Lubbock residents held their first public hearing Tuesday urging the Lubbock City Council to pass a 90-day data center moratorium, with a first vote set for Dec. 10, KCBD reports. The proposed pause is a compromise after citizens with SAVE Lubbock petitioned for an 18-month moratorium that died without a second, according to TTU Public Media.
Even a 90-day pause requires two public hearings and another 90 days to take effect. Better yet, KCBD reports the Lubbock Economic Development Alliance already approved a smaller data center inside city limits. “We had no opportunity to say no because LEDA and you all had already spoken about it,” resident Stephanie Smith told council.
Officials can barely agree on what they are regulating. While council sought tougher rules, Planning and Zoning Commission member Robert Wood warned that “if this is what we adopt, we will never see a data center in the city limits of Lubbock,” TTU Public Media notes. Meanwhile, District 4 city councilman Tim Green voted against starting the moratorium process, pitching data centers as a way to “build Lake Seven with all of our drinking water”—even though water use topped residents’ concerns in the city’s survey.
North Lubbock resident Fabian Mata summed up the mood at Tuesday’s hearing: “We don’t trust you when you say you’re going to put 1,000, 2,000, 5,000 feet [setback] in the data centers in north Lubbock because you don’t enforce any of the ordinances.”
Statewide Loopholes and $500 Fines
Mayor Mark McBrayer has insisted a local pause won’t hurt growth because Gov. Greg Abbott already ordered grid and environmental permitting freezes, claiming, “No one’s coming to Lubbock in the next year anyway with a data center.”
The Texas Tribune reports Abbott’s freeze has been porous, with Public Citizen finding the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality still approved at least six data center stormwater permits after his directive before later suspending them. Elsewhere, developers dodge grid waits by building on-site natural gas plants—which a Houston Advanced Research Center report warns could erase decades of air quality progress by 2031—or by having Brownsville de-annex 444.45 acres for $220 million so SpaceX could build a $24 billion project in Starbase.
And if a company withholds water-use numbers from the Texas Water Development Board, the maximum state fine is $500, which should really terrify billion-dollar tech giants.
After all, what good is locking the barn door in December if the servers are already humming inside?
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