Big tech is coming for East Texas, coming to pilfer its resources and siphon off value from it.
By now I’m sure all of you have heard, or read, some rumblings someplace about data centers, and the pushback many rural communities are giving to Big Tech in their desire to locate said facilities in such areas, nationwide. I’m sure some of you have also sensed that in many communities, We the People really haven’t gotten much of a say; our voices and concerns scuttled by leaders who attempt to sell such communities about data centers – that these facilities are gonna save us all.
Much of the concern revolves around how much water and electricity such an operation would require, and, of course, the question arises about just what such a facility will bring to a rural community.
According to recent information, compiled this past January, Texas is said to have more than 400 data centers, at present, with most of them located in the metro areas of Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio, Austin and some out in the West Texas region.
Data centers, which are used to power AI, are facilities filled with computing equipment, such as servers, cooling towers, networking gear, etc. Before I go further down this road, AI is a problem I have written about in this space before, and though there are far more tech-savvy voices weighing in on this, at the end of the day, the answer, to me, is simple: as a species, we need to all stop using AI.
The tech sector is targeting rural areas of Texas as possible sites for data centers, and this has created a great deal of consternation among residents. Just up the road in Angelina County, developers want to locate a data center in the old Southland Paper Mill and another concern wants to acquire a long-offline power plant in the north part of Lufkin.
These projects have rattled many residents, and the debate has carried over throughout the region, because, hey, there’s a lot of potential bases from which these AI centers can set up shop in Deep East Texas.
Reporting from the Houston Advanced Research Center states that the existing data centers in the state require, collectively, about 9,567 megawatts of electricity, but with the increasing demand, that amount could be somewhere between 22,175 and 77,965 megawatts by the year 2030, depending on how many data centers are up and running by then. This information, reported in January, is also where the above figure on the number of existent data centers can be found.
Another troublesome fact to many is the amount of water consumption by these data centers. Estimates show that the 400-plus operating facilities consume around 25 billion gallons of water per year with the cooling and power-generation functions.
A report in the Lufkin Daily News on the topic stated that many residents do not trust the potential new industry and perceive a lack of transparency from local officials.
In Amarillo, which sits in a region affected by water shortages, residents have protested the possibility of five new data centers in the area that are planned, while officials claim the overall economic benefits outweigh potential drawbacks.
In Athens, a project backed by Data Factory, which proposed a 10-megawatt capacity data center, was scuttled by the city council, largely as a result of citizen involvement and a demand for information.
Over in Granbury, residents recently filed suit against the city over a lack of transparency concerning a proposed data center.
Those examples are just a few ripped from headlines here in Texas, but similar things are happening across the country. It’s as if the news of huge tax breaks, potential environmental harm and a scarcity of jobs offered have really mobilized citizens, and one by one, some hampering of what is sold to We the Peons as “progress.”
Several years ago, public outcry arose here in Woodville over a proposed meat-packing facility, which developers wanted to build north of the city limits. With that particular scenario, many of those concerned, felt that the city council wasn’t transparent enough in its dealings with the developers, but sadly, the environmental concerns articulated by a few were overshadowed by a great deal of xenophobia on social media, owing to the nationality and/or religion of the developers.
While such an operation would’ve added another burden on our resources here, as any industrial facility would, these data centers are a whole different universe, in terms of impact, judging by the numbers available. In Woodville, there is such a facility, an offline biofuels plant, which would be an attractive prospect to the tech folks.
Through the generations, rural America has been sold a bill of goods time and time again by heavy industry, and many times, the benefits have largely outweighed the drawbacks. Business and society never got around to hammering out any kind of contract to outline their relationship to each other, however, long-standing social contracts that determine many of our relationships and values demand to know what benefit(s) a business would/could bring to the people, as well as the reverse side of that coin.
We all want to see our region grow, but data centers appear, from all angles, as a great big no. While officials might try to sell them as the new frontier, there’s an old saw about running out of resources and not being able to eat, drink or breathe money that comes to mind for me.
Chris Edwards is editor of the Tyler County Booster, a sister newspaper in the Polk County Publishing Group. He can be reached at cedwards@polkcountypublishing.com.
