Dickens County—best known for being the place you drive through as fast as possible to get somewhere better—is about to host a $3.5 billion data center expansion. Galaxy (not the phone, the electricity vampire) got the green light to use 1.6 gigawatts of power. To put that in perspective, that’s enough to power 320,000 homes, which is roughly 400 times the number of actual houses in Dickens County. Apparently, the plan is to provide enough computing power to finally calculate why anyone still lives in Spur.
Our benevolent overlords in Austin passed Senate Bill 6 to make sure these tech giants don’t accidentally turn the entire Texas Panhandle into a dark, silent wasteland during the next cold snap. The new rules require these companies to cough up $100,000 per megawatt as “financial security” just to prove they aren’t a fly-by-night operation. It’s a nice gesture, but considering ERCOT’s track record of keeping the lights on, most of us are already shopping for backup generators and extra-thick blankets.
State Senator Charles Perry is here to soothe our nerves with the classic “it won’t cost you a dime” routine. He claims the average person won’t be responsible for added utility costs—before immediately admitting your meter might go up “temporarily” to pay for new transmission lines. It’s like a surgeon saying the operation is free, but you’ll have to pay for the scalpels, the anesthesia, and the hospital’s property taxes. But don’t worry, it’s not the data center’s fault; it’s just the “transmission” that you’re paying for. Totally different.
As for the water, Galaxy promises they’ll only use about 25,000 gallons a day because of their “closed-loop” system. They say it’s only the same amount as irrigating a few acres of farmland. In a region where we treat a rainy Tuesday like a religious miracle and the Ogallala Aquifer is currently gasping for its final breath, asking us to trust a corporation’s “minimal” water usage is like asking a coyote to watch the hen house because he’s recently gone vegan.
After all, who needs a stable power grid or a glass of water when we can have 1,500 acres of humming servers dedicated to processing AI-generated deepfakes and data mining?
