The City of Lubbock hosted a public meeting on July 7 to discuss the potential development of large-scale data centers. The meeting lasted nearly four hours, nearly 500 people attended, and about 70 members of the public spoke to the city council.
The meeting began with two presentations from the City of Lubbock. The first was an overview from Lubbock’s city manager Jarett Atkinson of research conducted by himself and city staff over the past several months.
“For today, we'll talk about it as a large-scale data center uses 100 megawatts or more of electricity per day and/or, either one would get you there, 100,000 gallons of water per day, and primarily supplies information or does processing for offsite users,” Atkinson explained. “We're not talking about those data centers that are in a school or a hospital or a business, large-scale data centers.”
This research included site visits to other large-scale data centers and comparing the needs of some of these facilities to Lubbock’s existing industrial infrastructure.
Prior to the meeting, nearly 1,550 people completed a virtual survey providing their feedback on data centers. In the survey, folks were asked to rank 10 items of concern. Atkinson said the top three responses were water usage, electricity usage and utility costs, and environmental impact.
Atkinson’s presentation largely focused on the water demand, discussing Lubbock’s conservation, planned future supply, and the usage by current residents and industries.
He said that in 2011, the city had to produce 15.3 billion gallons of water, but in 2025 – with about 40,000 more people in the city – the city used about 2 billion fewer gallons of water.
“So, the question, what comes next?” Atkinson posited. “Obviously the community will continue to grow, that is everyone's goal. And you will need supply as the community grows. Lubbock does have a 100-year water plan. I like to say it is fully funded. Funded means you have those sources available to you. They have not been developed, you don't develop until you need them, and you bring them to town.”
Using a hypothetical data center, Atkinson said that a facility which uses 110,000 gallons of water a day would rank between the 13th and 14th highest water users in the city.
Additionally, he said that data centers do not have public infrastructure within their lots, so they don’t need things like street or alley maintenance, just dispatchable services, like calls for police, fire, animal services, and code enforcement.
After the meeting, Lubbock Mayor Mark McBrayer said this was one of the potential benefits a data center could bring to the city.
“You have a square mile, or whatever it is, of a data center paying taxes, but without the associated costs that a resident's mile of a square mile of residences does, the police nonexistent, pretty much fire nonexistent, pretty much streets, alleys, sewers, all that pretty much nonexistent, and anything inside they pay for, so you've got tax income without an offsetting expense,” McBrayer said. “I think a lot of people don't understand that in a city like Lubbock, your property taxes that you pay, every resident pays here, doesn't even pay for our police and fire alone.”
Recommendations from the city
Following Atkinson’s presentation, the assistant city manager Erik Rejino gave the council a series of recommendations from city staff on restrictions and policies to be implemented for potential data center developers.
Some things are outside of the city’s control, like air quality – which is regulated by the TCEQ – and energy costs and mandates – which come through the Public Utility Commission of Texas and ERCOT, or the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.
However, the city can place restrictions through infrastructure agreements, utility service agreements, and zoning districts.
City staff recommended water standards, such as requiring proposals to use “closed-loop cooling systems, air-dry cooling systems, or similar technology, which minimizes water use, and eliminates the need for continuous water withdrawals from the City’s public water system.”
They also recommended a water reservation fee, in which the city would collect a fee based on a project’s estimated water consumption.
“It's a benefit for Lubbock. If the project doesn't come again, there's a cost for it, and the citizens ultimately end up benefiting from that fee,” Rejino said. “We would assess it at the time of the execution of a development agreement, and again, only for your really large users.”
Rejino recommended that large-scale data centers only be permitted in two zoning districts: light industrial and general industrial.
“We're proposing a specific use permit that is an additional set of regulations, requirements, standards that fall within any district that you set,” he explained. “So if there's a proposed data center and large-scale data center that is appropriately zoned for light industrial, general industrial, they would still have to get that specific use permit. It would still trigger public hearings. It would still take the city council taking those on a case-by-case basis.”
Under these conditions, all large-scale data centers will require two public meetings for residents to speak on project proposals, during a meeting of the Planning & Zoning Commission and of the Lubbock City Council.
The city also recommended requiring developers to provide a power usage study and air quality compliance documents, to have setbacks to create a buffer between the structures and adjacent properties, and that developers submit a decommissioning plan for centers that are no longer in use.
The city council did not take up any items at the special city council meeting, so did not vote to implement any of the recommendations at this time.
Public feedback
The environmental impact and utility costs were some of the primary concerns of residents who spoke against data centers.
Lubbock resident Corye Austin expressed concern that the city’s estimated 100,000 gallons of water per day did not line up with independent studies on data center water consumption.
“Texas has been in a drought ever since I have lived here. I've been born and raised here in Texas, and water's always been an issue. So, why are we even thinking about allowing things in the state, in our county, in our city that are going to draw on one of our most precious resources?” Austin said.
Another citizen, Camille Webb, pointed to the results – or lack thereof – from a recent survey conducted by Public Utility Commission of Texas and Texas Water Development Board and presented to the state’s House Natural Resources Committee.
“Data center and crypto miner operators were asked to participate in an optional survey by the Public Utility Commission of Texas about water consumption, and less than a third of them responded. The numbers we have on these centers do not tell the whole story. Developers need to be transparent about the energy and water demands, and consider the repercussions of multiple large-scale projects on the same depleting aquifer,” Webb said. “There's not even enough evidence to prove that this will not have a negative impact on our community. The 2027 Texas Water Plan completely ignores the data center surge.”
Webb was among those to call for the city to implement a moratorium, or legal pause, on data center development.
Nicie Pratt also requested the council instate a moratorium.
“Please put a moratorium in place, you have people petitioning for a moratorium. Stand up and take the initiative to put a moratorium in place immediately to pump the brakes on this. That's not radical, it's happening everywhere,” she said. “If you want us to trust you, put the moratorium in place. Don't make us petition you to do it.”
A group of Lubbock citizens have been collecting signatures for a petition to bring an 18-month moratorium before the city council, under the name “Save Lubbock.” If the group collects enough signatures by July 28, the city council will choose to accept the moratorium or put it on a ballot for Lubbock voters.
Last month, San Marcos became the first city in Texas to ban data centers, following numerous thwarted attempts at moratoriums from Texas counties earlier this year.
The lack of regulatory control outside of the city was another concern shared by residents and elected officials.
“We have no control over what happens in the county, and in fact, the county has no control what happens in the county either,” Lubbock Mayor McBrayer told KTTZ after the meeting.
“We can adopt zoning regulations in the city, they can't,” he continued. “That's kind of one of the things we have to balance. Some people say we don't want them, no matter what. My point is, if we say no to them, that doesn't mean they're not going to be built. They're not going to be built right next door to our city, and if they do, they're going to use the same amount of water. They're just going to be pumping out of the ground instead of getting it from us.”
Speaking to the council during public comment, Xan Argo introduced himself as a policy analyst researcher at Texas Tech University.
“I also wanted to speak to you, to the members of the board who state ‘we have to keep them here, because if we let them go elsewhere, then they'll be unregulated.’ To you, I'd say we don't care,” Argo said. “We are here to speak to them in the city, because we will fight them in the city. If they leave and go elsewhere, if they go to the county, we will fight them in the county. If we have to go to the Capitol, we will fight them at the Capitol. We will go wherever they are, we only need you to represent us here in the city. We will take the fight to them.”
Some speakers were not against data centers altogether, but stressed that any decision by the city government should be measured, with assurance that the benefits will be worth the investment.
Jordan Chisum told the council he understands the importance of data centers for the economy, but wants to make sure citizens are protected.
“I appreciate the proposed zoning changes, close the cooling noise mitigation berms, I think those are all good ideas, but I share the same concerns as a lot of our other citizens in that they have not very much faith that anything will be done to enforce those regulations if they're in place,” he explained.
Lubbock Mayor Mark McBrayer said the information gathered in the meeting and the questions raised by citizens will inform further research conducted by the city and help establish standards for the city council the next time a proposal comes up.
You can find a recording of the meeting on the City of Lubbock’s website here.