Home/United States/Texas/Young County
Data centers in Young County, Texas: 1 project mapped
Young County, in North Texas, is facing one of the largest proposed data center campuses in the state. Project Saltworks is being developed by Headwaters Site Development, an affiliate of Dallas-based Stream Data Centers, on about 890 acres south of Lake Graham between FM 61 and FM 209, a few miles south of Graham. It first surfaced in February 2025. County Judge Win Graham told the Olney Enterprise that Stream and Headwaters had proposed as many as 11 buildings, and he called it "a total game changer." He said the county had drawn the developers because it sits under the high-voltage lines that carry West Texas wind power to the Metroplex: "We were stuck with all these transmission lines because we're small and had fewer people to complain when they were built, but now, it could turn into a good thing." The developers have since described 5 to 15 buildings over 5 to 10 years. The Olney Enterprise reports the full campus is valued at as much as $10 billion, and construction is expected to begin in early 2027 depending on power scheduling and on landing a hyperscale customer.
Opposition organized quickly. On November 4, 2025 a standing-room-only crowd filled the Loving Community Center for a meeting called by Ryan Mote, whose fourth-generation pecan farm borders the site, and landowner Travis Kunkel. Their petition had passed 1,000 signatures. Mote said Stream had shown him preliminary plans for 17 buildings built over 12 to 17 years, with 1,000 to 2,000 construction workers at peak. He also relayed a figure of 165,000 gallons to fill each building's closed-loop cooling system. Opponents raised grazing land, wildlife, erosion, Salt Creek and Lake Graham. "People can stop it," Mote said. "You do it with your voice, your letters, your petitions." At the time Stream had not asked for an abatement, and ERCOT had not approved the site's power request.
Read more
The request came to the Commissioners Court on June 22, 2026: a 100 percent abatement on personal property taxes on the equipment inside the buildings, plus a tax increment reinvestment zone steering half of the project's increment to local infrastructure. The developers said they would not seek abatements from the schools or hospital districts. Matt Long of Headwaters told commissioners the campus would be air-cooled ("We do not consume water in our cooling process") and noted that five 345-kilovolt lines cross the area. The company did not say how much electricity the campus would use at full buildout. Resident Karen Brewer said: "The water's not going to be there. You're going to suck it all out of the ground." County Appraiser Jesse Blackmon estimated that a $1 billion investment would generate more than $14 million a year for the county. Young County's net taxable value was $1.787 billion the year before.
The data center decided the county judge's race. In the May 26, 2026 Republican runoff, former judge John Charles Bullock beat Graham with 57.42 percent after campaigning against any abatement. "In my opinion, the county is not adequately prepared for the level of chaos and challenges this development would create," he wrote. Bullock takes office January 1, 2027. In the Precinct 4 runoff Bobby Swetnam beat Cooper Dodd, who had run against the project, 350 votes to 310. Sheriff Travis Babcock had already linked a rise in felony inmates at the county jail to workers from the Google data center in Haskell County.
Stream has kept assembling the project. On July 13, 2026 Plug Power announced it would sell Stream its canceled green hydrogen site near Graham: about 66 acres and a 164-megawatt grid connection, for $50 million at closing plus up to $26.5 million more depending on the load capacity confirmed with the utility. Graham is weighing sewer access and nonpotable water from the pipeline Plug left behind. On July 23 the city council hired ZacTax Consulting, led by former Abilene city manager Robert Hanna, for up to $36,000 to study the project's costs and benefits. City Manager Eric Garretty stressed that Graham had signed no economic development agreement. Residents asked both bodies to wait for the 2027 Legislature, citing Gov. Greg Abbott's June 10 directive telling regulators to keep data center grid costs off homeowners. "There are no emergencies when negotiating with data centers," Lori Kramer told the council. On August 10 the county formally received Headwaters' abatement application, which Commissioner Alan Craig said still had "no meat in the sandwich," and voted 5-0 to ratify a $250,000 escrow agreement from Headwaters to pay the county's consultants. Nothing had been approved as of that meeting.
Data center projects on record in Young County
Grouped by the town each site sits in. The report above may name projects that have no record here yet.
Graham1
| Project | Company | Status | Power | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stream Project Saltworks (Graham, former Plug Power hydrogen site)Graham | Stream Data Centers | Proposed | Not reported |
Where this comes from
The reporting above was written from these. Open one and check it yourself.
Every project above is drawn from public records, filings and local reporting. Each row links to what it is based on. Statuses change, so check the source date before you rely on one. Found something wrong? Write to [email protected] and it gets fixed.