Data Centers and Water Usage – Texas Wants Answers

Today, we're talking about data centers and specifically water.

Data centers face a new test, power, water, and proof.

Texas asked its data centers a basic question.

How much water are you using? So far, most of them have not answered the question.

For each of these past three years, fewer than one in three of the data centers surveyed by the Texas Water Development Board returned the state's required water use survey.

Now, that doesn't mean that those facilities necessarily used too much water or did something wrong.

It just means that now Texas has been trying to plan for this massive expansion of digital infrastructure, but without getting complete information from many of the companies involved, the data centers.

So now, Governor Greg Abbott says that the lack of response will carry consequences.

On September 14, Abbott directed the Texas Water Development Board to pursue past failures, penalize future noncompliance, and to also work with ERCOT as part of its broader audit of data centers seeking access to the Texas grid.

In his letter to the board, Abbott didn't mince words.

Major water users, he said, quote, Texas is no longer looking at power demand over here and then water demand over there.

Instead, the state is beginning to connect power, water, ownership, financing, and even community impact into one much larger question.

What should a data center have to prove before Texas allows it to move forward? Today, we're looking at why water reporting compliance has been so low, who can actually enforce the requirement, and how Texas is building a new approval framework around its fast-growing data center market.

why this is about more than paperwork.