I want to call attention to Save Rural Texas, a growing grassroots movement organizing to protect rural Texans’ land, water, property rights, infrastructure, and communities amid the extraordinary expansion of artificial-intelligence data centers. Its message should resonate across political lines: economic development does not entitle corporations to a blank check on our land, water, electricity, or local democracy.
Artificial intelligence is often described as though it exists somewhere intangible, in “the cloud.” But the cloud has an address. It occupies land. It requires substations, transmission lines, generating capacity, roads, enormous buildings filled with servers, cooling systems, and, depending on their design, potentially extraordinary amounts of water.
Increasingly, that address is rural Texas.
A recent Texas Tribune analysis found that more than half of the data centers planned for Texas are slated for unincorporated areas, precisely where county governments possess substantially less land-use authority than municipalities (Cobler, 2026). In places such as Hood County, residents confronting multiple proposed data centers have raised concerns about water, electricity, noise, traffic, pollution, and the transformation of rural landscapes, only to discover how little authority local governments possess to regulate what is coming (Martinez et al., 2026).
In this vein, I encourage you to listen to this community conversation on the matter with James Talarico to get a sense of just how profoundly our communities, landscape, and wildlife are already being impacted.
This raises a fundamental question about property rights. What does private property mean when a rural landowner can defend the boundaries of a ranch or farm but possesses very little democratic authority over an enormous industrial complex next door? Property rights cannot mean only the rights of corporations wealthy enough to assemble thousands of acres. They must also include the rights of families whose homes, wells, farms, roads, landscapes, and communities surround these developments.
Texas groundwater law still carries something of a survival-of-the-fittest logic through the rule of capture—what the Texas Water Development Board has memorably described as the “law of the biggest pump.”
This raises an obvious question: In an era of hyperscale AI development, what happens when the biggest pump is backed by the deepest corporate pockets?
Although groundwater conservation districts provide regulation in many places, Texas has no single statewide agency controlling groundwater production, and areas outside groundwater districts remain especially vulnerable (Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, 2025; Texas Water Development Board, n.d.-a).
That legal framework developed long before anyone imagined hyperscale AI facilities. What happens when the proverbial biggest pump belongs not to another farmer or rancher but to one of the most heavily capitalized industries in the world?
Luke Metzger, executive director of Environment Texas Research & Policy Center, and I explored precisely this problem in our essay, “Draining the Ogallala Aquifer for AI? Project Matador and the Myth of Limitless Growth.” Project Matador, being developed by Fermi America in partnership with the Texas Tech University System northeast of Amarillo, is envisioned as a massive artificial-intelligence and energy campus covering roughly 7,570 acres. It is situated in a region deeply dependent upon the already-stressed Ogallala Aquifer (Valenzuela & Metzger, 2026).
The Texas Water Development Board has documented long-term declines in the Ogallala because groundwater withdrawals in much of the region exceed recharge (Texas Water Development Board, n.d.-b). Yet Project Matador has secured access to substantial water supplies. Access does not necessarily equal daily consumption, and actual usage will depend on cooling technology, recycling, buildout, weather, and other factors. Nevertheless, the potential scale should command our attention.
Metzger and I made a simple point that bears repeating: paying more for water does not make it renewable. A corporation's capacity to purchase a scarce natural resource does not answer the larger public question of whether that resource should be consumed at that scale. Markets answer, Who can afford it? Democratic governance must answer, What must be preserved?
This is why Project Matador and Save Rural Texas belong in the same conversation. Both expose an emerging imbalance in which private capital can move faster than democratic governance and ecological knowledge. Texas communities too often learn about massive projects after land has been acquired, financing negotiated, nondisclosure agreements signed, and development plans advanced. The corporation knows what it needs to know about the community before investing; the community may know very little about the corporation until the project is difficult to stop (Goldenstein & Foxhall, 2026).
Governor Greg Abbott's August 3 directive ordering an audit of data centers seeking connections to the Texas electrical grid is therefore significant. It recognizes that the state needs better information about electricity use, water, cooling systems, ownership, incentives, and community impacts (Office of the Texas Governor, 2026). But an audit should be the beginning of reform, not its conclusion. Texas still needs meaningful groundwater protections, greater transparency, genuine community participation, clearer limits on public subsidies, and stronger authority for rural communities confronting projects capable of permanently transforming their landscapes.
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| People across Texas are struggling to find information about proposed data center projects popping up in their neighborhoods, like Mason McCallister, center, who has been on a crusade to get information. Meanwhile, local officials and even state elected leaders say they need more information to regulate the growing industry. Illustration by Mariana Ocejo for The Texas Tribune. Source images: Shelby Tauber, Leila Saidane, and Briana Vargas for The Texas Tribune; Aiden Gonzalez/The Texas Tribune |
That is why I support Save Rural Texas. Its position is not anti-technology. Artificial intelligence may produce genuine advances in medicine, science, education, accessibility, climate research, and communications. But acknowledging those possibilities does not mean accepting every data center, at every location, at every scale, consuming whatever water and electricity its owners can purchase.
That is not innovation policy. It is the surrender of public decision-making to the idea that technological expansion is inevitable.
There must be places where Texas says yes to data centers, places where the answer is yes only under enforceable conditions, and places where the answer must be no—because an aquifer cannot sustain the demand, because the electrical grid cannot support it, because the public subsidy outweighs the demonstrated benefit, or simply because a community decides that thousands of acres of agricultural land should remain agricultural land.
Rural Texas is not vacant territory awaiting its highest bidder. It is home, agricultural production, groundwater, habitat, history, family inheritance, and community. Texas can embrace innovation and participate in the future of artificial intelligence without surrendering the principle that technology must remain accountable to people and place.
Our communities are not sacrifice zones. Our aquifers are not corporate reservoirs. And our land, water, and future are not for sale simply because someone arrives with the biggest check—or the biggest pump.
References
Cobler, P. (2026, August 14). Data center audit lacks specifics even as Gov. Abbott, industry leaders tout it. The Texas Tribune. https://www.texastribune.org/2026/08/14/data-center-texas-audit-moratorium/
Goldenstein, T., & Foxhall, E. (2026, August 10). While data centers boom in Texas, their plans stay shrouded in secrecy. The Texas Tribune. https://www.texastribune.org/2026/08/10/texas-data-centers-transparency-information/
Martinez, A., Tauber, S., Mahajan, A., & Ford, A. (2026, June 2). Eight data centers threaten to transform this small Texas county. Local officials say they have no power to stop them. The Texas Tribune. https://www.texastribune.org/2026/06/02/texas-data-centers-hood-county-local-control-rural-water-power/
Office of the Texas Governor. (2026, August 3). Governor Abbott directs comprehensive data center audit. https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-directs-comprehensive-data-center-audit
Save Rural Texas. (n.d.). Save Rural Texas. https://www.saveruraltexas.com/
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. (2025). Groundwater regulation for private well owners. https://www.tceq.texas.gov/response/drought/groundwater_regulation.html
Texas Water Development Board. (n.d.-a). General groundwater and private water well frequently asked questions (FAQ). https://www.twdb.texas.gov/groundwater/faq/faqgwm.asp
Texas Water Development Board. (n.d.-b). Ogallala Aquifer. https://www.twdb.texas.gov/groundwater/aquifer/majors/ogallala.asp
Valenzuela, A., & Metzger, L. (2026, July 23). Draining the Ogallala Aquifer for AI? Project Matador and the myth of limitless growth. Environment Texas Research & Policy Center. https://environmentamerica.org/texas/center/articles/draining-the-ogallala-aquifer-for-ai-project-matador-and-the-myth-of-limitless-growth/
