{"id":1458409,"date":"2025-11-17T03:13:26","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T09:13:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/?p=1458409"},"modified":"2025-11-19T05:19:21","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T11:19:21","slug":"sulphur-springs-suing-landowners-blocking-datacenter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/?p=1458409","title":{"rendered":"Sulphur Springs suing landowners blocking datacenter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"SULPHUR SPRINGS \u2013 The former owners of the land where a massive AI datacenter campus is planned to built in Sulphur Springs are being sued by the city for trying to stop part of the datacenter project. According to our news partner KETK, the lawsuit comes after the Vistra Corporation, parent company of Luminant Mining Company, issued a cease and desist letter to the city on Sept. 30. They sent the letter after learning about Sulphur Springs\u2019 deal with MSB Global to build 30 AI data centers on the land that Luminant had gifted to the city.<\/p>\n

According to court documents, when Luminant transferred the mine land to the city they included a restrictive covenant in the deed that would prevent the land for being used for power generation or power storage of any kind. Since the datacenters are planned to include onsite power generation or storage, Vistra claims the covenant would prevent construction that equipment.<\/p>\n

Vistra\u2019s cease and desist letter says they brought up how this restrictive covenant could block the construction of a datacenter on the land to the city several times since they granted them the property in 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can imagine Vistra\u2019s surprise, then, when the Data Center Project was announced for the
\nProperty without resolution of Vistra\u2019s concerns,\u201d Vistra\u2019s letter said. \u201cIndeed, upon review of the site plan publicly available on MSB Global\u2019s website, the Data Center Project includes a \u20181.6 GW POWER PLANT (UNDER CONSTRUCTION)\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s lawsuit claims this restrictive covenant was only added to the proposed deed on the day that it was signed, after years of discussion about transferring the land. The city claims that Luminant signed a letter of intent for the exchange in 2017 that supported \u201creclamation activities and changes of land use that result in beneficial land use by the general public.\u201d<\/p>\n

They also claim that Luminant directly benefited from the gift by giving the land to the city before declaring bankruptcy and claiming the gift as a tax right off. They also claim that Luminant was able to post a large monetary bond to lay off $43 million in obligations to the Texas Railroad Commission and other obligations, by gifting the land to the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn actuality, it has now become clear that Defendants intended to reap all the benefits using the \u2018gift\u2019 deed to City of undisclosed bankruptcy relief, obligations of reclamation relief and savings from City\u2019s involvement, as well as the resulting monetary gains from Defendants\u2019 bond, obligations of waterway restoration relief and savings from City\u2019s involvement, obligations to TCEQ relief and savings from City\u2019s involvement, obligations of rebuilding a bridge and portion of highway entirely from City\u2019s involvement, and the forgiveness of tens of thousands of dollars in tax debts from City\u2019s involvement,\u201d the lawsuit claimed.<\/p>\n

Sulphur Springs\u2019 lawsuit goes on to accuse Luminant and Vistra of attempting to create a monopoly in the electricity market and asking the city for more $100 million to remove the restrictive covenant.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, despite their windfall of benefits from the transfer and from City\u2019s involvement, as soon as City\u2019s hard work resulted in a significant and transformative contract for development that would greatly benefit City, all of East Texas, as well as the entire state of Texas, Defendants finally showed their ultimate intention of creating a monopoly for electricity on the land and then gouging City and City\u2019s developer for an obscene amount of compensation ($100+ million) to release a restriction on land in which Defendants didn\u2019t even want to conduct business,\u201d the lawsuit alleged.<\/p>\n

The Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton\u2019s office filled an amicus brief in Sulphur Springs lawsuit asking for the case to not be dismissed early because their Antitrust Division has launched an investigation into Luminant for allegedly including this restrictive covenant into more than 100 other deeds across the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter looking into this deception further, the City found out that the Luminant Defendants
\nincluded this clause into almost 150 deeds across eighteen different counties,\u201d the brief claimed. \u201cSeveral other deeds transferred property to other government entities, including McLennan County, the Town of Sunnyvale, Rusk County, the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department and Titus County.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paxton\u2019s office is supporting the city\u2019s claims and estimates that Luminant may have used this restrictive covenant to enrich their company by nearly $15 billion.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe State files this brief to support the City\u2019s claims that the restrictions are against public policy, are designed to govern state action and seek to impermissibly enrich the Luminant Defendants to the tune of almost fifteen billion dollars,\u201d the brief stated.<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s lawsuit is asking 62nd Judicial District Judge Gary D. Young to find whether the deed restriction should be struck down as void and accuses the companies of fraudulent concealment, common law fraud and civil conspiracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SULPHUR SPRINGS \u2013 The former owners of the land where a massive AI datacenter campus is planned to built in Sulphur Springs are being sued by the city for trying to stop part of the datacenter project. According to our news partner KETK, the lawsuit comes after the Vistra Corporation, parent company of Luminant Mining … Continue reading Sulphur Springs suing landowners blocking datacenter<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1458652,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2025\/11\/2025-11-17_031308-202x200.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1458409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news-archive-archives"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-07 14:18:55","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2025\/11\/2025-11-17_031308-202x200.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1458409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1458409"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1458409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1459040,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1458409\/revisions\/1459040"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1458652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1458409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1458409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1458409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}