Yes. We now have enough primary-source material to start the actual Fort Worth Development Accountability Ledger rather than continuing to talk about it abstractly.
One important correction from our earlier discussion: USGS released Annual NLCD Collection 1.2 on June 30, 2026, extending annual land-cover and land-cover-change data through 2025. That gives us a legitimate scientific baseline for measuring what has happened to the landscape.
Fort Worth's 2025 Development Activity Report recorded 1,278 new non-residential commercial permits, up 8.3% from 1,172 in 2024. More strikingly, the reported valuation of those new non-residential commercial permits increased from approximately $2.1 billion in 2024 to $5.4 billion in 2025—a 151% increase. These figures exclude multifamily housing.
That is a very substantial acceleration in commercial construction.
These are actual entries in Fort Worth's development records—not projections from social media or development websites.
The city recorded 5.4 billion dollars of new non-residential commercial permit valuation in 2025 alone.
That doesn't mean $5.4 billion of land was paved over.
It means the value of permitted new commercial construction reached that level.
That's an important distinction.
But it demonstrates the sheer magnitude of construction occurring.
And Fort Worth continues publishing monthly Development Activity Reports through 2026, allowing us to track the expansion rather than relying on an old annual snapshot.
This is where we can finally measure the landscape itself.
The USGS Annual NLCD provides annual land-cover information at 30-meter resolution and includes a specific Land Cover Change product showing the transition from one land-cover class to another from year to year.
That means we can distinguish, for example:
Forest → Developed
from:
Grassland → Developed
Agriculture → Developed
rather than simply saying "Fort Worth lost green space."
That's much more defensible.
I recommend using:
as the baseline,
then measuring:
and treating:
as the development pipeline rather than pretending future projects are already built.
Why?
Because USGS's annual dataset gives us actual observed land cover through 2025.
For 2026 onward, we switch to planning and permitting records.
That creates a clean distinction:
PAST = measured satellite change
PRESENT = permits/construction
FUTURE = approved/proposed projects
Acres converted from natural/agricultural land → developed
Woodland/forest converted
Grassland/pasture converted
Agricultural land converted
Roads + parking + roofs + concrete
New units
Square footage
Square footage + MW
Gallons/day and gallons/year where documented
MW requested / approved / connected
Actual approved incentives
Permanent employment commitments
Road, water, sewer, drainage and electrical requirements
Land actually protected
We should not lump apartments, warehouses and data centers into one "development" number.
They affect the community differently.
For example:
Main concerns:
population + water + wastewater + traffic + schools + public services
land + truck traffic + roads + pavement + drainage + employment
electricity + substations + cooling + water + backup generation + fiber + relatively low permanent employment
That distinction will make our final report much stronger.
Fort Worth's own data-center policy page confirms that the city is actively developing regulations addressing these facilities. In 2026, the city presented proposed regulations, held a public open house, and advanced zoning-policy discussions.
So this isn't merely an environmental debate anymore.
It's becoming an actual municipal planning issue.
Not:
"Are data centers bad?"
"Is development bad?"
Instead:
That's the accountability question.
$1 billion investment 500 acres 500 jobs X gallons water X MW electricity $X incentive X acres preserved
versus:
$1 billion investment 100 acres 50 jobs X gallons water 200 MW electricity $X incentive zero conservation
Those projects have very different public consequences, even though both are "one-billion-dollar developments."
We can ultimately produce a 2015 → 2025 land-conversion map showing:
GREEN — natural/open land remaining
BROWN — agriculture
DARK GREEN — woodland
GRAY — developed/impervious land
and then overlay:
🔴 warehouses 🟣 data centers 🟠 major apartment developments 🔵 roads/infrastructure 🟢 protected land
The USGS data is specifically designed for this kind of land-change analysis.
I don't want to give you a dramatic-looking number such as:
"Fort Worth destroyed 40,000 acres of forest."
unless the GIS analysis actually produces that number.
The USGS data can tell us exactly what changed, but we need to process the Fort Worth boundary against the annual raster data to calculate the acreage.
That is the next technical step.
2015 → 2020 → 2025
Fort Worth boundary
Forest / grassland / agriculture / developed
Then calculate:
How many acres changed from each natural/agricultural category into developed land?
Once we have that number, we can put the apartments, warehouses and data centers on top of the actual land-change evidence.
That will give you the answer to the question you've been asking from the beginning:
Yes. I’ve now moved this from the general discussion into a documented Fort Worth development baseline. The most important thing I can tell you is that the evidence supports your observation of rapid physical change, but we need to distinguish measured land conversion from future development proposals.
The U.S. Geological Survey's Annual NLCD now provides annual land-cover and land-change data from 1985 through 2025, at 30-meter resolution. It specifically records transitions such as one land-cover class changing into another.
USGS even uses the northern Dallas–Fort Worth area as an example, showing the expansion of developed/urban land from 1985 through 2023.
So the basic observation:
"The open land is disappearing and being replaced by development."
is supported by satellite-based evidence.
I am not going to manufacture an acreage figure for Fort Worth until the GIS data are actually clipped to the Fort Worth boundary and calculated.
That is the next step needed for a scientifically defensible number.
The city's Development Activity Committee maintains monthly reports, including January through June 2026.
And these aren't tiny projects.
For example, recent city records include:
Alliance Center North — Building 3
New shell warehouse
$20.45 million
First Industrial Fossil Creek
New office/warehouse shell
$7.38 million
And earlier city records show projects such as:
ACN8 & ACN9
New commercial warehouse buildings:
The same city development records show:
Presidio III Apartments
and
Standard at River District
with a parking garage.
Another example is Jefferson Ederville, a 398-unit apartment development in east Fort Worth, scheduled to open in winter 2026.
So what you're seeing isn't simply warehouses replacing open land.
It's:
all occurring as part of the same broader growth process.
Fort Worth currently reports:
containing:
with a combined footprint exceeding:
The facilities range from roughly 209,000 square feet to a 1.5-million-square-foot campus. The city says the first Fort Worth data center dates to 2000, with the most recent completed construction in 2025.
And the pipeline isn't finished.
Fort Worth currently identifies:
That's why the data-center question deserves to be treated separately from ordinary commercial construction.
Fort Worth's planning documents previously reported more than 66,000 acres of vacant developable land based on NCTCOG's 2015 estimates.
An earlier city economic-development document put the figure at approximately 70,661 acres using an older NCTCOG dataset.
But—and this is critical—
It can include pasture, grassland, previously disturbed property and other categories.
That's exactly why we're going to use USGS land-cover data to determine what the land actually was before development.
For each year:
Forest → ?
Grassland → ?
Agriculture → ?
Developed → ?
Then:
we calculate:
Wetland → Developed
Other natural → Developed
The USGS Land Cover Change product is specifically designed to identify those transitions.
Your description of the landscape being covered by "concrete" is actually something we can measure more precisely.
USGS has a separate:
product.
It measures the percentage of a location covered by impervious surfaces such as buildings, pavement and other surfaces that prevent water from infiltrating normally. The Annual NLCD product suite includes both fractional impervious surface and an impervious descriptor.
So our eventual report shouldn't merely say:
"X acres were developed."
It should also ask:
"How much of that land became effectively impervious?"
That's much closer to what you're describing when you look at a former grassy or wooded landscape and see roofs, parking lots and concrete.
Fort Worth is already considering specific regulations for data centers.
The city's current policy page says the proposed regulations address issues including water, wastewater, noise, zoning and infrastructure. The city is also moving through the legal process for a possible data-center moratorium, with a tentative February 16, 2027 council vote if the required steps are completed.
That is significant.
It means the city itself recognizes that data centers create issues requiring special consideration, rather than simply treating them like an ordinary office building.
That last line is important.
The question isn't simply:
We can ask something much harder:
Because imagine simultaneously increasing:
🏠 population
🏢 apartments
🏭 warehouses
💻 data centers
🚗 traffic
💧 water demand
⚡ electricity demand
while consuming:
🌳 open land
🌾 agricultural land
🌲 woodland
and increasing:
🛣️ roads
🚰 water infrastructure
⚡ transmission infrastructure
🌧️ stormwater infrastructure
That's the real system we're investigating.
The final report should have four parts:
PART I — THE LAND
2015 → 2025 satellite-measured conversion.
PART II — THE BUILDINGS
Apartments, warehouses, industrial projects and data centers.
PART III — THE RESOURCES
Water, electricity, roads, wastewater and stormwater.
PART IV — THE FUTURE
Approved and proposed 2026–2030 development.
And every number will carry a label:
🟢 VERIFIED
🟡 REPORTED
🔴 UNKNOWN
That last category is important. If the city or developer hasn't disclosed something, we should say so.
That way, the finished report isn't propaganda for or against development.
It becomes a public-accountability document based on government records, satellite observations and disclosed numbers.
John, that genuinely means a lot. Thank you. 🙏
And I appreciate the way you're approaching this: ask the hard questions, but then demand evidence. That's exactly how we'll keep the Fort Worth development investigation credible.
We'll keep separating what is known, what is estimated, and what remains unknown—especially when we're dealing with water, electricity, land use, tax incentives, and data centers.
God bless you too, my friend. 🙏🇺🇸
Absolutely. The concern about data centers and water consumption is legitimate, but the scale depends heavily on the type of facility, its cooling technology, climate, and whether the water is potable, reclaimed, or recycled.
The primary reason is heat.
Modern data centers contain thousands of servers running continuously. Those servers turn a large portion of their electricity into heat. That heat must be removed 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
One common method is evaporative cooling:
Electricity → Servers → Heat → Cooling system → Water evaporation
Water absorbs heat extremely effectively. In cooling towers, some of the water is deliberately evaporated into the atmosphere. That water has to be replaced.
This is where some of the claims circulating online become misleading.
A large hyperscale data center can consume hundreds of thousands of gallons of water per day, and facilities in the largest installations can reach millions of gallons per day under certain conditions.
But there is an important distinction:
Those numbers can be dramatically different.
Artificial intelligence is adding another dimension.
AI systems require enormous amounts of computing power, particularly during the training of large models and when millions of users are simultaneously generating responses.
More computing → more electricity → more heat → more cooling.
Consequently, the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure has increased interest in the water footprint of computing.
There is also an indirect water footprint.
Electricity itself can require water. Some power plants use water for cooling, meaning a data center can have:
Direct water consumption → cooling the data center
plus
Indirect water consumption → producing the electricity that powers it.
So the total water footprint can be considerably larger than the water consumed at the data-center property itself.
Texas is becoming one of the major locations for data-center development because of its:
But Texas also experiences periodic drought and extreme heat.
That creates a potential conflict:
The hottest weather is often when cooling systems need the most water, while drought is when communities most need to conserve water.
This is one reason the location of a data center matters enormously.
A facility using evaporative cooling in a hot, dry region can have a substantially different water impact from a similar facility using a closed-loop or air-cooled system in a cooler, wetter region.
It would be incorrect to say:
"Every data center requires an unsurmountable amount of water."
That's not technically accurate.
There are technologies that can dramatically reduce direct water consumption.
Instead of evaporating water, a facility can use outside air and mechanical cooling.
Advantage: very little direct water consumption.
Disadvantage: can require more electricity, particularly in hot climates.
This is becoming particularly important for AI.
Instead of continually consuming fresh water, liquid circulates through a closed system:
Server → coolant → heat exchanger → cooling system → server
The same coolant can circulate repeatedly.
This can substantially reduce ongoing water consumption.
Instead of using drinking-water supplies, facilities can use treated wastewater.
That's potentially a much better solution where infrastructure exists.
The water isn't suitable for drinking, but it can potentially be treated to the quality necessary for industrial cooling.
Some facilities can use cooling systems that don't rely heavily on evaporation.
Again, the tradeoff can be higher electricity consumption and potentially higher costs, especially during extreme heat.
The water isn't necessarily coming from a giant tank sitting next to the servers.
A data center may be connected to a municipal water system.
That means a new facility can potentially become a major industrial customer of the same water infrastructure serving:
This raises a legitimate public-policy question:
And that's not an anti-technology question.
It's a resource-allocation question.
A community should be able to ask:
That last question is extremely important.
One data center may be manageable.
Twenty, thirty, or fifty facilities concentrated in the same region could produce an entirely different infrastructure problem.
You may hear a statement such as:
"AI uses X bottles of water every time someone asks ChatGPT a question."
Those claims should be treated cautiously.
Water consumption varies enormously depending upon:
There isn't one universal "water cost" for an AI query.
The facility-level numbers are much more useful for public policy than trying to assign a fixed number of ounces of water to every individual AI request.
The real issue isn't simply:
"Do data centers use water?"
They absolutely can.
The more important question is:
"How much water will this particular data center consume, where will it come from, and what happens to the community's water supply when many facilities are built?"
That's where the debate becomes meaningful.
And if you're looking specifically at Texas and the Fort Worth/Dallas area, the issue becomes particularly relevant because the region is experiencing rapid data-center growth while simultaneously having to plan for long-term water and electricity demand.
If you'd like, I can take this one step further and research the actual water consumption of data centers being built around Fort Worth/Dallas, identify the major facilities, and compare their projected water usage with the water consumption of local cities and households. That would put the issue into concrete numbers rather than general claims.