<\/p>\n
Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller and Clayton Tucker, Democratic candidate for Agriculture Commissioner, speak during a forum hosted by Matagorda County Against Data Centers on the impact of data center construction in the state, Thursday, June 11, 2026.<\/p>\n
Jason Fochtman\/Houston Chronicle<\/p>\n
Corpus Christi is in danger of running out of water. Groundwater across the state <\/a>is dwindling. Experts say Texas needs tens of billions of dollars<\/a> in new infrastructure to stave off losing critical water supply in the next 50 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n Water shortages present a serious threat to our state\u2019s continued growth and economic success.<\/p>\n So it is flabbergasting that the owners of data centers can\u2019t even bring themselves to fill out a survey<\/a> about their water consumption.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n This stunning revelation came to light during a legislative hearing held by the House Natural Resources Committee last week. The Texas Water Development Board\u2019s water supply director told lawmakers that the agency sent surveys to the state\u2019s 341 data centers<\/a> to account for their water usage.\u00a0<\/p>\n But most of the data centers are hitting the \u201cunsubscribe\u201d button. Only 17% of the data centers responded to the TWDB survey<\/a>. The state Public Utilities Commission also sent a survey to 92 data centers<\/a> and cryptomining facilities regarding their water usage, but their response rate wasn\u2019t much better. Only 28 participated<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Texas has a long history of allowing industries to police themselves, with state regulatory agencies either underfunded and understaffed or serving mostly as a rubber stamp. The Railroad Commission<\/a> is notorious for allowing the oil and gas sector to pollute the air and groundwater. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality takes nearly a year and a half to investigate and complete enforcement actions on potential environmental violations.\u00a0<\/p>\n But the proliferation of data centers has sparked concerns that transcend the usual partisan divides in Texas.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Some of those concerns are driven by uninformed fearmongering or a \u201cnot in my backyard\u201d mind-set that simply doesn\u2019t want anything new added to a community.\u00a0 But there are very real questions about whether these data centers could harm Texas water systems. That\u2019s because most data centers need to run servers 24\/7 in order to provide uninterrupted access for AI applications or other computing systems. They consume vast amounts of water \u2014 estimated at 25 billion gallons per year<\/a> in Texas \u2014 in order to keep the servers cool and prevent equipment from overheating and could be using well over seven times as much water within the next five years.\u00a0<\/p>\n Texas has long allowed industries to use vast quantities of water. Oil and gas producers in the Permian Basin, for instance, lift 22 million barrels<\/a> of water from the ground per day for drilling operations. One energy expert told the Chronicle\u2019s Amanda Drane and Rebekah Ward that water demand from data centers and agriculture in the coming years could be 10 times higher<\/a> than the projected volumes of oilfield wastewater. A recent University of Texas study<\/a> predicted that data centers could account for as much as 9% of the state\u2019s water consumption by 2040.\u00a0<\/p>\n That the state has no reliable record of data centers\u2019 water usage is a failure of political leadership. It\u2019s impossible to plan for a future with a sizable population increase if we don\u2019t know how much water the state\u2019s industries are gobbling up. And advocates for building data centers should want to have their own reliable data on hand in order to rebut some of the dissenters\u2019 more outrageous claims.<\/p>\n So where is the enforcement? As state Rep. Cody Harris (R-Palestine) noted during the hearing, the attorney general\u2019s office could, at minimum, legally compel every data center to respond to the water development board survey.\u00a0<\/p>\n Last we checked, however, Paxton was on vacation in Iceland<\/a> with his latest paramour while he continues to settle a divorce filed by his wife \u201con biblical grounds<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Paxton has no problem investigating Lululemon<\/a> for putting plastic in yoga pants or threatening children’s toothpaste manufacturers<\/a> for not making it super-duper clear that you should only use a pea-sized dollop of bubblegum-flavored gel. But when it comes to enforcing regulations passed by his fellow Texas Republicans, well, apparently Reykjav\u00edk is more appealing this time of year.\u00a0<\/p>\n Other politicians are taking the concerns more seriously.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sid Miller, the outgoing agriculture commissioner, recently called for a statewide moratorium on data centers. He has been joined in that call by Clayton Tucker<\/a>, the Democrat vying to fill his seat. That\u2019s overreach, even if it is politically popular.<\/p>\n Gov. Greg Abbott is charting a more reasonable path, calling on state regulators<\/a> to ensure new data centers don\u2019t pass on costs of electrical infrastructure to ratepayers and asking lawmakers to require data centers to use water more efficiently. He even suggested repealing data center companies\u2019 sales tax exemptions. That\u2019s quite a change from just seven months ago when the governor bragged that Texas will be the \u201ccenterpiece for AI data centers<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n While election year backlash is surely driving Abbott\u2019s repositioning, we hope the Legislature acts. It\u2019s a useful framework for sensible policymaking that mirrors what other red and blue states<\/a> have done to regulate the burden data centers put on communities. The tech companies building and managing these facilities also have a responsibility to be good neighbors and friendly corporate stewards. Just as when this editorial board opposed local efforts to ban fracking<\/a>, we think a little compromise would go a long way. And that starts with filling out surveys about water usage without the state needing to file a lawsuit. As many of those skeptical rural Texans know: Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.\u00a0<\/p>\n We want Texas to continue to prosper economically and be a business-friendly state. But we can\u2019t roll out the red carpet without some reasonable guardrails in place to protect precious natural resources.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller and Clayton Tucker, Democratic candidate for Agriculture Commissioner, speak during a forum hosted by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362530,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-362529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362529","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=362529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}