An unexpected coalition of protestors gathered on the south steps of the Texas Capitol on Monday with a single demand for state leaders: Hit pause on the biggest data centers until Texas writes new rules for the industry.<\/p>\n
State Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, who has pressed Gov. Greg Abbott and other leaders to act, told the crowd of ranchers and farmers, liberals and conservatives, that the issue doesn’t split along party lines.<\/p>\n
“It’s not a Democrat or Republican issue. This truly is a Texas issue,” Miller said.<\/p>\n
The rally, held ahead of a Texas Senate Committee on Finance hearing on data centers scheduled for later that morning, came days after one North Texas community claimed a win of its own.<\/p>\n
In rural Henderson County, Nan Michelle Anderson and her neighbors are celebrating. Developer Diode walked away from a massive data center it had proposed just beyond the gates of her 160-acre Triple N Ranch.<\/p>\n
“Because I had a bell and a longhorn, I think that got people’s attention,” Anderson said.<\/p>\n
Opponents said the project could have drawn 5 million gallons of water a day from nearby Cedar Creek Lake. Anderson, part of an organized opposition campaign, credited the attention the fight drew.<\/p>\n
“Being on the news, I think that people hearing the story, seeing the story, made all the difference in the world,” she said.<\/p>\n
Abbott pointed to the withdrawal as proof his approach is working. In a statement, the governor said data centers that want to do business in Texas “must meet a clear standard,” and added, “Diode did the right thing by withdrawing their project.”<\/p>\n
Abbott laid out those expectations in a June 10 directive to the Public Utility Commission and ERCOT, the state’s grid operator, calling for measures such as water-efficient cooling, protections for residential ratepayers and reduced impacts on nearby communities.<\/p>\n
Diode framed the decision as its own. In a July 22 notice to Henderson County officials, the company’s co-presidents wrote that the site \u2014 given its close proximity to the rural residential community around Cedar Creek Lake \u2014 “does not meet the higher standard we believe should guide data center development.”<\/p>\n
Diode said it would focus on other opportunities in Texas and supported water-efficient technologies such as closed-loop and air-cooled systems.<\/p>\n
But Miller said one withdrawal doesn’t fix the underlying problem.<\/p>\n
“It is welcome news, but it really doesn’t solve the problem. One out of hundreds,” he said.<\/p>\n
Anderson worries nothing has really changed.<\/p>\n
“Nothing to really prevent something similar coming in and doing the same thing,” she said.<\/p>\n
Diode is gone, but the land is still for sale. And across Texas, the next fights are already lining up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An unexpected coalition of protestors gathered on the south steps of the Texas Capitol on Monday with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388680,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[89004,5304,392,136981,2879,27,5601,29,28],"class_list":["post-388679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-cedar-creek-lake","tag-data-centers","tag-greg-abbott","tag-michelle-anderson","tag-sid-miller","tag-texas","tag-texas-capitol","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388679","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=388679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}