{"id":436977,"date":"2026-09-15T20:48:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T20:48:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/436977\/"},"modified":"2026-09-15T20:48:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T20:48:12","slug":"gov-greg-abbott-wants-to-penalize-data-centers-in-water-use-inquiry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/436977\/","title":{"rendered":"Gov. Greg Abbott wants to penalize data centers in water use inquiry"},"content":{"rendered":"

AUSTIN \u2014 Gov. Greg Abbott<\/a> directed state water regulators to penalize data centers<\/a> that failed to respond to a recent inquiry into their water usage.<\/p>\n

More than 70% of data centers in Texas broke the law<\/a> by failing to respond to a state-ordered survey of their water usage, authorities at the Texas Water Development Board said recently. The survey went out to more than 300 data centers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, Abbott wants those data centers to face civil or criminal penalties.<\/p>\n

\u201cData centers must share the duty to protect Texas water,\u201d Abbott said in a statement<\/a> indicating he had directed the Water Development Board to \u201cuse its enforcement authority to penalize past failures and to impose legal consequences for any future failure to comply.\u201d<\/p>\n

Data center water use has become a potent political issue in this year\u2019s election cycle in rural communities. The lack of information has underscored concerns about transparency from data center developers and fed public mistrust.<\/p>\n

Abbott said that data centers\u2019 failure to respond hampered the Water Development Board\u2019s ability to create plans for state water consumption \u2014 one of the chief tasks for the agency. The Houston Advanced Research Center\u00a0estimated in January<\/a> that data center water consumption could rise to about 161 billion gallons in 2030 \u2014 about 82% of\u00a0Lewisville Lake’s\u00a0capacity.<\/p>\n

In a letter to the board<\/a>, Abbott ordered the agency to seek civil and criminal penalties for data center companies found to have violated the law. Civil penalties could include automatic denial of permits from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.<\/p>\n

At a Sept. 1 hearing<\/a>, Temple McKinnon, water supply planning director at the Water Development Board, said that enforcing the laws related to water use inquiries would be up to local prosecutors, including county and district attorneys.<\/p>\n

Abbott ordered the Water Development Board to refer violators to local authorities.<\/p>\n

The Water Development Board conducted its inquiry alongside a separate survey from the Texas Public Utility Commission, which regulates electricity usage. Authorities from that agency said less than half of the data centers they contacted responded.<\/p>\n

Abbott once embraced data centers. He cheered the state\u2019s rise as the \u201cepicenter of AI development\u201d in November<\/a>, vowing that Texas \u201cmust ensure that America remains at the forefront of the AI revolution, and Texas is the place where that can happen\u201d during an event marking $40 billion of investment by Google into AI infrastructure in the state.<\/p>\n

But as political support has frayed in rural, Republican strongholds, Abbott\u2019s attitude changed.<\/p>\n

He ordered a moratorium on data center construction in August, halting any permit approvals for new centers seeking to connect to the state\u2019s stand-alone power grid until an audit is completed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSimply put, Texans must come first,\u201d said in a statement following the announcement of the moratorium.<\/p>\n

Abbott now wants the Water Development Board to join the audit effort being headed by the Public Utility Commission and ERCOT.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN \u2014 Gov. Greg Abbott directed state water regulators to penalize data centers that failed to respond to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":436978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-436977","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\/436977","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=436977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}