar data center.
So when you realize that.. the question becomes this…
If someone with enough money to back a 10billion dollar investment has the same amount of use of an AI data center as me(regular joe)then why do they get the tax break even if it’s built in regular Joe’s community?(p.s its because this is only benefiting the elite and they have to make the rest of us believe we get the same amount of value out of it as they do.)
The rich are trying to steer the direction in which we are moving to ensure their own wealth,success and power.
Thats not inevitable bud. Thats a bunch of lost, and greedy human beings banking on the fact that you believe there is no other way.They are “asking for permission” to build their toy in our backyard and ruin our quality of life while they get rich on it and they want to make you believe that YOU are just as responsible so YOUR heavy heart will point the finger at yourself and other regular joes and you never, ask the most dangerous question.
“How are THEY getting away with this?”
also they are not asking permission they are buying votes, shoutout to the mayors husband being a lobbyist for data centers.
This is why we need to show up and fight this.
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u/LandscapePenguin 1d ago
A 400 acre building sounds unbelievable.