2K signatures against data center

CEDAR CREEK LAKE – A petition created by nonprofit ‘Save Cedar Creek Lake’ has gathered over 2,500 signatures in an attempt to save the East Texas lake from data centers. ‘Save Cedar Creek Lake’ is a local non-profit that’s aiming to stop a planned data center from being built near the Key Ranch Estates on Cedar Creek Lake in Henderson County. Their new petition is just the latest step they’ve taken towards stopping data center plans near the lake.

According to the nonprofit’s website and our news partner KETK, the petition, it’s signatures and the following demands will be sent to the respective organizations:

“Henderson County Commissioners Court: Deny any Chapter 312 tax abatement for a hyperscale data center, and oppose every related TCEQ permit application during public comment.”
“Lake-area school & hospital districts: Deny any Chapter 403 / school-district value-limitation agreement that would shift facility costs away from the developer.”
“Texas Legislature: Grant Texas counties limited siting authority over hyperscale water-using facilities, or set state-level setback, water-use, and noise standards directly.”
“TCEQ: Condition every water-rights, wastewater, air, and noise permit on closed-loop cooling, a 55-dB property-line standard, and minimum 10-mile setbacks from homes, schools, and the lake shoreline.
“Tarrant Regional Water District & PUC of Texas: Condition raw-water supply contracts to require closed-loop cooling; require developers to pay 100% of the cost of new transmission and substations rather than socializing those costs to ratepayers.”

Local attorney and Cedar Creek Lake property owner Ashley Cook is one of the nonprofit’s leaders and she spoke with KETK News at a town hall the group hosted on June 28.

“It’s going to take a lot of people making a whole lot of noise for us to be able to get it across on a state level that this is really important,” Cook said in June. “We need people to understand that this is a serious issue.”

Their goal is to reach 5,000 signatures before they send off the petition. To learn more, visit Save Cedar Creek online.