Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has opened an investigation into the state’s data centers that haven’t reported their water usage.
The investigation underscores concerns that large-scale data center developments consume enormous amounts of water to cool their computer servers. The Lone Star State is already undergoing a water shortage, so the state is taking steps to ensure that its water supplies are not depleted by the infrastructure that powers artificial intelligence.
There are over 300 operational data centers in Texas, with plans to build hundreds more.
“My office is currently investigating hundreds of data center developments to ensure that they are transparent about their water usage and fully compliant with the law,” Paxton said in a statement on Thursday. “It is our responsibility to steward our state’s land well, and we cannot do that if companies are blatantly disregarding their legal obligations to Texas and to our citizens. We cannot sacrifice our resources, water, or energy supply, and I will continue to fight for our communities across this state.”
Under state law, the Texas Water Development Board is required to conduct surveys of entities that use surface water and groundwater for municipal, industrial, power generation, or mining purposes, according to Paxton’s office. As a result, the Republican official is demanding that all Texas-based data centers comply with the law.
Texas has attracted large investments from data center developers over the past year, becoming the second state with the most operational data centers behind Virginia.
But Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) has since adopted a more cautious view of the sprawling data center campuses. He implemented a strict moratorium on the development of new data centers this summer based on concerns about the state’s strained water supplies and power grid.
The governor recently stressed that data centers are welcome to the state as long as they gain the approval of the local communities in which they are built.
“They pop up in places that nobody ever heard of before until they started the construction,” Abbott said of data centers in an interview with ABC News last month. “And so they had not been working in collaboration with the state. They had not been in collaboration with local governments, and so they basically dug their own grave for the problem that’s been caused for them, and that’s why they got the backlash they deserve.”
GREG ABBOTT SAYS DATA CENTER DEVELOPERS ‘DUG THEIR OWN GRAVE’
A day after that interview, Paxton adopted a tough regulatory stance on data centers that he would implement if he were elected to the Senate. The Texas Republican is running against Democratic candidate James Talarico, who has a competing plan to regulate data center projects.
The midterm elections come as Republicans begin to sour on data centers amid the public backlash facing the AI boom. Despite the growing criticism, President Donald Trump is standing by his agenda to accelerate the construction of more data centers nationwide as part of his goal to beat China in the AI race.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
