Parker County Data — Pro Populo
Citizen-research repository on the Black Mountain Power LLC data-center project, the Fort Worth Power Core LLC statewide gas-plant network, and what they will cost Parker County families.
Resources
Interactive map
Toggle layers, click any Texas county for source-cited detail. Three switchable basemaps, six toggleable data layers, zoom + pan.
Open the map →
Presentation deck
16-slide HTML deck for the June 8, 2026 Parker County Commissioners Court. Keyboard navigation, print-to-PDF supported.
Open the slides →
Full source code & data
R scripts, CSVs, PDFs, SQL — every number in the deck traces to a file in this repository.
Browse on GitHub →
What's in scope
- 2,075 acres at 501 Pearson Ranch Road — assembled under Black Mountain Power LLC. Parker County Appraisal District stripped the agricultural exemption on May 15, 2026.
- 75-megawatt natural-gas power plant — five turbines, 24/7 continuous operation. Approved by TCEQ in 2.5 weeks with no public process.
- Statewide context — the same operator (Fort Worth Power Core LLC) holds TCEQ air permits at 14 sites across 11 Texas counties. Parker is one of fourteen.
- Local cost — under an 80% Chapter 312 abatement, Parker County and its special districts give up roughly $30 million (Phase 1) to $364 million (full buildout) in revenue the state does not replace, over the 10-year term. The school-district portion is separate and largely state-backfilled, so it is not counted as a local loss. Data centers return as few as 10–75 permanent jobs.
- State-law constraint — HB 3 and SB 2 cap how fast the county can raise rates, so the foregone revenue can't be recovered later. It's a permanent reduction in local fiscal capacity — and the project still adds costs (water, roads, emergency response) the existing budget must absorb.
How to verify
- Parker CAD records — 18 corrected appraisal notices archived in
black_mountain_holdings/
- TCEQ Central Registry — raw HTML pulls archived in
tceq_sos_cache/
- Texas Comptroller — franchise-tax registry JSON for all Black Mountain entities + Fort Worth Power Core LLC, archived in
tceq_sos_cache/
- TWDB Nov-2019 GCD shapefile — full spatial join archived in
county_gcd_join_2019.csv
- May-26-2026 commissioners court transcript — structured at
parker_costs/court_records/
- Methodology — every R script that produces a chart or number is in the repo and runnable
Sources current as of June 2, 2026. Built on public records — Parker County Appraisal District, TCEQ Central Registry, TX Comptroller franchise-tax registry, TWDB groundwater conservation district shapefile, USDA NASS Census of Agriculture 2022, and the Parker County Commissioners Court session transcript of May 26, 2026.
This is a citizen-research project. No commercial affiliation. Every number is verifiable through the cited source.