Brutal Data Center Stats for Texas Water

Texas faces the prospect of 750 new data centers according to a presentation at the recent Milken Global Conference.  Currently 140 data centers are under construction and 610 have been announced.  It's not clear if San Angelo/Tom Green County's potential four data centers are in the count.  Likely not, so the number could grow much higher.

Beacon Data Centers is looking at Dove Creek in Tom Green County for a possible location.  Their website indicates one of their data centers under development would use 400 acre feet of water per year.  

They said they would not drill wells but use surface water from Spring Creek.  I don't see how that is possible given we live upstream and the creek goes dry solely from upstream irrigation.  They stop irrigating and the flow returns.  It's not nearly enough to sustain daily operations of a giant data center.

Take 750 new data centers at 400 acre feet per year once under operation and that's an additional 300,000 acre feet needed statewide.  That does not count the water needed for construction or for new workers' living needs during the construction period.

Consider this recent report from Politico:

The neighbors of a data center in Georgia are steaming after they discovered the facility had sucked up nearly 30 million gallons of water.... 

Outrage started bubbling up last year when residents of an affluent subdivision named Annelise Park in Fayetteville, Georgia, noticed their water pressure was unusually low.

The company said its water consumption was so high last year because of temporary construction-related activities, such as concrete work, dust control and site preparation

Water demands occur long before sites become operational.  That 30 million gallons equates to 92 acre feet.  Someone needs to model the water use of 750 additional Texas data centers during the construction period.   That's water for the work and for the workers who surely need showers at the end of the day.  

A recent story in the Houston Chronicle indicated Texas data centers would go from using less than 1% of the state's water to 9% by 2040.  At a minimum that's a tenfold increase.  The study was done by the University of Texas.

The State of Texas has thrown the door wide open for these facilities.  That is why there are so many coming.  The newfound reticence of elected officials may be real and it may be for show.  

San Angelo and Tom Green County have four data centers exploring sites.  The Skybox/Emergent in San Angelo seems pretty far along and is actively being marketed.  Beacon Data Centers expressed interest and met with the community, which clearly told them to look elsewhere.  The other two sites have not been named, by interested party or location in the county.   

The picture is brutal on water alone.  No responsible elected official could allow this to happen on such an obscene scale.  

Update 5-13-26:  A mega data center development named "The Stratos Project" in Utah was approved by Box Elder County commissioners.  

Box Elder County, Utah gets 17 inches of rain, on average, per year.

Average annual rainfall for San Angelo is 21 inches.   

Stratos has a long way to go to become fully operational:

Developers say they will begin raising capital within 60 days and aim to start initial phases within months. The data center would likely not be in operation for ten years.

How did a Shark have so much success that far inland, in an area with so little water?  It won because local and state leaders prioritized out of state corporate interests above the people who elected them.  They did so "because the Undersecretary of the Air Force asked them to."

San Angelo has Goodfellow Airforce Base, which trains military intelligence and firefighters across all of the military's branches.  As of now there is no state group coordinating project development, but that could change.