TCEQ Dismisses Community Concerns in Approving the ‘Donald J. Trump Advanced Energy and Intelligence Campus’ Near Amarillo
The state’s environmental regulator approves polluting power plants for troubled data center project
AUSTIN, Texas — On Wednesday, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) voted to silence Amarillo-area residents by denying all requests to challenge three air quality permits sought by Fermi Equipment Holdco, LLC’s Project Matador, a hyperscale artificial intelligence data center and power plant campus now rebranded as the Donald J. Trump Advanced Energy and Intelligence Campus.
The decision clears the way for the project to move forward, despite fierce community opposition and against the recommendation of the state’s public interest independent counsel. Fermi’s co-founder is former Texas Gov. Rick Perry
“The denial of these hearing requests has once again shown that the TCEQ’s public participation process is a performative sham,” said Kathryn Guerra, the director of Public Citizen’s TCEQ Watchdog Campaign. “Dismissing the concerns of working Texans and the state’s public interest counsel ignores the community’s interest in protecting local resources. Texas deserves a regulatory agency that listens to people, not one that rubber-stamps Big Tech sprawl.”
Fermi’s gas power plant campus will emit thousands of pounds of particulate matter and carbon monoxide. The facility’s expected 23.5 million pounds of greenhouse gas emissions per year equal approximately 12% of the combined emissions of all power plants in Texas in 2023, the most recent year data is available from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
“We asked them to take our health into account,” said Amarillo resident Kendra Seawright, a member of the grassroots group Panhandle Taxpayers for Transparency. “We followed all the rules to be heard by the TCEQ, but this decision proves that they will allow industry to bulldoze their way into our communities without consideration of how it could harm us.”
Over 300 comments were submitted during the public comment period for the air permit applications, with residents expressing concerns about their health and environmental impacts to air quality, water quality and water availability.
In approving the air permits, TCEQ commissioners also denied all requests for a contested case hearing or reconsideration. Contested Case Hearings are a public participation tool that allows communities’ objections to draft permits to be heard by an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) from the State Office of Administrative Hearings (SOAH). The ALJ then recommends approval or denial of a permit back to the TCEQ. The hearings are legal proceedings that often require residents to retain legal counsel, pay for expert testimony, and invest significant time. Despite this, TCEQ commissioners are not legally obligated to accept the ALJ’s recommendation at the conclusion of the process.
Additionally, the Office of Public Interest Counsel (OPIC), an office within the TCEQ created to represent the public’s interest in environmental permitting and enforcement matters, recommended granting the Amarillo residents’ request for a contested case hearing.
In late 2025, Project Matador’s future was thrown into question when its primary anchor tenant pulled out, leading to a 30% crash in the company’s stock and a class-action lawsuit against Fermi filed by the project’s investors.
According to a Public Citizen analysis, the TCEQ denied 40% of hearing requests in 2025. OPIC recommended that commissioners grant 62% of the denied requests, meaning TCEQ commissioners ignored the recommendation to protect the public’s interest more often than not.
The Fermi project is the latest in numerous battles against data centers playing out across the state as communities push back against the rush to build them to meet the needs of AI corporate interests.