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‘We need to do our due diligence’: Harlingen [Texas] approves 120-day data center moratorium
(www.valleycentral.com)
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this post was submitted on 25 May 2026
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This just became the first city in Texas to block a major data center. It would have brought billions of dollars into the small city, but used 4.6 million gallons or water and sewer daily.
The city's leaders recognized the long term dangers and blocked it.
I'm curious as to how sites like this actually bring in money into a community, let alone billions. They bring their own construction crews, equipment and supplies, and when they're done they hire like ten security guards. Not that I'm not happy with this current outcome. I feel it's huge in light of everything. But that claim doesn't feel right to me.
The companies actually buy a lot of equipment and supplies locally, and use local construction crews where possible (if there's enough of them available in the area).
One of the things that people are annoyed about with data centers is that even if the company does buy things locally, they often get exempted from sales tax. For example, Texas and Ohio exempt data center equipment purchases from sales tax, and Meta negotiated a 20-year exemption from sales tax for their big Hyperion campus in Louisiana.
Probably taxes, land taxes, local employees, bribes to the local government, etc.
How does it consume this much water? I thought modern water cooling systems were all closed-loop systems?
Modern water cooling systems can be closed loop, but that's more expensive, particularly at the scales datacenters use. So, evaporative open-loop cooling it is!
if you make them use closed-loop systems through regulation, they would make less profit, and we can't have that!