Meta Temple data center, Temple, Texas

Meta's data center campus in Temple, Bell County, Texas, has become the focus of a fight over tax breaks for data centers. In July 2026, residents urged the Bell County Commissioners Court to stop giving data centers tax abatements, noting Meta holds one from both the city of Temple and the county. Meta says it has invested $1.2 billion in the Temple campus, where it broke ground in 2022.

JE Dunn, the general contractor, says it began building the 386-acre campus in April 2022: three buildings with more than 750,000 square feet of space, totaling 152 megawatts of power, with up to 1,200 trades workers at peak construction. The campus is complete and uses dry cooling to limit water use, the contractor says.

Meta says the site supports about 100 operational jobs, that it pays the full cost of its water, wastewater and energy use, and that it has given more than $1.7 million to Bell County-area schools and nonprofits.

"I don't think any data center should be given a tax abatement. They were already granted money they wouldn't have gotten. So they're already ahead," farmer Alton Fowler told commissioners on July 7. Resident Joe Royer questioned why the county gave Meta its own abatement on top of the city's: "We also gave them a county tax abatement as if we are deliberately trying to attract them to our community."

Commissioner Bobby Whitson said most of the Meta tax revenue is tied up in a Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone and "was never coming to Bell County anyway until the TIRZ expires." He said a tax abatement is the only lever the county has to require public safety measures or good-neighbor conditions from a project. County Judge David Blackburn has said dropping data centers from abatements would make the county "the wild, wild west" for them, with no other regulation it could impose.

Texas counties have no power to impose a moratorium on data centers, the county says. A second developer, Rowan, is also building in Bell County; both Rowan and Meta get their water from the City of Temple and are subject to its drought rules, and Meta has pledged its Temple site will capture rainwater.

The Commissioners Court held workshops on the issue on July 27, August 3 and August 17, and is asking the State of Texas for more authority to set land-use rules on data centers beyond tax abatements. A public hearing and vote on an amended tax abatement policy was scheduled for September 8, 2026; no result has been published.