The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You, and the World is Watching

The progression of this conversation has been sobering. While the people of Texas continue to push for accountability, transparency, and realistic standards from our state as hyper-scale datacenters begin setting up shop in Texas, we’ve heard very, very little from our elected officials.

If you’re fortunate, and I will say that I have been, you’ve met with your state rep and have had the opportunity to voice your concern. If you’re not in such a position, it is beginning to feel as though you’ve stepped into an echo chamber. We may be hearing assurances of change or of safety, but we have few actions to reflect those promises.

We have to keep doing the work, continue to advocate for ourselves, our families, our neighbors. This may be speaking at a city council meeting, a commissioners court, a water board, or in letters and emails to our higher legislative branches. And we push to see what they will do with this concern.

Some of the most notable rejections of public appeal have occurred in Round Rock, Temple, Red Oak, and Hood County,

https://www.kxan.com/.../smoke-and-mirrors-texans.../amp/

https://www.msn.com/.../temple-city-council.../ar-AA22EpeV

https://www.fox4news.com/.../red-oak-data-center-city...

https://www.keranews.org/.../hood-county-al-data-center...

We’re waiting for a statewide response to the moratorium set in place in Hill County. We’re hoping for the best, while acknowledging the precarious situation that Senator Bettencourt has levied against counties.

https://www.texaspolicyresearch.com/is-the-state.../

We’re looking at Amarillo as a standard of expectation for datacenter’s community impact and have only seen chaos. Housing prices surged due to temporary workers coming in, homelessness increased as residents were priced out, water is being drained, our cotton industry threatened, and all for what appears to be an industry failure thus far.

https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-ai-data-centers.../

https://abc7amarillo.com/.../amarillo-pit-count-finds...

https://www.latimes.com/.../data-center-startup-fermi...

https://dallasexpress.com/.../tech-boom-vs-texas.../

https://abc7amarillo.com/.../fermi-america-releases...

We’re in a difficult season. The people of Texas must continue to remind our elected officials - “the eyes of Texas are upon you”.

This week I was reminded that the eyes of the world are upon us. Upon the people. Upon those of us who represent the “free world” in the Lone Star State.

I was contacted by a foundation of researchers, the Heinrich Böll Foundation (the websites in German, so I’ll link the Wikipedia and you’re welcome to go from there):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Böll_Foundation

They wanted to know what was happening. Who is moving? What is being said? Why is the grassroots movement like this? When will things change? Where do we go from here? What can others expect?

I’m going to tell everyone in this group: we need to move with intention. We need to prepare for hard conversations. We need to do the work - each of us - for the preservation of our state.

Texas is worth the effort.

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To the common arguments:

•the water consumption of industrial users is NOT regulated in our state, and many of these companies are asking for millions of gallons. Check the proposals, check the statistics. Look up Corpus Christi water, look up Kyle Bass case.

•all of these 100’s of complexes are being built by private companies with 2 exceptions for a military base that is still contested in El Paso & maybe in Fort Hood, an ongoing conversation. The private companies are NOT involved in national security, they don’t even know who all the tenants of the centers’ servers will be, but the Chinese parts that supply the build out could become a national security threat.

•they will not add power to the grid, they will only put money into the infrastructure to grow the grid - then, like everyone else, their usage and presence makes the cost go up for everyone else. Supply and demand applies to our power grid. Check Virginia and other east coast states - enormous cost hikes. Then look at what Riot (bitcoin operator) did in Texas in 2023.

https://www.cnbc.com/.../texas-paid-bitcoin-miner-riot...

Go by the history we have, not by empty promises made by people looking to appease us into silence.