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.