SAN MARCOS, Texas \u2014 Halfway between Austin and San Antonio, a battle has been playing out in the San Marcos City Council over data center development. The city passed a ban on these projects on June 16.<\/p>\n
When items related to data centers are being discussed at San Marcos City Hall, it gets so packed that people spill out into the outdoor area, most expressing opposition to these projects. It\u2019s this pressure that ultimately led city leaders to pass the ban.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a big surprise,\u201d said San Marcos City Council member Amanda Rodriguez.<\/p>\n
The Central Texas city has become the first in the state to fully prohibit the data center industry, with Council member Lorenzo Gonzalez flipping and voting in favor of the ban.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said in a Facebook post, \u201c\u2026 after listening to residents and learning more about the issue, I ultimately concluded that the promised benefits remained speculative while many community concerns remained unresolved.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s important for us as colleagues to hold each other accountable and remind one another who our real bosses are, and that\u2019s the people,\u201d Rodriguez said.<\/p>\n
Rodriguez is the one who originally brought the amendment forward to the council.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s just truly a testament to all of the knowledge that we continue to get both by our community members, by people who would call in, who care about these issues, and I\u2019m happy to see where it turned out,\u201d Rodriguez said.<\/p>\n
Abigail Lindsey is a concerned resident who has a new neighbor, the Cloudburst Data Center, across the street from her home on the border of San Marcos and New Braunfels.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m really worried about sound,\u201d Lindsey said. \u201cI just\u2026 I can\u2019t fathom it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The center broke ground last year. The ban won\u2019t stop this project, but Lindsey is among the residents who joined the effort to halt data center development in the city alongside the Data Center Action Coalition, which has been mobilizing in the community.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did a number of panel discussions and info sessions and things like this and started to kind of slowly bring more people into the organizing, having monthly orientations,\u201d said Si Frede with the coalition.<\/p>\n
Residents have brought forward their concerns \u2014 ranging from water and power use to noise pollution \u2014 to city leaders.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt starts with people and communities getting together, protesting, doing petitions, coming together, going to these meetings, and then people start to notice, then city council starts to notice,\u201d Lindsey said.<\/p>\n
For the city council member celebrating a win for the efforts to halt data center expansion in San Marcos, she has some advice for other cities.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hope is, is that they can look at what we did to emulate, and even if it\u2019s not a full out ban, those stipulations\u2026 such as noise, setbacks and so on, that they can consider those too,\u201d Rodriguez said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN MARCOS, Texas \u2014 Halfway between Austin and San Antonio, a battle has been playing out in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354413,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[2160,132,134,133,1570,102,138,6364,1063,223,82,3621,27,1569,2053,835],"class_list":["post-354412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-app-top-stories","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-ctv","tag-dallas","tag-el-paso","tag-geraldine-torrellas","tag-local-politics","tag-news","tag-san-antonio","tag-technology","tag-texas","tag-texas-what-you-need-to-know","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}