This morning, the Texas House Committee on Natural Resources met at the Capitol in Austin to hear testimony on one of the most important issues facing our region: the growing strain that data center development is putting on Texas water and land resources.
For those of us who live and work in the Hill Country, this isn’t an abstract policy debate. Water is the foundation of everything here — our homes, our ranches, our pools, our businesses. At Weeping Willow Water Supply, we see firsthand how tight water resources already are during drought cycles. Adding massive industrial water demand from data centers into that mix is something every Central Texan should be paying attention to.
Hearings like this one matter because they happen before the legislative session — while lawmakers are still gathering input and shaping what comes next. Once a session starts, the window to be heard narrows fast.
The hearing ran nearly ten hours, and what came out of it should concern every Texan. State agencies admitted they still don’t have a reliable picture of how much water data centers are actually using — fewer than a third of the companies surveyed even bothered to respond, despite being legally required to. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle were frustrated. One representative put it plainly: when 80% of an industry won’t report basic water usage, the public is left to wonder what they’re trying to hide. On a hopeful note, representatives from a few major tech companies did testify that they’re already using non-potable water and closed-loop cooling systems to cut their water footprint — proof that the solutions we’ve been talking about aren’t hypothetical. No new rules came out of this hearing — it was about gathering facts ahead of the next legislative session — but the message was clear: Texas doesn’t have the data it needs, and the data centers themselves are the reason why.
Why Do Data Centers Need So Much Water Anyway?
It’s a fair question, and the answer matters for this debate: most data centers use evaporative cooling towers, which work by deliberately letting huge volumes of water evaporate into the air to pull heat out of the building. It’s cheap and energy-efficient, but it burns through millions of gallons a day — water that doesn’t come back.
Here’s the part that should give everyone hope: it doesn’t have to work that way. The technology already exists to cool these facilities with little to no ongoing water use — closed-loop systems, similar in principle to the coolant loop in your car’s engine, that fill once and recirculate the same fluid indefinitely instead of constantly drawing fresh water. Major operators are already proving it works at scale, in some cases using 200 times less water than a traditional facility of the same size.
So when we say “we don’t have the water to give,” we’re not asking these companies to go away. We’re asking them to build it right.
They Can Power Up Without Drawing Us Dry
The same logic applies to power. Texas has more sunny days than almost anywhere in the country, and the tools to turn that sunshine into round-the-clock power already exist — and are being built right here in our own state.
Tesla’s newest battery Megafactory, producing its utility-scale Megapack energy storage systems, is rising near Houston — right here in Texas. These batteries let a solar farm bank daytime energy and discharge it at night, giving a facility reliable, clean power around the clock without leaning harder on the grid or the water table. Even Elon Musk’s own AI company has used Megapacks to help power its data centers. If the technology is good enough for a data center company to use on itself, it’s good enough to ask of every data center that wants to build here.
We want the jobs. We want the investment. But we don’t have surplus water to give away — period, end of statement. Texas has the sun, the land, and now the homegrown battery technology to let these companies power themselves without draining the wells, lakes, and aquifers the rest of us depend on. Bring the data centers. Build the solar. Build the storage. Leave our water for the people who live here.
This won’t be the last opportunity to weigh in. If you care about protecting our water and land from being treated as an unlimited resource for industrial development, stay engaged — follow the Texas House Committee on Natural Resources, and look for the next chance to make your voice heard.
We’ll keep you posted as this moves forward.
UPDATE — August 2026
Things have moved fast since we first wrote this, and every development points the same direction we’ve been pushing for.
On August 3, 2026, Governor Abbott directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas and ERCOT to pause new data center grid connections until regulators finish auditing how much water and power these facilities are actually using. That’s exactly the kind of accountability this fight has needed — you can’t manage what you don’t measure.
Closer to home, the Blanco-Pedernales Groundwater Conservation District passed a resolution asking the Legislature for the authority to deny water permits to data centers when their projected demand exceeds what the aquifer can sustainably provide, along with mandatory water-use disclosures from anyone applying. That’s a local district saying, in plain terms, that it needs the tools to say no when the numbers don’t work.
We also want to make the case for closed-loop cooling more concrete, because it isn’t some far-off promise — it’s already happening. Closed-loop cooling works a lot like the radiator in your truck: coolant is sealed inside a circuit, filled once, and recirculated indefinitely instead of being drawn fresh from the ground over and over. Skybox Datacenters told the Texas House Committee on State Affairs back in April that one of their buildings uses about 30,000 gallons one time just to charge the system — and that their average data center uses less water than five households. Skybox hasn’t used evaporative cooling since 2016. Those are the company’s own figures, given to lawmakers. Abbott’s audit should tell us how they hold up.
They’re not alone. Microsoft, Google, Nvidia, and Oracle are all moving toward closed-loop or waterless cooling in their own facilities. The technology isn’t the obstacle. Cost is.
So the question to ask every data center that wants to build in the Hill Country isn’t how much water they need. It’s: can we see your closed-loop system plan?
Common Questions
What is closed-loop cooling?
Closed-loop cooling seals coolant inside a circuit, fills it once, and recirculates that same fluid indefinitely — think of the radiator in your truck, not a hose running nonstop. Instead of pulling fresh water from the ground every day, the system just reuses what’s already inside it. One Texas operator told lawmakers a single building draws about 30,000 gallons one time to charge the system — compared to older facilities that evaporate millions of gallons a day.
Do data centers have to use water for cooling?
No. Closed-loop and waterless cooling designs already exist, and Microsoft, Google, Nvidia, and Oracle are all moving toward them in their own facilities right now. The technology isn’t the obstacle — cost is, which is exactly why we think every data center proposal here should have to show its cooling plan up front.
Can Texas groundwater districts deny permits to data centers?
Right now, that’s not entirely clear — and that’s exactly the problem the Blanco-Pedernales Groundwater Conservation District is trying to fix. The district passed a resolution asking the Legislature for explicit authority to deny water permits when a project’s demand outstrips what the aquifer can sustainably provide, getting ahead of the 2027 session instead of waiting on it.