Commentaries at the San Antonio Report provide space for our community to share perspectives and offer solutions to pressing local issues. The views expressed in this commentary belong to the author alone.
When you call a place home, it becomes more than just a town on a map or words on a county sign. It becomes something you want to protect and fight for. The Texas Hill Country is that place for me. Growing up in Bandera, I remember cruising country backgrounds through limestone bluffs and kayaking on our once lush and healthy rivers. Whether I was studying in Austin or working in San Antonio, I always longed for the peace and stillness of Texas’ rolling hills. As I write this from my nearly 100-year-old home in Bandera County, I still feel that deep connection to the Hill Country’s incredible beauty and the singular peace that comes by being one with wide open, wild spaces.
And today, that peace is under threat from data centers.
Across Texas, the rapid expansion of data centers is fundamentally changing rural communities. By 2029, Texas is projected to “become the nation’s leading data center market.”
These facilities consume enormous amounts of electricity and water, generate constant industrial noise, splinter ranchland and wildlife, and permanently alter the rural character that defines so much of our state. They change our way of life, affecting everyone from families to ranchers, doing little to make long-lasting positive impact or create long term local job growth.
Communities such as Corpus Christi already face mounting pressure on their water supplies and the state estimates almost $175 billion will be needed by 2050, simply to meet demand. Data centers will exacerbate that problem.
For years, local residents have raised these concerns. Only recently has Governor Greg Abbott responded.
In June, Abbott asked the Public Utility Commission of Texas and other state regulators to ensure any future “data center development does not come at the cost of Texans,” recommending infrastructure cost recovery, expanded reporting, voluntary environmental best practices, and “repealing certain sales tax exemptions.” In August, Abbott went somewhat further saying Texas would be placing a moratorium on projected data center development “until regulatory agencies can audit” these projects.
While this all sounds promising and could be seen as real action, this falls flat when one considers who is expected to enforce and audit these projects. The Public Utility Commission and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality are led by Abbott appointees, while ERCOT’s governing structure is heavily shaped through appointments made under his administration. Asking agencies your administration helped staff to independently police an industry your administration spent years promoting does not indicate meaningful accountability or independence.
Even Abbott’s call to limit future data center development in rural Texas assumes these projects are inevitable. Many Texans disagree. Recent polling shows 56% of Texans — 62% in rural counties — oppose data centers in their communities outright.
But state leaders, political parties, and candidates — across the political spectrum — continue to push for their development, failing to ask: In a state already struggling with persistent drought, declining aquifers, and chronic water scarcity, should Texas continue expanding water-intensive data centers at all?
In my run to represent Texas’ 21st Congressional District, I proposed the Texas Public Resource Transparency and Accountability Act, which would require the public disclosure of major utility agreements, prohibit secret deals involving public resources, and ensure Texans have a meaningful voice about projects that shape our communities. We deserve transparency before such projects are approved, not an apology after damage is already done.
This is not about being anti-technology or hindering positive progress either. It is about deciding whether every technological advancement deserves a blank check. Especially when it comes to data centers that won’t generate long term growth for our communities and put more strain on our water supply and current/future generations.
That is why meaningful change will come from Texans organizing locally, not from Austin.
Community meetings, educational forums, and public testimony at city councils, county commissioners’ courts, and groundwater district meetings ensure local officials hear directly from the people they represent. Organizations such as the Sierra Club, the Texas Data Center Action Coalition, neighborhood associations, and other local groups help communities organize and speak with one voice. And running for local office in rural areas where seats are plentiful and impactful is always a viable method to change your community’s direction.
The Texas Hill Country is one of the state’s greatest treasures, not only to visitors across the state and country, but to generations of Texans who call it home. The decisions, policies, and allowances made for data centers deserve meaningful public participation, genuine transparency, and legitimate discussion in determining how our land, water, and infrastructure is utilized.
We need to remain engaged, become better organized, and insist that the people who will bear the brunt of these centers have a seat at the table before irreversible decisions are made. The future of rural Texas should be decided by the people who call it home, not by corporations that see it as another place for financial gain.
