Know what you're up against.
Twelve plain-English explainers on the data-center playbook, the water math, the tax abatements, and how to actually show up. Politically neutral. 9th-grade readable. Free.
Water & aquifer
How much a hyperscale facility actually draws, from which aquifer, and what your GCD controls.
Pillar · PowerGrid & power
Megawatts, ERCOT, SB 6, and who pays when a hyperscale load lands next to your substation.
Pillar · TaxAbatements & tax
Chapter 312, retired 313, the new JETI. What a county actually receives vs. gives up.
Pillar · CivicsShow up & speak
How a commission vote works, the 60-second comment formula, and the 7 questions worth asking.
💧 Water & aquifer 4 articles
How much water does a hyperscale data center actually use?
The 4-million-gallon-per-day baseline, evaporative vs closed-loop cooling, and the Olympic-pool and household-equivalent conversions that make the number real.
Read the article → 7 min readThe Texas aquifer map — whose water is at stake?
Edwards, Trinity, Carrizo-Wilcox, Ogallala, Gulf Coast. Which of the 20 priority counties draws from which, and where the stress is highest.
Read the article → 5 min readEvaporative vs closed-loop vs air-cooled.
The three cooling architectures, water draw per MW of IT load, and the one question that reveals which one the developer is proposing.
Read the article → 5 min readWhat a Groundwater Conservation District actually controls.
In rural Texas, the GCD — not the county commission — often holds the real lever on big water users. Here's why, and who yours is.
Read the article →⚡ Grid & power 1 article (more coming)
💵 Abatements & tax 2 articles
Chapter 312, retired 313, and the new JETI.
Plain-English walkthrough of Texas tax-abatement law — who approves, who pays, who benefits, and what a decade-long break actually costs the school district next to the facility.
Read the article → 7 min readWhat happened in Santa Clara? The precedent everyone's quoting.
Multi-decade case study: what was promised to the community, what actually happened to property values, water, power rates, and tax revenue.
Read the article →🗳️ Show up & speak 5 articles
How a Commissioners Court vote actually works.
Step by step: from agenda-posted to gavel-down. The consent-agenda trap, the order of business, and where your 60 seconds of public comment fits in.
Read the article → 4 min readThe 60-second comment that actually changes a vote.
The 3-line formula — who you are, the specific ask, the consequence — plus 3 template examples you can adapt in the car on the way there.
Read the article → 6 min readThe 7 questions every commissioner should ask before voting yes.
Cooling method. GCD permit. Interconnection cost. Abatement breakeven. Local-hire. Decommissioning bond. Eminent-domain trigger. With one-sentence rationales.
Read the article → 6 min readZoning 101: rezoning, SUPs, variances.
The three words every data-center proposal will include — and why which one the developer picks changes everything about your options.
Read the article → 7 min readThe steelman for data centers: what the industry gets right.
Before Stand argues against bad projects, here's the strongest case for hyperscale infrastructure — construction jobs, property-tax streams, modern closed-loop efficiency, AI supply-chain security.
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