{"id":436053,"date":"2026-09-14T23:40:22","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T23:40:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/436053\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T23:40:22","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T23:40:22","slug":"texas-governor-threatens-to-penalize-datacenters-not-obeying-water-laws-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/436053\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas governor threatens to penalize datacenters not obeying water laws | Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Greg Abbott<\/a>, the Texas<\/a> governor, has directed state regulators to penalize datacenters<\/a> that fail to comply with state laws requiring them to disclose their water use.<\/p>\n

\u201cData centers must share the duty to protect Texas water,\u201d the Republican<\/a> governor said<\/a> on Monday. \u201cThe Texas Water Code requires a complete and accurate water use survey. I direct the Texas Water Development Board to use its enforcement authority to penalize past failures and to impose legal consequences for any future failure to comply,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

In a letter<\/a> to the water board, Abbott, who is seeking a fourth term, said: \u201cMajor water users, including data centers, appear to have committed civil and criminal violations by failing to provide the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) with information about water usage as required by the Texas Water Code.\u201d<\/p>\n

It follows a directive<\/a> Abbott issued last month ordering the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (Ercot) to conduct a comprehensive audit of datacenters advancing through the Ercot interconnection process.<\/p>\n

Drought<\/a>–prone<\/a> Texas<\/a> has<\/a> fast become the heart of the US\u2019s datacenter boom.<\/p>\n

Texas has the second-most datacenters of any state in the country, according to a tally<\/a> by the Pew Research Center. But with 335 datacenters<\/a>, and at least 248 more in the pipeline, experts believe it could surpass Virginia as the world\u2019s largest concentration of datacenters by the end of the decade.<\/p>\n

But, amid growing public concern<\/a> over datacenter construction, Texas has been working to tighten oversight of the industry as demand grows for the state\u2019s power and water supplies.<\/p>\n

In 2025, Texas datacenters consumed an estimated 25bn gallons of water, according to<\/a> the Houston Advanced Research Center. Water use by datacenters in the state could rise to 161bn gallons a year by 2030 \u2013 about 2.7% of all water used in Texas, or roughly the amount consumed by 1.3m households across the country.<\/p>\n

The audit requires datacenters to provide information about their water consumption, water sources and efforts to use water-efficient technologies. Abbott said projects that fail to complete the audit will be denied permission to connect to the state\u2019s power grid.<\/p>\n

\u201cTWDB\u2019s water use surveys serve a similarly important purpose as this data center audit. TWDB must coordinate with PUC and ERCOT to ensure that covered entities provide critical water use information in response,\u201d Abbott said in his Monday letter. \u201cAny failure to respond to the audit\u2019s request for water use information would trigger TWDB\u2019s independent enforcement authority.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Greg Abbott, the Texas governor, has directed state regulators to penalize datacenters that fail to comply with state…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":436054,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-436053","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\/436053","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=436053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}