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Does anyone know what position our local and state officials are taking on the uncontrolled proliferation of Data Centers in our state? Have tried to call offices and ask staff where the candidates stand but they are not responding. Sure would like to know before I vote.

Am really concerned by high water use and the impact on future water availability. Also, concerned that utility customers are being saddled with the costs of the big new transmission lines to move power to the Data Center facilities through higher electric rates. Our leaders need to demand that The Public Utility Commission and ERCOT pause everything to fully examine the impacts on our state.

President Trump seems to be moving in the direction of asking these Data Center companies to incur all the costs instead of making residents pay through higher utility bills. The County Judge in Hays County has proposed a moratorium on industrial water users (Data Centers) labeling the situation a crisis.

Trying to get information from Abbott, Patrick, Miller, Sheets, Schwertner, Dyson, Wharton, Kacal, Southerland, Ford, and Garrett and their opponents on whether they think a pause is necessary.

If anyone has information, please chime in so we can be informed voters.

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Never thought I'd see the day when Data Center expansion became a campaign issue.

A place where I've lived for the past 30 years (almost) and most people probably never gave a second thought about until the recent electricity rate hype.

Can't we just attach a couple of servers to each windmill in West Texas?

I think water usage is a non issue. AI data centers use a tiny fraction of what farmers use.

Power on the other hand is a huge problem. We need to cut regulation and build like crazy (nukes, nat gas, solar + batteries, all of it).

Who is OP quoting??

Im Gipper said:

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Who is OP quoting??

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Listeater?

I have a cousin that basically just retired at 35 after selling his family farm to a datacenter in the Eagle Lake area. It's legally his after my uncle died so he can do whatever he wants with it, but he definitely ruffled some feathers in the family.

Im Gipper said:

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Who is OP quoting??

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AI post

We are having the debate in San Angelo about data centers.

Water is non-issue
Noise is non-issue
Power is there or it's not. No matter where they build a data center under ERCOT's grid, it will impact us because we need more capacity. Texas has added 30 GW to the grid since 2021's freeze. 30 years ago, the entire grid had 30 GW total capacity.

My take:

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OPINION In the late 19th century, Texas stood at a crossroadsquite literally. The arrival of railroads promised unprecedented connectivity, economic vitality, and growth, but not every community seized the opportunity. Towns that embraced the rails boomed into bustling hubs, while those that shunned them or were bypassed withered into obscurity. Today, San Angelo faces a similar pivotal moment with the proposed arrival of data centers, the modern equivalent of those iron tracks. These facilities, powering the AI-driven digital economy, could incubate innovation, create jobs, and propel our city into a land of opportunity for all.

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Lessons from the Rails in Texas

Texas' economic development history is inextricably linked to railroads, which transformed isolated outposts into economic powerhouses. Towns that actively courted rail lines saw explosive growth. Take Abilene: In the 1880s, when the Texas and Pacific Railway considered bypassing the area in favor of Buffalo Gap, local cattlemen and developers rallied, offering land and incentives to reroute the tracks through their nascent town. The result? Abilene became a major cattle-shipping center, its population surging as commerce flowed in. Similarly, Dallas leveraged rail connections starting in 1872, evolving from a modest settlement into a commercial giant by the end of the 19th century, with multiple lines converging to fuel trade in cotton, oil, and goods.

Other communities flourished by design. Rosenberg, southwest of Houston, boomed after welcoming the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway in the 1880s, supplanting nearby Richmond, which reportedly refused right-of-way concessions. Temple grew as a junction for the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, becoming a medical and transportation hub. Marshall, already a cotton center, solidified its status with the Texas and Pacific's arrival in 1873, hosting workshops and depots that employed hundreds. These towns didn't just survivethey innovated, attracting industries, immigrants, and investment that built schools, hospitals, and lasting prosperity.

Contrast this with the fates of those that resisted or were overlooked. Buffalo Gap, once Taylor County's seat, declined after the railroad favored Abilene, its population dwindling as businesses migrated. Helena in Karnes County saw its growth halt when the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway curved around it in the 1880s, bypassing the town due to local disputes or terraintoday, it's a shadow of its former self, with Highway 181 tracing the old "Big Curve." Brackettville in Kinney County offers another cautionary tale: Initially planned for inclusion, it was bypassed by the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway in 1882, which opted for a route ten miles south, limiting its expansion despite its role as a wool and hides shipping point tied to its U.S. Army base called Fort Clark. This decision redirected growth to Del Rio, 30 miles west, transforming a small settlement around San Felipe Springs into a regional hub; by the 1890s, Del Rio's population had swelled to 2,000, fueled by railroad connectivity that boosted sheep and goat ranching, wool trade, and later military and tourism developments. Whitt in Parker County began fading in the early 1900s after being bypassed, exacerbated by the Great Depression. Stiles in Reagan County started declining in 1911 when the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railway skipped it, and oil booms elsewhere sealed its fate as a near-ghost town. Pittsville in Wood County suffered similarly in the late 1880s, its bypassed status leading to depopulation.

These stories aren't anomalies; they're patterns. Railroads brought jobs in construction, maintenance, and shipping, spurred related industries like lumber and agriculture, and connected towns to national markets. Shunning themwhether through pride, short-sightedness, or failed negotiationsmeant isolation and economic demotion.

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Today, data centers represent the new railsvast facilities housing servers that underpin AI, cloud computing, and global connectivity. San Angelo is already on the cusp: Skybox Datacenters has proposed a hyperscale project on 343-374 acres of city-owned land northeast of town, near U.S. Highway 67 and City Farm Road.

Arthur Stilwell's Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railway ended in heartbreak and an abandoned rail line with San Angelo as a hub, but for the modern economic battles, San Angelo should have the upper hand over Abilene.

San Angelo historically led telecommunications throughout the 20th century because General Telephone of the Southwest (GTE Southwest) was headquartered here at 2701 S. Johnson St. GTE's headquarters elevated San Angelo's telecom infrastructure, providing robust connectivity that supported economic stability during challenges like the Great Depression, storms, and floods, and the dot-com boom in the late 1990s and early 2000s. GTE bought out the former San Angelo Telephone Company to establish GTE Southwest and moved its headquarters here from Durant, Oklahoma, in the early 1950s. GTE also nurtured local talent, such as James L. "Rocky" Johnson, who advanced from clerk to GTE CEO by 1998. Today, the E.H. Danner Museum of Telephony at Angelo State University preserves artifacts from this era, including switchboards and early phones, underscoring San Angelo's enduring telecom heritage.

What no one advocating for the Skybox Datacenter has mentioned is that in that same old six-story GTE building, situated in the backyards of a fairly affluent neighborhood, today houses a rather large datacenter called Cloudnium's SANG-TX facility. The 30,000- to 38,000-square-foot facility has been in operation on one floor of the old GTE building for about a year and a half, and there is a plan to expand its capacity from 7.8 MW to 50 MW in electricity use.

While the Chamber crowd hasn't mentioned the Cloudnium facility, its existence silences vocal opposition to projects like Skybox. It is located almost inside a residential area on a lot zoned for General Commercial and Heavy Commercial use. Cloudnium is much closer to San Angelo's posh Santa Rita than PaulAnn is to Skybox, and we haven't heard a peep about noise from San Angelo's gilded classes despite Cloudnium's 9,000-gallon diesel engine backup generators. Water remains plentiful, and no one is experiencing electrical blackouts.

The second point here, over and above a current use case that annihilates the opposition's argument, is that San Angelo has the heritage and infrastructure to grab a large swath of the AI buildout, but lackluster advocacy and an emerging vocal opposition of naysayers is killing the community's sales vibe.

Of Trains, Telephones and Artificial Intelligence

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The key to power for data centers is building small modern nuke reactors that can power a data center right next door. Then you can put them out in the boonies and only worry about running fiber to them for connectivity.

They are proposing a data center in Young County and it is comical to read all the "hair on fire" FB posts about the billions of gallons of water and the gigawatts of electricity they use. It has become an echo chamber of copy and paste every radical claim from all over the country. We have several county residents that are coat tailing off the hysteria to run for office.

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Water is non-issue
Noise is non-issue
Power is there or it's not. No matter where they build a data center under ERCOT's grid, it will impact us because we need more capacity. Texas has added 30 GW to the grid since 2021's freeze. 30 years ago, the entire grid had 30 GW total capacity.

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This.

The power issue is one for the State. It needs to be addressed, but opposing a data center in your jurisdiction isn't going to save you from power outages if they simply build it somewhere else on the ERCOT grid.

The water is a closed loop. The biggest problem in West Texas is getting the water to the data centers. They can RO treat just about any water and make it suitable, but getting easements for water lines is another matter. So, if you can't hook up to city water or a rural water system, then that could be a problem, but it's not really a neighborhood problem.

The tax abatement issues come up, but the ones that get approved result in a lot more revenue for the local government than if the property remained ag valuation land.