Project Lufkin: Amp Z Data Center, Lufkin, Texas

AmpZ Champion Data Center Holdings, of Denver, wants to build a data center on more than 1,000 acres of the old Southland Paper Mill site on State Highway 103 East outside Lufkin, in Angelina County, Texas, and the county cannot stop it. "We have no authority to do a moratorium or stop any type of development in the county," Angelina County Judge Keith Wright told a commissioners court meeting in June 2026, adding: "Texas legislators have consciously limited what counties can do, and they've done it on purpose. They don't trust us." The mill employed nearly 600 people before it stopped operating in 2004, and the site is classed as heavy industrial.

The developer calls it Project Lufkin: about 175 megawatts of power in 2026, 1.1 gigawatts by 2028 and 2.1 gigawatts in the end, with up to a gigawatt of that from the proposed Longleaf Power Generation Plant nearby. The city of Lufkin's own fact sheet says the project is in the planning phase and has not been approved for construction, that it would bring about 500 construction jobs and 30 permanent ones, and that a closed-loop cooling system would use about 500 gallons of treated water a day, roughly what three homes use. Because the site is outside the city limits, it is not subject to city zoning or permitting, and Lufkin would get no sales or property tax from it.

By July 2026 there was no construction at the site and AmpZ was still waiting on a power agreement with Oncor. Residents began organizing when news of the plan broke in February 2026, asking for transparency and for no tax abatements. In mid-May they rallied before a Lufkin city council meeting and were barred from speaking about it because the data center was not on the agenda; when the county put it on its own agenda in June, fourteen people signed up to speak on water, energy, noise, light and contamination. Shelley Tatum, a Democrat running for Texas House District 9 who grew up near the mill, asked commissioners to refuse any abatement: "That data center is not going to be operating in 10 years."

A tax abatement is the county's only lever, and Wright said he would not bring one to the court unless the company first held a public meeting. If AmpZ applies, the county says it will press for noise limits at the property line, generator testing only in daytime and never on Sundays, written water and wastewater limits, a public project website, $250,000 a year for volunteer fire departments and a decommissioning bond. AmpZ did file a preliminary abatement application, which commissioners sent back asking for more detail, and Wright said in July that he had heard nothing from the company since.

A second, separate data center is further along: HyperDataGrid is building on the site of the old Northern Chip Mill on Highway 103 West, has secured electrical and water agreements, and has begun clearing land, Wright said. "103 West is kind of out of sight, out of mind. Nobody is really seeing what's happening with that," Wright said. HyperDataGrid will still need a road use agreement with the commissioners court, which Wright said the county would use to ask for concessions, and in July 2026 the court put on its agenda a resolution asking the Texas Legislature to give counties limited regulatory authority over data centers and other large industrial projects.