Zoning and Land-Use Control in Somervell County, Texas

No zoning ordinance -- and a decision that belonged to the county next door

Like the great majority of rural Texas counties, Somervell County has no general zoning authority -- its Commissioners Court can regulate things like subdivision platting and floodplain development, but it can't zone unincorporated land the way a city can. In 2025-2026, Florida-based Sailfish Investors LLC proposed "Comanche Circle," a roughly 2,600-acre data-center campus near 8709 Paluxy Highway that straddles the Hood-Somervell county line, about seven miles from the Glen Rose town square and close to Dinosaur Valley State Park. The concept-plan review that generated the most attention, however, was not Somervell's to conduct: it was the Hood County Commissioners Court that granted conditional approval in January 2026, requiring the developer to complete traffic-impact and water-use studies, and it was Hood County's commissioners who then voted 3-1 in June 2026 to approve the project without those conditions, after the developer threatened legal action citing a neighboring county's roughly $100 million lawsuit exposure over a similar data-center moratorium challenge. The project has since moved to the site-development-plan stage, with construction targeted by the end of 2026 and operation planned for 2028.

This matters for anyone researching Somervell County specifically: the concept-plan conditioning process, and its later removal, was Hood County's regulatory tool applied to Hood County's portion of the review, not an illustration of Somervell County's own no-zoning toolkit. A buyer evaluating land on the Somervell side of the line should understand that the county whose commissioners actually held approval authority over Comanche Circle's site plan was Hood, not Somervell -- and that Hood County's own capacity to hold firm on conditions evidently did not survive a serious legal threat from the developer.

Somervell County's own response: a resolution, a letter to the state, and a live water dispute

Somervell County's own Commissioners Court did take real, distinct action of its own, even without concept-plan authority over the specific project: it unanimously passed a resolution opposing any new data center developments in the county until the Texas Legislature addresses gaps in state-level water and energy regulation, and it approved a letter to state officials urging lawmakers to increase regulatory oversight of data centers statewide. That is a genuinely unusual move for a Texas county without zoning power -- using a formal policy resolution and direct legislative advocacy in place of the concept-plan or moratorium tools a city would have, or that Hood County had (and ultimately gave up) on its own side of the line.

Separately, and more directly tied to Somervell County's own regulatory reach, the developer has publicly alleged that the Somervell County Water District reneged on a surface-water memorandum of understanding tied to the project -- reporting describes the MOU as a surface-water supply and annexation agreement intended to reduce the project's reliance on groundwater, not a groundwater-specific agreement (CORRECTED 2026-09) -- a live, unresolved water-rights dispute that, unlike the Hood County concept-plan review, is genuinely Somervell's own to resolve. Because any water Comanche Circle draws from the Somervell side would run through this district, its outcome is a more concrete point of Somervell-specific leverage than the county's policy resolution alone.

For a land buyer, the practical upshot is threaded through both pieces. First, Somervell County is demonstrably willing to take a public policy stance against large industrial proposals even without zoning or site-plan authority, which matters if you're evaluating land specifically because of (or in spite of) development pressure in the area. Second, if you're looking at land near the Comanche Circle site or similar large parcels along the Hood-Somervell line, confirm which county's commissioners actually hold review authority over a specific parcel or project -- it is not automatically Somervell's just because the county line runs through the area -- and separately ask the Somervell County Water District directly about the status of its dispute with the developer, since that (not the now-resolved Hood County concept-plan conditions) is the live Somervell-specific issue to track.