Data center boom raises concerns over power, water use in Texas

Our Take

Credit to FOX 13 Seattle for putting a spotlight on what's becoming the defining story of this decade's infrastructure buildout: Texas is approving data centers faster than anyone can say for certain the grid or the aquifers can support them. ERCOT already runs close to the edge during summer peaks, and every new hyperscale campus that gets promised cheap land and light-touch permitting is another multi-hundred-megawatt load stacked on top of a system that was stressed before AI training clusters entered the picture.

The water piece deserves just as much attention as the electricity piece. Central Texas isn't exactly flush with surplus groundwater, and cooling millions of square feet of servers can mean millions of gallons a year pulled from the same drought-prone supplies that ranchers, farmers, and regular households depend on. When residents start showing up to county meetings asking who signed off on this, it's usually because nobody asked them first — the deals get struck between developers and local officials or utilities long before the public gets a real say.

This is exactly the pattern we track across the country: quiet approvals, vague water and power projections, and communities finding out after the concrete's already poured. If you want to see where these fights are happening near you, check our facility map, and if you're ready to push back on a project in your own backyard, our take-action page has a place to start.