Texas governor threatens to penalize datacenters not obeying water laws
Summary
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has ordered state officials to punish datacenters that do not report their water usage as required by Texas law. This move comes as Texas faces drought and a rapid increase in datacenter construction, which uses large amounts of water.Key Facts
- Governor Abbott directed the Texas Water Development Board to penalize datacenters not sharing complete water use data.
- The Texas Water Code requires datacenters to provide accurate water usage surveys.
- Abbott said some datacenters may have broken civil and criminal laws by failing to report water usage.
- An audit is underway to check datacenter water consumption and efficiency efforts.
- Datacenters must complete this audit or risk being denied access to the Texas power grid.
- Texas has 335 datacenters and plans more, possibly becoming the state with the most datacenters worldwide.
- In 2025, Texas datacenters used about 25 billion gallons of water; this could rise to 161 billion gallons by 2030.
- The water used by datacenters may equal about 2.7% of Texas’s total water use, similar to the amount used by 1.3 million U.S. households.
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