The numbers tell the story before anyone in Cedar Creek says a word. Pacifico’s planned natural gas power plant here has grown from an initial estimate of 710 megawatts to 1,326 megawatts — more than double what the nearby city of Bastrop itself requires. It would sit in unincorporated Bastrop County to feed a data center intended for Anthropic. And the land under it all? A ranch the Wallace family values at around $30 million, for which Pacifico is offering roughly 90.
Viviana Mazza reported from the site itself this week, standing on folding-chair territory with the volunteers of Lost Pines Watch while cows lowed in the background. The picture she documented is some of the best grazing land in Texas, and the people trying to keep it that way.
That on-the-ground reporting, published November 8, 2026, lands at a peculiar political moment: Election Day happened this week, and the situation around this project changed.
The $2.2 Billion Project That Comes With 25 Jobs
The offer on the table is the largest private figure in the story: a $2.2 billion industrial complex combining a data center and the gas plant that powers it. What Bastrop County would get in return, per the sources who live there, is property tax money — tens of millions of dollars — and a workforce of 25.
“This one will eventually, once it’s fully built, will provide 25 jobs, and none of them have to come from here,” Cameron Allen, a 43-year-old farmer and used-book seller who is an eighth-generation Texan, told the newspaper. He and Adam Smith, a 47-year-old sound engineer who moved from Ohio, both oppose the plant. “We’re not against development, nor are we against artificial intelligence in general. We simply don’t want a power plant that shouldn’t be built here,” Allen said.
The gap between the money and the jobs is precisely what residents say the county is trading away. “And that seems to be their argument” for allowing the project, Allen said of the tax revenue. What is not disputed: the land sale itself, at roughly three times the assessed value, would solve a problem the family faces. The sources note that economic difficulties in ranching prompted the Wallaces to consider selling.
Why Neighbors Across the Political Divide Are Aligned
Within a three-mile radius of the proposed plant sit 5,700 homes, more than 20 schools and daycare centers, churches, and small farms. Residents fear emissions, noise pollution, and low-frequency vibrations. Allen’s framing is blunt: “You can never make this land the same again.”
Lost Pines Watch is the coalition organizing the resistance, and its composition is the uncomfortable part for local Republicans. The group draws landowners and farmers from both the left and the right, united by land rather than party. Smith said one of his neighbors — a conservative backhoe driver — is now weighing a Democratic vote. “I’ve never voted for a Democrat in my life, but this time I will,” Smith said.
The Permitting Loophole Abbott’s Pause Didn’t Touch
Governor Greg Abbott has announced two pauses on permits for data centers, but the sources describe both as temporary and insufficient to stop this project. Pacifico was exempt from the first pause because it involves an autonomous facility, disconnected from the power grid.
Smith’s complaint is about process, not technology: “This giant power plant is being permitted exactly the same as you would permit a diesel generator, like for a hospital. The crucial thing is that the permitting doesn’t require any sort of public hearing, no public input. They don’t have to give information to the public.”
There is also a demographic fault line running through the opposition effort. About 30% of Cedar Creek’s residents speak Spanish at home, Allen noted as a car with Mexican license plates drove by and a family waved from the windows. Many of those residents live near the future facility but may know nothing about it — what Allen calls “an issue of environmental racism — they aren’t invited to participate in the conversation.”
Election Night Changed the Board
Two decisions this week altered the project’s odds, and both came from the ballot box and the council chamber rather than the statehouse.
First, as part of a “blue wave” of Democratic victories across the country, Gina Hinojosa defeated incumbent Greg Abbott to become the new governor of Texas. She has promised a state-wide moratorium as she takes office — a direct threat to the project’s timeline. Abbott’s two pauses were temporary.
Second, the Bastrop city council voted unanimously on that same Tuesday to ask the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to have public hearings for the permit application submitted by Pacifico for the power plant. That request targets the exact transparency gap Smith described — permitting with no public hearing and no public input.
Pacifico, for its part, has the strongest financial position in the story — a reported offer of three times the land’s value and a $2.2 billion project already on the drawing board.
One Ranch in a Race for the World’s Largest Data Center Market
Cedar Creek is one piece of a larger transformation: Texas aims to become the world’s leading market for data centers by 2030. The resistance here is narrower than it might first appear. As Allen put it, the problem is not the technology itself but “a model of accelerated industrial development that lacks adequate land-use planning or genuine community involvement.”
By sunset, as the correspondent prepared to leave and coyotes sounded in the distance, Allen had one last errand. “It’s time to bring the chickens in,” he said. Whether the cows he shares this grazing land with will be there when the next reporter visits is now a question for a new governor, a state environmental commission, and 1,150 hectares of Texas land valued at $30 million — and offered roughly 90.
