Fort Worth's water utility now requires closed-loop cooling and a wastewater pretreatment permit for new data centers in its service area

A developer who plans a data center campus that will take water from Fort Worth's utility now has to cool the campus with a closed-loop system. Every new data center in the utility's service area falls under that rule, which came in with new water design criteria that took effect when the City Council adopted them on Aug. 11, 2026.

Fort Worth put the cooling rule in the manual engineers use to design its water and sewer systems

In the August 2026 edition of Fort Worth's Installation Policy and Design Criteria, data centers "must use a closed loop cooling system." Data center developments also have to get what the city calls a "Non-Significant Industrial User" permit, which is a wastewater pretreatment permit.

The city describes closed-loop cooling as a system designed to reuse water within the system, so it draws far less new water for cooling. Fort Worth estimates that a closed-loop data center on 100 acres uses 300,000 to 1 million gallons of water in an average month. An evaporative data center, which cools its water in open air by evaporating a small part of it, uses 4 to 6 million gallons a month on the same 100 acres in that estimate. The city compares both with about 2 million gallons a month for 100 acres of single-family homes. By the city's numbers, the evaporative campus uses two to three times the water of a neighborhood its size, and the closed-loop campus uses half the neighborhood's water or less.

The pretreatment permit deals with what leaves the campus through the sewer. Fort Worth can use that permit to make a data center disclose its chemicals and keep its discharge within set limits.

A campus planned in Fort Worth that has not yet filed its zoning application could also face a moratorium on data center development. The City Council is considering one and has set the first of its two public hearings for Nov. 10, 2026.

Austin's water task force wants data centers cooled with non-potable water

On June 9, 2026, the Austin Integrated Water Resource Planning Community Task Force voted 7 to 0 to ask the City Council to "require non-potable water for data centers and more commercial and industrial cooling uses." Non-potable water is water that hasn't been treated to drinking standards, such as the city's reclaimed wastewater, so the recommendation would keep data center cooling off Austin's drinking supply.

Austin Water calls a customer large volume when it uses more than 85 million gallons in a fiscal year at one address or campus. The city manager owes the council recommendations on how those customers would apply for service by Dec. 9, 2026.

Hays County held its hearing on draft development regulations on Oct. 27

Austin Water's service area reaches into some unincorporated parts of Hays County. A campus on unincorporated land in Hays County that takes water from Austin Water could answer to the county's regulations and to the large volume rules Austin adopts. Hays County's commissioners court held a public hearing on Oct. 27, 2026 on the final draft of its rewritten development regulations.

Our water and cooling team can check your engineer's cooling design against a water provider's criteria.