⭐ Morning Briefing — October 7, 2026

(Wednesday, October 7, 2026)

Top Story: Granbury's City Council was about to schedule a May 2027 recall election for its mayor and four council members over a data center annexation on Tuesday night. It stopped after a Houston attorney who won't say who his client is announced he was suing to block the vote.

📰 Today's News

1. ⚖️ Granbury Puts Its Recall Election on Hold After a Lawyer With an Unnamed Client Says He's Suing

At Tuesday's Granbury City Council meeting, attorney Andy Taylor announced before the vote that he was suing the city to stop the recall election the council was about to set for May 2027, FOX 4 reported. Taylor argued that the petition is invalid because of procedural and signature problems.
City Attorney Jeremy SoRelle advised the council not to go ahead with scheduling. FOX 4 found no online record of the lawsuit, and Taylor, who is based in Houston, ignored a request to say whom he represents.
More than 1,300 voters, about 15% of the city's registered voters, signed the petition to recall Mayor Jim Jarratt and four council members. Residents say the council annexed 2,200 acres near Meadow Wood Road without telling them enough about the data center now proposed there.
City officials said any formal development plan for the site would still have to go through normal zoning and development review.

Today's Signal: Residents already needed a state appeals court to get these petitions accepted. Now a lawsuit with no named plaintiff has stopped the election before it was even scheduled. Until a filing shows up in court records, nobody in Granbury knows who is paying to keep this off the ballot.

2. 🔒 PUC Sues the Attorney General's Office to Keep Data Center Counties Secret

The Public Utility Commission filed suit in Travis County on Monday asking a judge to rule that two fields in its data center and crypto-mine survey (each facility's county and its regional water planning area) are exempt from disclosure under the Texas Homeland Security Act, The Texas Tribune reported Tuesday.
Attorney General Ken Paxton's Open Records Division ruled twice that the PUC hadn't shown the information reveals the kind of infrastructure vulnerabilities the law protects. The PUC argues that combining location with power and water figures could help an attacker. It is not asking the court to seal the whole survey.
The fight started with open-records requests from a McLennan County resident and four journalists, including a Tribune reporter. Lawmakers required the survey in 2025. As of August, 77 data center and 13 crypto-mining facilities had answered it, out of 377 the PUC contacted.
Separately, ERCOT has given data center projects with at least 25 MW of planned demand until Oct. 12 to disclose their water use and the incentives they've received, the San Antonio Business Journal reported. Individual responses will be kept confidential.

Today's Signal: Regional water planning in Texas depends on knowing where the big water users are. The PUC is arguing that the county where those users sit is too sensitive to release. Meanwhile, ERCOT's new disclosure request is confidential from the start.

3. ⚛️ Blue Energy Files ERCOT's First Small Modular Reactor Interconnection Request, to Power Crusoe at the Port of Victoria

Maryland-based Blue Energy Global has applied to connect up to five 300-MW reactors, about 1.5 GW in total, to the ERCOT grid. Bloomberg, via Energy Connects, reported Tuesday that this is the first small modular reactor application ERCOT has received.
The plant would supply a Crusoe data center. About 1 GW of gas generation would come first, from two GE Vernova 7HA.02 turbines planned for 2030 and 2031, and the first reactor would follow in 2033, Construction Review reported.
The project sits on about 70 acres optioned from the Port of Victoria and is projected to cost more than $6 billion. A final investment decision is targeted for 2027, and the remaining NRC permit application is due in the second half of that year.

Today's Signal: The plan starts with a gigawatt of gas and adds nuclear later. If the reactors slip, the turbines still get built, so ERCOT and TCEQ will be reviewing a gas plant years before any reactor.

4. 💵 Taylor Developers Offer $28.2 Million to Get Their Gas-Powered Campus Annexed

Taylor City Council votes Thursday on an economic development agreement with South Dakota-based Big Watt Digital and Virginia-based PowerHouse Data Centers. Their Taylor Technology Campus, formerly Project Mustang, covers more than 660 acres in the city's extraterritorial jurisdiction, the Austin American-Statesman reported.
The agreement covers 500 MW of data center capacity with an option for 500 MW more, powered by an on-site natural gas plant that could sell power back to the grid.
The developers are pledging $28.2 million: $13 million for parks and recreation, $10.2 million for Taylor ISD, $1.5 million for scholarships, $1 million for workforce training, $1 million for animal care and about $1.5 million for local nonprofits.
The deal sets a one-time 1.575-million-gallon closed-loop water fill and setbacks of 300 feet on the north, east and west lines and 700 feet on the south. The developers withdrew their earlier annexation request after residents packed council meetings and petitioned to ban data centers.

Today's Signal: If the council votes no, KUT noted, the campus stays in unincorporated Williamson County, outside the city's regulatory authority. That makes the vote less about whether the campus gets built and more about whether Taylor will have any say over it.

5. ⏸️ Brownsville's Moratorium Is Written as Two 90-Day Freezes That Would Reach Into the ETJ

Brownsville's City Commission held the second of three required public hearings Tuesday afternoon on a temporary data center moratorium, ValleyCentral reported. The third is set for 5 p.m. today.
The ordinance would stop the city from accepting, processing or approving data center applications, permits and zoning requests for 90 days. The city says it expects to approve a second 90-day freeze after the first one ends.
The freeze would apply inside city limits and in Brownsville's extraterritorial jurisdiction while the city and its Environmental and Conservation Task Force study infrastructure impacts and draft zoning rules.

Today's Signal: Including the ETJ matters. Most large Texas sites, including Taylor's, sit just outside city limits, where a city-only freeze wouldn't reach.

6. 💧 Skybox Tells Wichita Falls the State Audits May Slow Its Build

A Skybox Datacenters spokesman told the Wichita Falls City Council on Tuesday that the timing of its planned business-park campus could be "impacted slightly" by state audits and verifications, the Times Record News reported.
Chief Development Officer Haynes Strader told KFDX that six fully built buildings would use about 3.6 million gallons of water a year, mostly for landscaping and restrooms. He said each closed-loop chiller system takes a one-time fill of 60,000 to 70,000 gallons.
Skybox described the project as six to 10 buildings and projected 2,000 to 3,000 construction jobs and 300 to 500 permanent jobs. Strader said the company would pay for the transmission connections it needs.

Today's Signal: Earlier this week Skybox said its Hutto site won't get a power answer until 2028. Wichita Falls is the second Skybox city in two days to hear that the state's review is now what sets the schedule.

7. 🏗️ Construction Registrations Keep Moving Through the Permit Freeze

CyrusOne has started building its 460,000-square-foot SAT14A data center near Castroville in Medina County, the San Antonio Current reported, citing Colocation Scout. The project registered with the state on July 16.
Colocation Scout founder Cody Swift said the freeze holds TCEQ air and water permits, including backup-generator air permits, but "doesn't touch construction registrations."
TechRadar detailed Crusoe's two Jayton registrations in Kent County: 1.52 million square feet and $4.8 billion combined, with construction starting in January 2027 and openings in May and July 2029. Neither filing says how the buildings will be powered.

Today's Signal: A building can be finished during the pause, but its backup generators may still need a TCEQ air permit before it can run. The bottleneck moves to TCEQ's backlog once the freeze lifts.

8. 📺 Hinojosa Runs a Sarcastic "Delivering Data Centers" Ad as Industry Utilities Line Up Behind the Coalition

Democratic gubernatorial nominee Gina Hinojosa released a digital ad Tuesday titled "Greg Abbott: Delivering Data Centers." It mock-praises Abbott for tax breaks and says Texas has 335 data centers with at least 248 more coming. Her campaign also says Abbott has taken $20 million from data center interests.
Texas Scorecard reported that Oncor, CenterPoint and AEP Texas, the utilities behind the contested 765-kV transmission buildout, are members of the industry's new Lone Star Infrastructure Coalition. Landowners and state Rep. Brad Buckley are questioning ERCOT's modeling for that buildout.

Today's Signal: The ad attacks Abbott for supporting data centers, after weeks in which his own freeze and audits have been the main restriction on them. The coalition's utility members tie the data center debate to the transmission-line fight in rural districts.

None of the eight DFW-area counties we track produced a TCEQ filing tied to a data center or gas plant today, and ERCOT hasn't issued a press release since its Sept. 21 podcast announcement.

📍 Today's Watch List

Whether Andy Taylor's lawsuit against Granbury appears in court records, who the plaintiff is, and when the recall can be rescheduled.
Taylor City Council's vote Thursday, Oct. 8, on the Big Watt/PowerHouse agreement.
Brownsville's third moratorium hearing at 5 p.m. today, and when the commission votes.
ERCOT's Oct. 12 deadline for water-use and incentive disclosures from projects of 25 MW or more.
The PUC's Travis County lawsuit, and whether the journalists and McLennan County resident who requested the records join it.
Denton's Oct. 13 vote on data center code amendments, San Antonio's Oct. 15 zoning vote, and TCEQ's Oct. 19 compliance update to the governor.
The Nov. 3 Senate District 9 race in Tarrant County, where the Star-Telegram has fact-checked both candidates on data centers.
Blue Energy's 2027 investment decision and NRC filing for the Victoria site.
ERCOT's Dec. 10 audit report to the PUC. Nothing material is expected before the December PUC meeting.