The data center quiz.
Most people miss 9 of 15.

Bluefield Research's 2023 survey pegs the average hyperscale campus at ~4 million gallons/day. Big outliers run 10–20M. For scale: that's roughly the daily consumption of 30,000–50,000 single-family households, drawn from the same aquifer your neighbors use.

Pick a county above to reveal the primary groundwater source.

Evaporative (or "adiabatic") towers dump heat by letting water evaporate into the air — that water is gone. Closed-loop systems recirculate the same coolant and reject heat to air or a sealed exchanger. Most big Texas hyperscale builds have picked evaporative because it's cheaper to run. The aquifer pays the difference.

Texas follows the rule of capture — landowners can pump unlimited groundwater unless a local GCD says otherwise. GCDs are the only entity that can meter wells, set spacing rules, or require permits. If your county doesn't have one, a hyperscale facility can drill and pump without a cap. Most commissioners don't mention this on meeting night.

For comparison, a mid-sized Texas city (say, 250,000 residents) peaks around 600 MW. One hyperscale campus pulls roughly what Waco or Abilene uses at peak. AI-optimized campuses in 2025–26 are being announced at 1 GW (1,000 MW) and up — the 2020 "cloud" scale is already obsolete.

Grid interconnection and substation costs get socialized into the transmission & distribution rate base, which every household and small business pays through their electric bill. Texas SB6 (2025) tried to shift more of this cost onto large loads, but implementation is still contested at PUCT and ERCOT. Until then, your grandma's bill subsidizes the AI campus.

Transformer lead-times alone have stretched to 2+ years. When a commission approves a hyperscale campus with a "we'll be operational by Q3 next year" promise, the grid side simply can't keep up. The facility either sits dark, runs on gas peakers (louder and dirtier than advertised), or pushes an existing line past its rating. All three have happened in Texas in 2024–25.

Signed into law in 2025, SB6 forces ERCOT and PUCT to formally study the impact of any new load above a threshold (currently 75 MW) and disclose who pays what. It does not cap growth — it just makes the bill visible. Use it. At your commission meeting, asking "has the SB6 study been filed?" is a completely legitimate, non-partisan question that forces the operator to show their homework.

$120,000,000 ÷ 100,000 residents = $1,200 each. That's real money your school district, ESD, and hospital district are forgoing — often for 10 years. If the facility creates 50 permanent jobs (typical), that works out to $2.4M per job created. The jobs argument rarely survives contact with a calculator.

Chapter 313 expired at the end of 2022. JETI (HB 5, 2023) took its place in 2024. It still allows school districts to offer big property-tax breaks — but requires bigger wage floors, stricter job-count rules, and school-board-level approval. Most 2025–26 Texas hyperscale deals are being structured under JETI. Knowing the acronym is a quiet credibility signal in the meeting room.

Press releases quote construction-phase jobs (real but short) and "indirect jobs" (speculative multipliers). Long-term on-site headcount is usually 30–80: a handful of engineers, security, and facilities staff. A Walmart Supercenter employs more people than a $2B data center. The "economic development" framing is designed to survive a 30-second news clip, not a spreadsheet.

Most Texas counties default to 3 minutes per speaker, set by court rule. Some (especially in big counties with long agendas) drop it to 2. A few will extend if you're presenting data. Write out what you're going to say. Three minutes is enough for one clear point plus one specific ask. Not two points.

Most Texas commissioners courts require written comment to be submitted by 8 a.m. on meeting day to be entered into the record. Some require 24 hours; a handful accept up to the gavel. Written comments go in the record whether or not you speak — so submit one even if you're showing up in person. It doubles your footprint.

In Texas, any resident can submit a formal written objection to a rezoning, special-use permit, or variance request. Adjacent-property owners get extra procedural weight (mailed notices, higher vote thresholds to override), but you don't have to be one to file. File anyway. Paper trails matter at appeal.