The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has switched off the online system it uses to grant automatic permits, saying staff need to check every application for links to data centres. The move follows reports by watchdog groups that the portal kept approving data-centre construction permits after Governor Greg Abbott ordered a pause.
A notice now on the STEERS portal reads: “TCEQ’s electronic filing application used for automatic authorizations has been temporarily shut down to ensure all applications are reviewed by agency staff to determine if they are related to data centers.” The notice gives no date for the system to return.
Abbott ordered a pause in September
On 21 September Abbott directed TCEQ “to halt all permits sought by data centers until the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) completes its audit”. In his letter to the agency’s executive director, Kelly Keel, he wrote: “I direct the TCEQ to pause the issuance of all permits related to data center projects until ERCOT completes its review.” The release quoted him saying: “Until they do, TCEQ will issue no permits sought by data center projects.” It asked the agency to report on its compliance by 19 October.
TCEQ’s reply to the governor, dated 19 October, said: “TCEQ has paused the issuance of all permits related to the construction or development of infrastructure directly supporting data centers.” It also addressed approvals that the agency is not required to issue itself. TCEQ said it was screening these “claimed authorizations” and, “where possible, is suspending such authorizations for data center activities”.
Watchdogs said approvals carried on
On Monday 19 October, FracTracker Alliance and Public Citizen published reports detailing more than two dozen permits issued to Texas data-centre projects, 404 Media reported. By Tuesday the STEERS portal was returning an error page, and by Wednesday the shutdown notice was up, according to the outlet.
Before the portal went down, 404 Media said, it viewed 17 permits related to data-centre projects and saw that they had been moved from “active” to “suspended” in TCEQ’s central registry. The outlet said these were stormwater construction permits, which allow builders to raise and level ground and are “a key, and sometimes final, part of the approval process”.
Sam Law, a researcher at FracTracker, told 404 Media: “STEERS is a portal that TCEQ uses to rubber stamp construction approvals… It seems like they forgot about it and the portal has been quietly issuing approvals since the governor’s order for a pause, including for OpenAI and Amazon this Monday and Tuesday.” TSN has not checked the permits Law refers to. He added that TCEQ had “taken the unprecedented step of suspending 17 approvals and taking down the whole site as they switch to a more involved human review process”. Law also worried that contractors might not know their approvals had been suspended.
Law said he had contacted TCEQ and had no reply. TCEQ did not respond to 404 Media’s request for comment.
TCEQ and the governor’s office deny breaching the pause
The agency did give a statement to Houston Public Media. TCEQ spokesperson Victoria Cann said the permits the groups identified were notices of intent, approved through “automated authorizations” before construction, and that all notices of intent related to data centres had been suspended. “To ensure all applications are thoroughly reviewed by agency staff to determine if they are related to data centers, applications must be physically provided to TCEQ,” she said. Cann said such permits give no authority to operate a data centre.
Abbott’s press secretary, Andrew Mahaleris, told the broadcaster: “In line with the Governor’s directive, TCEQ has not taken and will not take any proactive actions related to the approval of data center permits.” Kathryn Guerra of Public Citizen disputed that, saying: “Once the permit record says approved, the TCEQ has granted the permit — and with it, legal authority for that data center to begin construction.”
TSN has covered a string of Texas data-centre projects, from Taylor’s 664-acre campus deal to Soluna’s planned venture with Applied Digital. The power side of that boom is covered in TSN’s look at who pays for AI’s power.
An automatic system outlasted a manual pause
The dispute turns on a gap between policy and plumbing. The governor’s order told an agency to stop issuing permits, but some construction approvals in Texas are claimed through an automated system rather than issued by a person. TCEQ’s own 19 October letter acknowledged that category and promised to suspend such approvals “where possible”. Shutting STEERS goes further than screening: it closes the automatic route altogether.
Both sides can point to the same records. TCEQ and the governor’s office describe automatic approvals as something other than the agency taking action. The watchdogs say an approval on the record is an approval. That difference matters to anyone who relied on one.
Paper filing moves the burden on to applicants
For builders, the practical change is that every application now goes through staff, on paper. Any project that holds a suspended authorisation has to establish where it stands before work continues, and Law’s warning that contractors may not know is the open risk. Because the notice applies to all applications, the shutdown reaches every applicant that used the portal, not only data-centre projects, until TCEQ says when STEERS returns.
Sources
- TCEQ, STEERS portal notice, read 24 October 2026
- Office of the Texas Governor, “Governor Abbott Directs TCEQ To Halt Data Center Permits”, 21 September 2026
- Office of the Texas Governor, letter to TCEQ Executive Director Kelly Keel, 21 September 2026
- TCEQ, response to the governor’s data-centre directive, 19 October 2026
- 404 Media, Matthew Gault, “Portal Texas Used to ‘Rubber Stamp’ Data Centers Down After 404 Media Reporting”, 22 October 2026
- Houston Public Media, Natalie Weber, 22 October 2026
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- Taylor, Texas Council Votes 5-0 for a 664-Acre Data-Centre and Power-Plant Deal; the Land Is Not Yet Annexed
- Soluna Agrees to Form Texas AI Data Centre Venture With Applied Digital
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