Well, look who wants to move to the Hub City and drink all our water. Tech conglomerates are suddenly eyeing Lubbock like a freshman eyes a 2:00 a.m. Whataburger run, and the city is scrambling. After a data center town hall in May completely overflowed the press box club level at Jones AT&T Stadium, Mayor Mark McBrayer has decided we need a bigger boat. He’s organizing a massive public meeting for July 7 at the Lubbock Civic Center’s Moe Turner Banquet Hall, hoping to cram in about 1,000 anxious citizens to talk about our impending digital overlords.
Why the sudden panic? Because data centers require ungodly amounts of electricity and water just to keep servers cool while they process AI queries. Mayor McBrayer insists the city hasn’t signed away the farm just yet and wants to “get out in front of it” to address public concerns over noise, power grid strain, and water depletion. Meanwhile, his former mayoral opponent, Stephen Sanders, is already out there pushing a petition for an 18-month data center moratorium, because nothing unites Lubbockites quite like the terrifying prospect of running out of water before the cotton crop even gets a chance.
If you think Lubbock leadership is flying blind, don’t worry—the rest of the Lone Star State is right there in the dark with us. Texas state officials recently sent out a survey to figure out exactly how much water these tech giants are guzzling. The industry’s response? A collective “new phone, who dis?” Fewer than a third of the companies bothered to reply, leaving state representatives to complain about a “pretty pathetic” lack of data. And why would the tech companies care? The current state penalty for ghosting the Texas Water Development Board’s mandatory survey is a staggering, bank-breaking fine of… $500. Surely that will make Google and Meta tremble.
Naturally, everyday Texans are thrilled. A new University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll shows that 56% of registered voters oppose having data centers in their communities, with opposition spiking to 62% in rural areas. Even Governor Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Patrick are suddenly acting tough, talking about pulling a state sales tax exemption that currently gifts these companies over a billion dollars a year. But the gold rush is already on, with Texas aggressively competing to be the number-one data center market in the country, mostly by dumping them in red, rural counties where pesky local regulations won’t get in the way of progress.
But sure, let’s cram a thousand angry West Texans into a banquet hall to discuss the strict “conditions” we’re going to place on multi-billion-dollar conglomerates who won’t even fill out a basic state questionnaire—what could possibly go wrong?
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