Save Rural Texas: Our Land, Our Water, and Our Future Are Not a Blank Check for AI, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. September 2, 2026

Save Rural Texas: Our Land, Our Water, and Our Future Are Not a Blank Check for AI

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

September 2, 2026

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.

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/

Draining the Ogallala Aquifer for AI? Project Matador and the myth of limitless growth, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. & Luke Metzger, Exec. Dir., Environment Texas Research & Policy Center

Friends,

I’m pleased to share a newly-published article co-authored with Luke Metzger, executive director of the Environment Texas Research & Policy Center, and published on the Center’s website.

Project Matador, a massive artificial-intelligence and energy campus under construction near Amarillo, raises urgent questions about water, natural gas, public land, corporate accountability, and the proper role of a public university in facilitating private development. At the center of our concern is the already-declining Ogallala Aquifer, upon which agriculture, communities, and future generations throughout the Texas Panhandle—and seven other states—depend.

AI is often presented as an immaterial technology existing somewhere in “the cloud,” but its infrastructure is being built on Texas soil—and it requires enormous quantities of water, electricity, land, and other public resources. Decisions of this magnitude should not proceed without transparency, independent environmental analysis, enforceable protections, and meaningful public participation.

I am grateful to Luke Metzger for this collaboration and to the Environment Texas Research & Policy Center for publishing our analysis. I also appreciate the work of the Panhandle 1^st Coalition and others who are raising critical questions about Project Matador and its long-term consequences.

I invite you to read and share the article. This is not simply a regional issue. It is a question of what kinds of technological development Texas will support, who will bear the environmental costs, and what obligations we have to citizens and residents in other states, as well as to the generations that follow us. -AV

Draining the Ogallala Aquifer for AI? Project Matador and the myth of limitless growth

A 17-gigawatt AI campus in the Texas Panhandle is staking its future on water the region doesn't have to spare.

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D., Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy at The University of Texas at Austin & Luke Metzger, Executive Director, Environment Texas Research & Policy Center

July 23, 2026

Google Data Center, Council Bluffs, Iowa

A massive artificial-intelligence (AI) infrastructure project is rising approximately 12 miles northeast of Amarillo. Known as Project Matador, the development is being built by Fermi America through a partnership with the Texas Tech University System and promoted as the largest private energy and artificial-intelligence campus in the world.The scale is staggering. Early plans described a roughly 6,000-acre campus capable of generating 11 gigawatts of electricity—enough to power the equivalent of approximately 8.2 million homes, by the company’s own estimate. Now the company says it will produce 17 gigawatts across 7,570 acres, with natural gas, solar energy, battery storage, and four proposed nuclear reactors providing the power.

All of this infrastructure is intended principally to power AI.

The project’s name carries an unsettling irony. In Spanish, matador literally means “one who kills”—the bullfighter charged with dispatching the bull. It was presumably chosen to evoke daring and spectacle, but for a project that could drain a declining aquifer and deepen reliance on natural gas, the literal meaning reads less like incidental branding and more like a warning.

What, exactly, might Project Matador ultimately kill—or help exhaust—if not the Ogallala Aquifer, one of the largest groundwater systems in the United States?

Project Matador is therefore more than an industrial development. It represents an extraordinary commitment of land, energy, water, public institutional resources, and environmental capacity to a privately controlled computational enterprise whose long-term public benefits remain uncertain.

Artificial intelligence is often described as though it were immaterial, existing somewhere in the “cloud.” In reality, AI depends on a vast physical infrastructure of data centers, chips, pipelines, power plants, transmission lines, cooling systems, and water. The cloud is not floating above us. It is being built on Texas soil.

Although Fermi America describes a diversified energy mix, the project’s near-term foundation appears to rely heavily on natural gas. The company boasts about both receiving a clean air permit for up to 6 GW of natural gas power generation and having easy access to both underground gas and ”Waha Hub, a giant U.S. marketplace for natural gas.” In addition, the company has a long-term agreement to purchase a large amount of natural gas each day. This exposes a contradiction at the heart of the AI boom: A technology marketed as futuristic may deepen dependence on anachronistic fossil-fuel extraction and combustion.

Calling Project Matador an “advanced energy” campus does not erase the environmental consequences of its reliance on natural gas. Natural-gas production and combustion release greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, as well as nitrogen oxides and other air pollutants from burning gas. Nitrogen oxides released through fossil-fuel combustion can also contribute to the formation of fine particulate matter, smog, and ground-level ozone. Nor does the prospect of adding solar or nuclear power in later phases cannot retroactively undo the environmental effects of the gas pipelines, gas-fired generating facilities, data centers, and other infrastructure being constructed now. Moreover, considering that the development of pipelines and power plants are durable investments, these may extend fossil-fuel dependence for decades.

The most urgent concern, however, may be water.

Project Matador is being built in a region heavily dependent on the Ogallala Aquifer, the foundation of agriculture, ranching, municipal life, and economic survival across much of the Great Plains.

Yet the Ogallala is being steadily depleted. In large portions of the Texas Panhandle and High Plains, water is being withdrawn far more rapidly than rainfall and natural recharge can replace it.

That makes every major new industrial claim on Panhandle water a matter of profound public importance. Water committed to data centers may no longer be available to farmers, ranchers, towns, ecosystems, or future generations. The question is not merely whether a corporation can afford to buy water. It is whether Texas should permit one of its most resource-intensive technological projects to expand in a region whose principal aquifer is already under severe strain.


The City of Amarillo approved an arrangement allowing Fermi America to purchase as much as 2.5 million gallons of municipal water per day at twice the standard rate. At the maximum level, that allocation alone would equal approximately 912.5 million gallons annually and more than 18 billion gallons over the initial 20-year term.

Yet this represents only part of the project’s potential supply. Fermi America has stated that it secured access to as much as 18.5 million gallons per day through a combination of municipal and private groundwater arrangements. At that upper limit, Project Matador would have access to approximately 6.75 billion gallons annually. Over 20 years, continuous use at that level would total approximately 135 billion gallons.

Access to 18.5 million gallons per day does not necessarily mean the completed project will consume that amount every day. Actual use will depend on the number and size of the data centers, cooling technologies, generating facilities, recycling systems, weather, and the pace of construction. Still, securing access to billions of gallons annually reveals the magnitude of the project’s anticipated water needs.

Fermi America says it will employ closed-loop cooling, recycle water, pay above-market rates, and finance infrastructure improvements. Those claims require independent verification. Closed-loop cooling can reduce withdrawals, but it does not make data centers water-free. Water is still lost through evaporation, cooling-tower blowdown, treatment, maintenance, and other industrial processes. Gas-fired and nuclear facilities will also require substantial water.

Paying more for water does not make it renewable. A higher price may generate municipal revenue, but it does not restore the Ogallala Aquifer. Money cannot quickly replenish groundwater accumulated over thousands of years.

The relevant question is not whether Fermi America can afford this water. It is whether the people of the Panhandle can afford the long-term consequences of surrendering so much of it.

Project Matador also raises serious questions about the role of public universities. The campus is being developed on land controlled by the Texas Tech University System under a 99-year ground lease. Texas Tech describes the partnership as an opportunity for research and workforce development.

Those possibilities should not be dismissed. The project may create construction work, technical employment, tax revenue, research partnerships, and investment in a region often overlooked by major development initiatives. But public benefit cannot simply be asserted. It must be demonstrated.

Texans deserve to know what risks Texas Tech has assumed, what tax abatements or infrastructure commitments support the project, and what protections exist if it is delayed, downsized, sold, or abandoned. They also deserve assurance that university researchers will remain free to independently study and publish findings on water use, pollution, labor conditions, nuclear safety, and community effects.

A public university should not serve merely as a landlord, workforce provider, branding partner, or source of legitimacy for private capital. Its first obligation is to the public.

The project’s employment claims also require scrutiny. Data centers employ large numbers of workers during construction but are highly automated once operational. The public needs independently verified estimates of permanent jobs, wages, local hiring, worker protections, and net public revenue after subsidies and tax abatements are considered.

The promise of four large nuclear reactors should likewise be treated cautiously. Such construction would involve extraordinary financial, engineering, regulatory, and logistical challenges. Communities should evaluate binding agreements and actual construction, not only promotional renderings of what may exist decades from now.

The final form of Project Matador may differ substantially from the sweeping vision now being marketed. In April 2026, Fermi announced that it was looking for a replacement for CEO Toby Neugebauer, the company’s co-founder and largest shareholder. The company’s interim leadership subsequently outlined a restructured strategy labeled “Fermi 2.0.” Neugebauer publicly urged the board to pursue an independent sale of the company and criticized the new direction, while Fermi disclosed a year-to-date net loss exceeding $486 million and confirmed that its first prospective anchor tenant had walked away from a construction-funding agreement. Given’s Fermi’s leadership upheaval and financial strain, regardless of the company’s intentions at the time of its commitments, it’s unclear what will survive the transition.

Beyond the environmental and economic questions lies a larger democratic one. We are increasingly told that artificial intelligence is inevitable and that communities must compete to host its infrastructure or be left behind. This conflates political choices with technological destiny and asks the public to accept nearly any expenditure of water, energy, land, and public resources in the name of AI.

But just because someone says something is inevitable doesn’t make it so, nor should it guide public policy.

Artificial intelligence may advance medicine, science, education, accessibility, and communication. It may also displace workers, intensify surveillance, reproduce discrimination, flood the information environment with synthetic content, and concentrate wealth and political power.

Before committing billions of gallons of water and city-scale quantities of electricity to AI infrastructure, Texans deserve to know what the computing capacity will be used for, who will control it, who will profit, and what enforceable public benefits will result.

Not every use of AI carries equal social value. Computing used for medical research or climate modeling cannot simply be equated with computing used to automate advertising, expand surveillance, replace workers, produce disposable content, or accelerate financial speculation. Yet all may draw from the same aquifer and impose costs on the same communities.

Project Matador should therefore be subject to independent water-impact studies, annual reporting of actual withdrawals and consumption, disclosure of cooling systems and recycling rates, aquifer monitoring, cumulative pollution assessments, drought-response requirements, disclosure of subsidies and tax incentives, and meaningful public participation.

The project must also be evaluated as a whole. A proposed 17-gigawatt campus should not be fragmented into separate permits for wells, pipelines, turbines, data halls, transmission lines, and nuclear facilities in ways that obscure its cumulative impact.

There must also be enforceable limits. During droughts or groundwater emergencies, household, agricultural, and community needs should take priority over nonessential computational demand.

Project Matador embodies a vision of ever-larger data centers, ever-greater computational capacity, and seemingly limitless technological growth. Yet it is being built in a region where water is finite and the Ogallala Aquifer is already declining.

That contradiction cannot be engineered away through corporate branding.

The issue is not whether one is simply for or against artificial intelligence. It is whether private technological ambition should be allowed to outrun democratic governance, environmental stewardship, and the rights of future generations.

The Ogallala Aquifer is not infinite. Natural gas is not clean merely because it powers computers instead of factories. Public land does not cease to be a public trust because it has been leased for nearly a century. And the promise of innovation does not relieve a corporation or public university of its obligation to demonstrate lasting public value.

Project Matador may become a monument to technological achievement. It could just as easily become a monument to an era that mistook computational power for wisdom, corporate scale for progress, and the ability to purchase water for the right to consume it.

Before Texas commits its water, energy, public land, and future to Project Matador, the people of the Panhandle—and the people of Texas—deserve transparency, independent science, enforceable protections, and a genuine democratic voice.

Authors

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy at The University of Texas at Austin

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D., is Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy at The University of Texas at Austin. Although she has taught environmental policy, her primary scholarship centers on K–12 and higher education policy, with particular attention to educational equity, culture, language, and the politics of education. She earned her Ph.D. in sociology from Stanford University and is the author of the award-winning book Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring (1999).


Dr. Valenzuela is also the founder and author of Educational Equity, Politics, and Policy in Texas, which is regarded as one of the nation’s leading education reform blogs. She is a co-founder of Academia Cuauhtli, a partnership-based, community-anchored Saturday school with district-wide impacts across the Austin Independent School District, where she regularly mentors young people and advances culturally sustaining education.

She was named among the nation’s top 200 education scholars in the 2025 Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings and is a member of the National Academy of Education.



Luke Metzger

Executive Director, Environment Texas Research & Policy Center


As the executive director of Environment Texas, Luke is a leading voice in the state for clean air and water, parks and wildlife, and a livable climate. Luke recently led the successful campaign to get the Texas Legislature and voters to invest $1 billion to buy land for new state parks. He also helped win permanent protection for the Christmas Mountains of Big Bend; helped compel Exxon, Shell and Chevron Phillips to cut air pollution at four Texas refineries and chemical plants; and got the Austin and Houston school districts to install filters on water fountains to protect children from lead in drinking water. The San Antonio Current has called Luke "long one of the most energetic and dedicated defenders of environmental issues in the state." He has been named one of the "Top Lobbyists for Causes" by Capitol Inside and received the President's Award from the Texas Recreation and Parks Society for his work to protect Texas parks. He is a board member of the Clean Air Force of Central Texas and an advisory board member of the Texas Tech University Masters of Public Administration program. Luke, his wife, son and daughters are working to visit every state park in Texas.

Texas Is Legislating Growth on a Drying Planet—and the $174 Billion Bill for Texas’ Growth Machine Is Coming Due, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Texas Is Legislating Growth on a Drying Planet—and the $174 Billion Bill for Texas’ Growth Machine Is 

Coming Due

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

June 24, 2026

Chris Tomlinson’s recent column posted below, “Texas is running out of cheap water, and will need to make salty water sweet,” should land like an alarm bell across the state. His central point is simple and sobering: Texas is outgrowing its freshwater supply. Population growth, drought, fracking, semiconductor production, data centers, and the vast water needs of artificial intelligence are converging into a crisis that can no longer be deferred.

Link to PDF here

According to the Texas Water Development Board’s Draft 2027 State WaterPlan, implementing the recommended water management strategies is estimated to cost $174 billion, more than double the $81 billion estimated in the 2022 plan (Texas Water Development Board, 2026, p. 28). That number should stop us in our tracks. It tells us that the old bargain—grow endlessly, build endlessly, extract endlessly, and assume water will somehow be there—is breaking down.

Tomlinson rightly points to Corpus Christi as the canary in the coal mine. There, the city’s surface water supplies are running low, new groundwater wells have not delivered as hoped, and desalination remains expensive. 

Meanwhile, the endless drive to attract industry is increasingly ill advised, stretching the water supply beyond what residents can reasonably bear. The result is a familiar Texas pattern: public resources get promised to private growth, and ordinary people are left to pay the bill.

This is where the water crisis becomes more than an infrastructure problem. It is a democracy problem. Who gets to decide how much growth is too much? Who benefits from water-intensive development? Who pays when systems fail? Who is asked to conserve while industries expand? And whose communities are treated as sacrifice zones in the name of “economic development”?

These questions echo themes I have raised in other posts about the Hot Earth, climate disruption, and the extractive logic that governs so much of our public policy. Climate change is not some distant abstraction. It is arriving through heat, drought, flood, fire, migration, insurance costs, utility bills, and water scarcity. It is arriving through the quiet violence of unaffordability. It is arriving through the realization that the poor, the elderly, rural communities, and working families will be the first to experience what policymakers long treated as someone else’s future.

Tomlinson’s column is especially important because it pierces the illusion of cheapness. Texas has “run out of cheap water,” as Sen. Charles Perry put it. That statement deserves our full attention. Cheap water was never really cheap. It was subsidized by aquifers, rivers, ecosystems, Indigenous dispossession, rural extraction, underpriced infrastructure, and future generations who were never asked for consent. Now the bill is coming due.

Desalination may become part of the state’s water future, but it is not a magic wand. Making salty water sweet requires enormous energy. It also produces concentrated brine that must be handled carefully to avoid serious environmental harm. If desalination becomes another excuse for unrestrained growth, we will have learned nothing. We will simply be using more energy to solve the water crisis while worsening the climate crisis that intensifies drought in the first place.

The same concern applies to artificial intelligence and data centers. As I have written elsewhere in reflecting on AI and extraction, artificial intelligence is not weightless. It is not merely “in the cloud.” It is physical infrastructure: land, water, energy, minerals, labor, servers, cooling systems, and communities asked to absorb the costs. The language of innovation often hides the material reality of extraction. In Texas, that reality is becoming increasingly visible as rural communities confront large-scale data centers that demand huge amounts of water and electricity.

It is telling that even Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller has called for a moratorium on new data centers, warning that rural communities that have conserved water and land for generations are now being asked to compete with corporate giants whose demands could overwhelm local resources. 

That alone should widen the conversation beyond partisan politics. This is not simply a left-right issue; it is a question of stewardship, fairness, and whether Texas will protect the communities that have long sustained the state before handing scarce resources over to the highest bidder.

Water also forces us to rethink what we mean by prosperity. For too long, Texas leaders have equated growth with success. More highways. More subdivisions. More warehouses. More data centers. More fossil fuel extraction. More tax incentives. More ribbon cuttings. But growth without ecological limits is not prosperity. It is debt. It is risk. It is a form of policy denial.

And as with so many policy debates in Texas, inequality sits at the center. Wealthier households will absorb higher water rates more easily. Poor and working-class families will not. Rural communities may see their aquifers strained by development they did not invite. Colonias and historically underserved communities may face the worst infrastructure deficits. Urban residents may be told to conserve while industry receives favorable treatment. This is how environmental crisis becomes social crisis.

We should be deeply concerned that Texas is discussing water scarcity largely as an engineering challenge rather than a justice challenge. Pipes matter. Treatment plants matter. Desalination facilities may matter. But governance matters, too. Public voice matters. Conservation matters. Climate policy matters. Land-use planning matters. Accountability matters. Without these, water policy will reproduce the very inequities that brought us here.

The Legislature will have to confront this in 2027. But Texans should not wait for lawmakers to frame the issue for us. We need a broader public conversation now—one that includes educators, scientists, farmers, Indigenous communities, rural residents, environmental advocates, labor, students, and families already struggling with the cost of living.

Water is life. It is also memory, land, culture, food, health, and public trust. It is the connective tissue of ecology and democracy.

Texas can still choose a different path. We can invest in infrastructure, conservation, reuse, repair, and fair pricing. We can scrutinize water-intensive industries before granting them public support. We can protect communities from being overrun by extractive development. We can treat climate disruption as real rather than optional. We can insist that economic development serve the public good rather than private accumulation alone.

But we cannot keep pretending that endless growth is compatible with finite water.

Tomlinson’s column is a warning. Corpus Christi is a warning. The draft State Water Plan is a warning. The Hot Earth is warning us, too.

The question is whether Texas will listen before scarcity becomes policy, before crisis becomes normal, and before ordinary Texans are told—once again—that there is no alternative but to pay for decisions they did not make.

References

Texas Water Development Board. (2026). 2027 state water plan: Draft, phase 1. https://www.twdb.texas.gov/waterplanning/swp/2027/docs/DraftSWP27-Water-For-Texas.pdf

Tomlinson, C. (2026, May 21). Texas is running out of cheap water, and will need to make salty water sweet. Houston Chronicle. 

Texas is running out of cheap water, and will need to make salty water sweet

Texas faces a costly water crisis as growth, drought and industry outpace freshwater supplies statewide, writes columnist Chris Tomlinson.

By Chris Tomlinson,ColumnistMay 21, 2026

Texas is outgrowing its freshwater supply.

Communities across the state need billions of gallons more water for growing populations and thirsty industries like oil and gas fracking, computer chip etching and artificial thinking. What happens this summer in Corpus Christi is a sign of what’s coming for all Texans.

The price of creating freshwater and keeping the economy growing will leave consumers with sticker shock, state lawmakers recently acknowledged. A draft of the 2027 State Water Plan says Texas will need to spend $174 billion to meet the water needs of the next 50 years — twice as much as lawmakers estimated just four years ago.

“The taxpayer is going to pay for this stuff one way or the other, be it property tax or be it fees, or be it insurance cost increases,” state Sen. Charles Perry, chairman of the Senate Water, Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee, said during a hearing last week. “There is no free lunch here, or if they don’t pay, we end up with a Third World state.”

Inconvenient truths

Lawmakers will need to have “a big conversation” when they gather in Austin next year, Perry predicted. The level-headed Lubbock Republican is not prone to hyperbole or known for rhetorical flourish. When he speaks up, Texans best listen up.

Droughts and floods have complicated life in Texas for eons. The population and economy only began to grow once people started damming rivers and drilling into aquifers. But experts say those water sources are insufficient for a growing state.

Corpus Christi is the canary in our coal mine. The city’s surface water supplies are running low, new groundwater wells have disappointed, and citizens can’t afford to make seawater drinkable.

In the City Council’s drive to attract industry and bring in new jobs and revenue, it stretched the water supply too thin. Now that the inevitable drought has arrived, the council will likely declare an emergency and impose strict rationing.

Experts told the Senate committee on May 11 that while 57% of city-owned water utilities say they have long-term plans with sufficient funding, 10% have no plan, and 43% do not have enough money.

This year was the first time the State Water Implementation Fund for Texas fell short, capable of providing only $1.28 billion of the $4.2 billion that water utilities requested. The Legislature created the fund 11 years ago to help local authorities pay for water projects.

The Texas Water Development Board, which administers the fund, rejected the Nueces River Authority’s request for help financing a Corpus Christi desalination plant, claiming it had to prioritize other projects. 

Statewide, Texas doesn’t know where it will find 10 million to 12 million acre-feet of the 17 million the state will need over the next 50 years, Perry warned (an acre-foot is about 325,000 gallons). Making existing water treatment plants and pipelines more efficient will only meet 3% of the need.

“If I have to pick between spending all of my dollars on leaky pipes or all my dollars on supply, I will pick supply every day,” Perry said.

Water users will need a lot of dollars.

Well runs dry

Producing drinking water from ground or surface sources typically costs between $1.10 to $4.30 per 1,000 gallons, according to the Texas Comptroller’s Office. Desalination costs range from $7.50 to $11 per 1,000 gallons.

“Everyone in the audience is going to say, ‘That’s too much, that’s double what we’re paying,’” Perry said. “But that’s the cost of new water in Texas … we have run out of the cheap water.”

If Texans will pay those rates, utilities will deliver. Companies are working to permit three seawater desalination plants, with state officials anticipating seven plants along the coast over the next decade.

Arid nations around the world use desalination, but in addition to requiring a lot of energy, they produce a brine that is twice as salty as the water going in. If the waste stream isn’t handled properly, it can cause severe environmental problems.

Critics question the wisdom of trying to grow Texas beyond what its natural resources can sustain. Community activists want to prioritize residents’ quality of life over industrial development, and environmentalists want conservation over development.

Sid Miller, the Republican agriculture commissioner, called for a moratorium on data centers to conserve water.

“They draw massive volumes of water for cooling, even amid ongoing drought,” Miller wrote in a press release on Monday. “Rural communities that have conserved resources for generations now compete with corporate giants.”

Should a higher power grant South Texans' prayers and bring a week or more of steady rain, a heaven-sent storm will not solve the state’s long-term water shortage. We’ll still need to turn salty water sweet.

“We have a lot of poor people that aren’t going to be able to live in Texas much longer if we don’t figure this out, and there needs to be a sense of urgency about it,” Perry warned. “The status quo has to break.”

Award-winning opinion writer Chris Tomlinson writes commentary about money, politics and life in Texas. Sign up for his “Tomlinson’s Take” newsletter at houstonchronicle.com/tomlinsonnewsletter or expressnews.com/tomlinsonnewsletter.

Chris Tomlinson

Business Columnist

Chris Tomlinson writes commentary about money, politics and life in Texas for Hearst Newspapers. He can be reached at ctomlinson@hearstcorp.com.

In 2025, Tomlinson was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters, an honor society that recognizes distinctive literary achievement. In 2021, the Texas Association of Managing Editors awarded him columnist of the year, and the Headliners Foundation named him Texas's Star Opinion Writer. He’s authored two New York Times Bestsellers, “Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth” and “Tomlinson Hill: The Remarkable Story of Two Families Who Share the Tomlinson Name - One White, One Black.”

Before joining the Houston Chronicle in 2014, he spent 20 years with The Associated Press reporting on politics, economics, conflicts and natural disasters from more than 30 countries in Africa, the Middle East and Europe.

The Empire of AI Comes to Texas: Data Centers, Coloniality, and Resistance in Texas, Chile, and Beyond, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

The Empire of AI Comes to Texas: Data Centers, Coloniality, and Resistance in Texas, Chile, and Beyond

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Link

May 30, 2026

When Erin Brockovich recently observed on MSNBC that "people aren't being heard" in the rush to build AI data centers across the United States, she identified a problem that extends far beyond environmental regulation. 

Her concern goes to the heart of democracy itself: Who gets to decide how land, water, energy, and public resources are used in the name of technological progress? And whose voices matter when those decisions are made? 

For Texans, these questions are becoming increasingly urgent as the state emerges as one of the nation's leading centers of AI infrastructure development (MSNBC, 2026).

According to Brockovich's AI Data Center Reporting Project, Texas hosts approximately 464 data centers that are either completed or in process, making it one of the nation's leading hubs for AI infrastructure (Brockovich AI Data Center Reporting, 2026; also see UT News, 2026). 

Link [pdf]

At the same time, Texas reportedly leads the nation in citizen complaints submitted through her website concerning the impacts of data centers on local communities. Residents have raised concerns about water consumption, strain on electrical grids, noise pollution, environmental degradation, tax incentives, and the lack of transparency surrounding proposed developments (Brockovich AI Data Center Reporting, 2026; Gillette, 2026).

The map created by Erin Brockovich. 

brockovichdatacenter.com

To understand why these concerns are resonating so deeply, Karen Hao's recent book, Empire of AI (2025), offers an invaluable framework. Her reporting from Chile is particularly illuminating. There, communities challenged proposed hyperscale data centers that would consume substantial quantities of water in regions already suffering from prolonged drought. Residents found themselves confronting not merely technical questions but political ones.

Similar to Texas and other states where such centers are getting developed, top-down decisions affecting local resources, drinking water quality, loss of land and so on were often justified through narratives of modernization, innovation, and economic necessity, while those most directly affected struggled to gain meaningful influence over the process (Hao, 2025).
Hao challenges the popular image of artificial intelligence as a largely immaterial force existing somewhere in "the cloud." In reality, AI depends upon vast material infrastructures—data centers, electrical grids, water systems, mining operations, and labor networks that stretch across the globe. Every single AI request relies on physical resources that must be extracted, transported, consumed, and maintained.

What is perhaps most striking is that opposition to these projects is increasingly bipartisan. As highlighted in recent MSNBC coverage, residents from across the political spectrum are questioning whether communities are being asked to absorb disproportionate environmental and economic costs in exchange for promises of innovation and economic growth (MSNBC, 2026). 
In a political era defined by polarization, this convergence is noteworthy. As concerns over water scarcity, infrastructure demands, and local control intensify, the politics of AI infrastructure could become an important issue in future elections.

Recent research from the University of Texas at Austin projects that data centers could account for between 3 and 9 percent of Texas's total water consumption by 2040 (UT News, 2026). In a state already grappling with recurring drought, aquifer depletion, and increasing competition for water resources, these projections warrant careful public scrutiny. This is especially true in Central Texas, where population growth, climate uncertainty, and development pressures are already placing extraordinary demands on finite water supplies.

Yet environmental concerns alone do not fully capture what is at stake.

What Hao's work helps us see is that AI infrastructure may represent a contemporary expression of what Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano (2000) termed the coloniality of power. Coloniality refers to the persistence of colonial forms of domination long after formal colonial rule has ended. It shapes whose knowledge counts, whose labor is valued, whose resources are extracted, and whose interests prevail in decisions about development.

Wikipedia Link

Historically, empires extracted silver from Latin America, rubber from the Amazon, cotton from the American South, and oil from colonized territories throughout the world. Today, the resources being extracted may appear different. Yet the underlying logic remains recognizable. The AI economy depends upon water, energy, land, public subsidies, data, and labor. The benefits frequently accrue to distant investors and technology firms, while local communities are often left to absorb environmental risks and infrastructure burdens.

This does not mean that artificial intelligence itself is inherently harmful. Nor does it mean that technological innovation should be rejected. The issue is not whether AI should exist. The issue is whether communities have a meaningful voice in determining how AI infrastructure is developed and governed.

This is where the concept of transformational resistance becomes especially useful.

In their seminal work, Solórzano and Delgado Bernal (2001) distinguish "transformational resistance" from other forms of opposition by emphasizing its critical awareness of structural inequality and its commitment to social justice. Transformational resistance is not simply reactive. It combines critique with collective action aimed at creating more equitable social arrangements.

More recently, Valenzuela, Unda, and Mena Bernal (2025) have extended this framework in their analysis of resistance to Texas Senate Bill 17 and the dismantling of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in higher education. We maintain that transformational resistance emerges when communities move beyond defending existing institutions toward imagining and constructing alternative democratic futures grounded in solidarity, collective agency, and the protection of the public good.

Viewed through this lens, communities raising questions about AI infrastructure are not merely opposing particular projects. They are advancing alternative visions of development rooted in democratic participation, ecological responsibility, and collective well-being. Their efforts remind us that technological progress should not be measured solely by computational power, market valuation, or economic growth, but also by whether it strengthens our capacity to care for one another and for the shared resources upon which our futures depend (Solórzano & Delgado Bernal, 2001; Valenzuela et al., 2025).

At stake is more than water consumption or energy demand. The deeper question concerns our collective obligations to resources that sustain community life across generations. Aquifers, watersheds, electrical grids, and public infrastructure are not merely inputs into an economic system. They are foundations of collective life. 

When decisions regarding their use are driven primarily by private interests while risks are borne by the broader public, citizens are right to ask whether the burdens and benefits of development are being distributed fairly.

This is why Brockovich's reporting initiative is so important. Her project does more than catalog complaints. It creates a public record of community concerns. It validates local knowledge. It elevates voices that might otherwise remain invisible within highly technical regulatory processes. In so doing, it helps democratize a conversation that too often unfolds behind closed doors.

The lesson emerging from both Chile and Texas is that technological futures are not inevitable. They are political choices.

The question before us is not whether artificial intelligence will shape the future. It already is. The question is whether that future will be organized around principles of extraction or stewardship, concentration of power or democratic participation, private gain or public responsibility.

We should be stunned—not because artificial intelligence exists, but because one of the most resource-intensive technological transformations in modern history is unfolding with so little public awareness and deliberation.

From Chile to Central Texas, communities are challenging the assumption that technological development should proceed without democratic consent. As Erin Brockovich reminds us, people deserve to be heard. 

The growing resistance to unaccountable AI infrastructure reflects a broader demand for transparency, stewardship, and meaningful public participation in decisions that affect collective well-being. At its core, the debate over AI data centers is not simply about technology. It is about who gets to decide, whose voices matter, and whether the future will be imposed upon communities or built with them.

The future of AI should not be determined solely by corporations, investors, engineers, or policymakers. It must also be shaped by the communities whose lives, resources, and futures are implicated in its development.

References

Brockovich AI Data Center Reporting. (2026). AI data centers & our communities. https://www.brockovichdatacenter.com

Bureau of Economic Geology. (2025). Water requirements for data centers in Texas [White paper]. The University of Texas at Austin. 

Gillette, S. (2026, May 28). Erin Brockovich launches map to track controversial AI data centers, which reportedly cost $25B in environmental damages last year. People. https://people.com/erin-brockovich-launches-map-track-ai-data-centers-11985676

Hao, K. (2025). Empire of AI. Penguin Random House.

MSNBC. (2026, May 28). Erin Brockovich on AI data centers: "People aren't being heard" [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hQLn5MbsEI

Quijano, A. (2000). Coloniality of power, eurocentrism, and Latin America. Nepantla: Views from South, 1(3), 533–580. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/23906

Solórzano, D. G., & Delgado Bernal, D. (2001). Examining transformational resistance through a critical race and LatCrit theory framework: Chicana and Chicano students in an urban context. Urban Education, 36(3), 308–342. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085901363002

UT News (2026, May 6). Data centers are growing in Texas, but big questions remain about water use. University of Texas at Austin News. https://news.utexas.edu/2026/05/06/data-centers-are-growing-in-texas-but-big-questions-remain-about-water-use/

Valenzuela, A., Unda, M. D. C., & Mena Bernal, J. J. (2025). Disrupting colonial logics: Transformational resistance against SB 17 and the dismantling of DEI in Texas higher education, Ethnic Studies Pedagogies. https://www.ethnicstudiespedagogies.org/gallery/Vol3-Issue1-03_DisruptingColonial.pdf