Water Woes: Counties carry no ability to restrain AI data centers from draining the river

Okay, sure, the headline is hyperbolic, meant to grab readers’ attention, because no AI data center, or centers (plural), is going to “drain the river.”

Just the fact, though, that an out-of- state, or foreign, business interest can come to the Rio Grande Valley incognito, if you will, set up a shell company to buy land in unincorporated areas of Hidalgo County, and not even let county officials know that they are going to build a water-guzzling industrial monster that can also endanger the power grid, does have an existential threat written all over it.

If one of these data centers uses the same amount of water as an average city of 50,000, and multiple centers are built in Texas counties already short of water, how is that supposed to work?

Start of the Outrage

In a perfect world, the Republican-led state legislature would have addressed this AI data center problem in either the 2023 session or the one that ended last year.

But instead, the governor was focused on more important things, like school vouchers (2023). In fact, he called four special sessions that year to get the vouch‑er deal done, in part, but no such luck.

On the periphery, however, really cranking up in 2022, was this new thing called artificial intelligence, each compa‑ny with multiple data centers that were al‑ready sapping up as much water per year as a decent size city.

In a state like Texas, where water is so very precious because of growing pop‑ulations and dwindling water supplies, whether it’s the Rio Grande or the Ed‑wards Aquifer, how to slow down the growth of data centers across the state has become a pressing issue.

According to our very own State Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, the state’s finance committee will be having hearings next month to dig deep into the data center issue.

“(We) want to find out exactly what are the facts based on science, based on research, and not rumors. But it is clear that there is a neg‑ative impact. (Whether) it’s local resources such as water and their demand on electricity, in addition to disturbing the neighborhood. (Counties) don’t have zoning authority, so it is a big challenge and issue.”

As AI became more popular, really picking up steam in 2023, the compa‑ny owners needed bigger data centers to house the hardware running the arti‑ficial intelligence models. They looked for cheap land, relatively speaking, and a state government willing to play ball, while the counties in which they would build their data centers had absolutely no power to stop them.

Water and electricity demand lie at the core of the debate.

For months before a single public meet‑ing is held, before a county judge hears a whisper of what’s cooking, and long be‑fore residents learn what’s headed their way, AKA, a water guzzler that can also slow down the power grid, major tech companies can quietly acquire land in rural Texas counties through shell LLCs, brokers, and nondisclosure agreements. By the time the public finds out, the deal is usually done — and the water demands of an AI‑class data center are already baked into the future of the county.

Since Texas counties have no zoning authority, there is no mechanism to slow, question, or even publicly identify the AI data center project until construction is imminent.

This secrecy is legal, based on how the state constitution reads.

Why the Worry?

AI‑class data centers — the kind running on high-end NVIDIA and AMD AI chips — are not the same as traditional cloud facilities. They run hotter, denser, and require far more cooling ability. That cooling often de‑pends on evaporative systems that can consume millions of gallons of water per day, and when the water “hits” the “white-hot” AI chips, the water simply evaporates. There is little to nothing left of the water for purposes of reuse.

Sure, reclaimed water (the effluent, undrinkable kind) is ideal — but Texas counties cannot require that these AI companies use it.

Instead, the AI moguls want to spend as little money as possible tapping into the county’s water lines, and typically, the closest lines are the same ones used to transport potable water, or they can always tap into groundwater wells.

Across the RGV, including Hidal‑go County, where the two reservoirs that feed us are near historic lows, and Mexico continues to fall behind on treaty‑mandated water deliveries, the arrival of a high‑water‑use AI data center facility — much less, two, three, four, or more — is not just a planning challenge, it’s a regional threat to all who call this home.

AI data centers can evaporate mil‑lions of gallons of water a day, and Texas counties have no legal authori‑ty to require reclaimed water, regulate water sourcing, or even know a proj‑ect is coming until the land is already bought.

Only the Texas Legislature can change that.

And if you think that’s going to hap‑pen — stymie commercial growth — then you don’t know Texas or the peo‑ple currently in charge of running it.