Texas Voters Push Back on Data Centers Over Power and Water Costs
The Texas NAACP has joined dozens of other groups in a coalition called We the People Texas, formed to stop or slow data center construction across the state. Gary Bledsoe, the NAACP's Texas president, puts the coalition's reach at as many as 1 million voters, according to The Verge.
The coalition is not limited to one party or one kind of community. Jet Parker co-founded Save Rural Texas, which is now part of We the People Texas. The local fights that came before the coalition vary widely. In Taylor, a data center project faces local opposition over plans to build on a site designated as a park. In Temple, the mayor and City Council members faced recall attempts over data center developments. San Marcos became the first city in Texas to ban data centers.
An August poll found 57 percent of Texans oppose data center construction, including 43 percent of Republicans, 75 percent of Democrats and 54 percent of independents. A University of Houston poll of likely voters found 69 percent very concerned about electricity prices and water supply in connection with data centers. A separate poll, reported by WFAA, found three out of four likely Texas voters believe a new data center in their community would raise their electricity bill. A September survey from the Texas Politics Project, covered by Reuters, found that only 30 percent of respondents would support a data center in their community.
The issue has reached the top of the statewide ballot. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is running for reelection against Democrat Gina Hinojosa, and Abbott has previously described Texas as the epicenter of AI development. In the Senate race, Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton is running against Democrat James Talarico. Anger over data centers has become a major issue for Texas voters and could influence key midterm races. Candidates' positions on data center guardrails and moratoriums could play decisive roles in close elections in Texas, Pennsylvania and other states, according to The Verge's policy coverage from October 27.
The state has already acted on the water question. In September, Abbott directed the Texas Water Development Board to impose legal consequences on data centers and other large water-consuming users, as Reuters reported. The directive tells the board to act, and the enforcement mechanics it sets in motion are still ahead.
Communities across the country are pushing back on similar grounds. CNBC reports that residents are fighting data centers over spiking electric bills, soaring electricity and water demand, noise, land use and taxpayer subsidies. Those same categories appear in the Texas polling.
A reasonable reading of that overlap is that the objections concern less the technology in the abstract than who pays for the power, the water and the land.
The broader context here is a shift in venue. For most of the cloud buildout, siting fights happened at zoning boards and utility commissions, where a few hundred attendees could decide a project. Once the grievance reaches a recall petition, a city charter ban and a statewide ballot question, developers, grid operators and state officials are all negotiating with an electorate that can measure its own utility bill.
In my view, the most useful question for the industry is not whether Texas voters will tolerate data centers but which terms they will accept. Load forecasts, water sourcing, cost allocation for transmission upgrades and tax abatements are technical matters, and they are where the next round of decisions will be made. Those decisions can also make projects more defensible. A facility that publishes its water use, pays its own grid upgrade costs and avoids protected land has a stronger case than one that does not. The efficiency gains that let large AI workloads run on less power and cooling are real, and operators who can demonstrate them at specific sites will have more room to build than those who ask communities to take their projections on faith.
