LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – Lubbock officials are weighing whether a large-scale data center makes sense inside city limits.
Mayor Mark McBrayer says leaders have been talking about the issue for about a year and they’re still evaluating.
“The city council in general is of a very similar mind that we are very cautious about data centers,” McBrayer said.
McBrayer has heard from residents regarding their concerns over a potential data center coming to Lubbock. He says the region is already seeing more of these projects and city leaders want to be ready if one lands here.
“There’s a lot of them that are looking at Lubbock and all around Lubbock. Lubbock county, there’s a big one out in Dickens County, there’s one going up near Abernathy, so they’re coming,” McBrayer said. “If they’re going to be in the city, we want to be basically in better control of that process than a lot of other cities have been.”
For a full-scale project, the city has to weigh the impact on local resources. Water supply continues to be top of mind.
“Data centers, we look at like any other industry, and one of the first questions we ask is water,” McBrayer said. “They’ve come a long way. A lot of earlier ones used a lot of water, but now they’ve developed new technologies, closed-loop cooling and air cooling. The only ones we would even be interested in talking to would are those that have adopted that process.”
Electricity use is another top priority. Gov. Greg Abbott recently directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas and ERCOT to take immediate steps to protect residents and make sure these centers pay for their own electricity.
At the same time, Texas Tech is pushing to be a leader in AI research and use, something McBrayer says Lubbock can’t ignore.
“We can’t just absolutely say no to AI, we can’t let the tail wag the dog, but it’s an important part of our national security, our national defense, and Tech, I think, really needs to be involved in that, so I’m really supportive of that,” McBrayer said.
The city is making arrangements to hold a community conversation about data centers in early July. The hope is to hold it in the Civic Center Ballroom with room for about 1,000 residents to ask questions and weigh in before any decisions are made.
“I want people who don’t want them, people who want them and people who still have a lot of questions about them to come and we will have that conversation with them, long before we ever make a decision about any particular data center,” McBrayer said.
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