Texas lawmakers are taking a closer look at a fast-growing part of the AI economy: data centers and how much water they use.<\/p>\n
Only about 17% of the hundreds of facilities the state surveyed had responded, officials said at a recent hearing.<\/p>\n
What happened?<\/p>\n
According to Texas Public Radio<\/a>, committee members warned that sparse reporting is leaving Texas with major gaps as it tries to prepare for future water shortages amid growth, drought, and aquifer depletion.<\/p>\n Data centers are increasingly tied to artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency mining, and the digital tools people use every day.<\/p>\n State Representative Cody Harris said, “Data centers have become a hot-button issue, dominating social media feeds and news reports\u2026 The transparency of utilization of resources shouldn’t be optional.”<\/p>\n The Texas Water Development Board identified 341 data centers in its 2025 survey, up from 22 in 2023.<\/p>\n But Temple McKinnon, who oversees water supply planning for the board, said the agency still lacks the facility-level detail needed to sort water use among cooling, on-site power generation, and other operations.<\/p>\n “Our survey doesn’t get into that level of facility detail,” McKinnon said, per TPR.<\/p>\n Why does it matter?<\/p>\n A key question is whether Texas can confidently plan for its water needs over the next 50 years with so little participation from industry.<\/p>\n State Representative Brad Buckley summed it up directly: “So we’re building a state water plan off of a 17% response rate. Is that an overstatement? I mean, that is a terrible response rate.”<\/p>\n Lawmakers also heard about a more local threat. In rural counties without a groundwater conservation district, a data center may be able to drill a well and pump groundwater without a local authority restricting withdrawals. That could allow a large facility to draw from the same aquifer used by nearby households, agricultural operations, and smaller public water providers.<\/p>\n The discussion also reflects AI’s growing ties to the energy grid. The infrastructure behind those tools can require enormous amounts of electricity and water.<\/p>\n That demand can strain power plants and raise broader concerns about resource use and the pace at which the technology is expanding.<\/p>\n What are people saying?<\/p>\n Lawmakers appeared increasingly frustrated during the hearing. Harris criticized companies that fail to answer basic questions from communities or lawmakers, saying the lack of response is fueling distrust.<\/p>\n State Representative Trent Ashby was especially direct about unregulated groundwater pumping: “That’s a broken system.”<\/p>\n McKinnon said the state is still working to fill in the gaps when companies do not respond.<\/p>\n “It’s kind of like \u2014 I like to call it forensic accounting, in a way,” McKinnon said, per TPR. “We ask these folks to report directly, but we’re also looking at many other methods to assess water use.”<\/p>\n Get TCD’s free newsletters<\/a> for easy tips, smart advice, and a chance to earn $5,000 toward home upgrades. To see more stories like this one, change your Google preferences here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas lawmakers are taking a closer look at a fast-growing part of the AI economy: data centers and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356923,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[126854,5304,126853,8554,27,29,28,36414],"class_list":["post-356922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-aquifer-depletion","tag-data-centers","tag-state-representative-cody-harris","tag-state-water-plan","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-texas-public-radio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356922","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=356922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}