Darby Tells Data Center Developer to Pack Up and Leave Dove Creek

SAN ANGELO, TX — State Rep. Drew Darby has had enough of Beacon Data Centers. On Thursday he sent the company a second letter and told it to drop the Dove Creek project.

This is not a request for more answers. The Aug. 10 letter already asked for those. Darby says he never got them. Nearly two months later, he says he has lost confidence in the company, as the representative for House District 72 and as a San Angelo resident.

“Beacon continues to operate under a shroud of secrecy,” he wrote. “It has held no additional town halls and has answered none of the substantive questions put to it.”

The only public meeting Beacon has held out there was April 16, at The Four56 Church. That is more than five months ago. Darby called the silence unacceptable.

He also says the company has not met Gov. Greg Abbott’s data-center rules, and he alleges it has kept moving on infrastructure out of public view. He did not spell out what that work is. The ask at the bottom of the letter is plain: withdraw the pending permit applications and do not build in Tom Green County.

Beacon’s plan is the Westline site, about a quarter-mile south of U.S. 67 on FM 2335, along Spring Creek. The company told commissioners in June it would generate its own power with natural-gas engines and use the grid as backup. The air applications are Westline TX Holdings, permits 184380, PSDTX1710, GHGPSDTX275 and HAP93. None has been granted.

Darby already asked TCEQ in August for a public meeting in Tom Green County before any of those permits move. Abbott’s Sept. 21 order is the harder stop. TCEQ is not issuing data-center permits until the ERCOT and water-board audits are finished. That report is due Dec. 10. Darby says he will oppose each permit anyway, and that he will file a bill next session aimed at what he calls bad actors.

“Rural Texas welcomes good actors and community partners,” he wrote. “Beacon’s conduct over the past several months has made clear that it is not one.”

District 72 covers Coke, Coleman, Concho, Glasscock, Howard, Irion, Reagan, Runnels, Sterling and Tom Green counties. Beacon had not answered the new letter by Thursday evening.