A Site Impact Permit is required before construction, installation, expansion, or operation of a facility meeting any listed trigger, including at least 1 MW of connected electrical load, operation exceeding 18 hours per day, continuously operating industrial-scale ventilation or cooling, on-site generation or fuel storage, or outdoor or nontraditional modular equipment. Facilities lawfully operating before September 2, 2026 are exempt unless later expansion or modification reaches a threshold.

The applicant must submit detailed site, infrastructure, equipment, access, setback, acreage, and utility information, with site and infrastructure documents sealed by a Texas-registered professional engineer or land surveyor and electrical-load documents sealed by a Texas-registered professional engineer.

Applicants must provide noise and mechanical-system information, including cooling and ventilation descriptions, manufacturer noise ratings, predicted property-boundary noise, and proposed mitigation such as walls, setbacks, or enclosures.

Facilities must comply with state fire codes and submit sealed plans from a Fire Protection Engineer covering electrical systems, fire suppression, fuel storage and containment, emergency access, and emergency shutdown; applicants must also document firefighting equipment, trucks, and trained personnel.

Applicants must disclose construction and operating traffic, heavy-vehicle routes, and proposed county-road use. A Texas-registered professional engineer must demonstrate that roads serving the facility have sufficient existing and proposed traffic capacity, and a separate Road Use or Right-of-Way Permit may be required.

If applicable, applicants must provide floodplain and drainage analyses, stormwater calculations, and sealed grading and drainage plans, and must demonstrate that increased ten-year runoff will not exceed public drainage capacity and that increased one-hundred-year runoff will not create potentially hazardous or destructive conditions.

Applicants must disclose water sources, average and peak demand, cooling methods, storage, wastewater disposal, and discharge rates. Cooling must be closed-loop; the policy expressly prohibits open-loop cooling systems. Applicants must also provide a wastewater discharge permit application and approved permit.

Each application requires a non-refundable $6,000 engineering-review retainer. If review costs exceed the retainer, the permittee must pay the additional amount in full before facility approval; the policy states that engineering fees are additional to other county permit fees.

The County may impose site-specific conditions to address documented impacts, including noise controls, construction-hour limits, road-maintenance or bonding requirements, emergency-access provisions, drainage or flood mitigation, and light-pollution mitigation, although conditions may not prohibit lawful operations.

The County may conduct reasonable compliance inspections, and violations may result in written notices, permit suspension or revocation, and other authorized enforcement actions, including public-nuisance enforcement.

The permit is limited to a ministerial review of submitted documentation for compliance with stated criteria, reducing discretionary review. ministerial review of submitted documentation

The policy is technology-neutral and bars the County from considering the content, purpose, or nature of computing, data-processing, or financial activities, allowing data centers to operate without activity-specific regulation. shall not regulate or consider the content, purpose, or nature

The policy expressly states that it is not zoning or land-use regulation, limiting the measure's stated scope and avoiding regulation of business models or digital activity. does not regulate zoning, land use, water rights, business models, digital activity, or financial transactions

Any permit conditions must be site-specific, tied directly to documented impacts, and may not prohibit lawful operations, protecting a permitted data center from conditions that effectively ban its operations. not prohibit lawful operations

Facilities lawfully operating before the policy's effective date do not need a permit unless later expansion, modification, or upgrading causes them to meet or exceed the Section 3 thresholds. Facilities lawfully operating prior to the effective date

Applicants may appeal permit determinations or conditions to the Commissioners Court within 30 days, providing a formal review mechanism. appeal permit determinations or conditions

The County does not receive authority to regulate electric rates, grid operations, or utility service decisions; it may only request confirmation that required utility infrastructure and agreements are in place before operations begin. does not authorize the County to regulate electric rates, grid operations, or utility service decisions

The engineering-review retainer is capped initially at $6,000, and any unused portion must be returned; additional engineering fees are payable before approval if review costs exceed the retainer. Any unused portion of the retainer will be returned