Gov. Greg Abbott directed the Texas Water Development Board to punish data centers that have ignored a mandatory water-use survey for years, a crackdown that comes as fewer than one in three facilities even bother to respond.
Abbott's directive orders the TWDB to use its enforcement authority against data centers that failed to file required water-use reports and to impose legal consequences on any facility that refuses to comply going forward. Under the Texas Water Code, ignoring the survey is a Class C misdemeanor, the same category as a traffic ticket, yet the state agency has never tracked how many fines, if any, have actually been levied.
The governor set a mid-October deadline for the board to report back on compliance and enforcement. He also pointed to a separate directive he issued in August ordering the TWDB to work with the Public Utility Commission of Texas, water utilities, and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas on an audit of every data center seeking to plug into the state's power grid. Facilities that fail the audit will be denied grid interconnection, a move that could strand billions of dollars in planned projects.
The compliance numbers tell the story. The TWDB began surveying data centers in 2020, mailing questionnaires to industrial facilities that use more than 10 million gallons of water a year. In the early years, when fewer than five data centers received the survey, every single one responded.
Then the AI boom hit.
By 2023, the agency surveyed 22 data centers. Only 32 percent responded. In 2024, the number of surveyed facilities tripled to 67, and the response rate dropped to 28 percent. Last year, 329 data centers received the survey. Nearly 30 percent responded, meaning roughly 230 facilities blew it off entirely. Of those 329 facilities, 267 were new to the agency's tracking system, and just 22.5 percent of those newcomers filed their reports.
The pattern is plain: as the industry exploded across Texas, compliance collapsed.
The 2025 survey identified the state's heaviest water users among data centers. Bitdeer operates a facility in Rockdale, a small town east of Austin, that consumes more than 300 million gallons of water per year, roughly the same as a Texas town of about 3,500 people. Google runs a facility in Midlothian, south of Dallas. QTS and Meta both operate data centers in Fort Worth. All four ranked among the largest water-consuming data centers in the state.
Most of these facilities cluster in North Texas, where water demand is already high and growing. Data centers require enormous volumes of water for cooling, on top of the electricity they pull from the grid. That dual strain, water and power, has fueled a growing public backlash against the industry's rapid expansion, with residents worried about rising energy costs and shrinking water supplies.
Part of the problem is structural. The TWDB is not a regulatory agency. It cannot prosecute. Its staff told the Texas Tribune in July that the board does not even track how many penalties have been issued for noncompliance. Enforcement falls to local district attorneys and law enforcement, officials who, in practice, have little reason to prioritize a Class C misdemeanor against a corporate data center.
Abbott's directive attempts to change that calculus. By ordering the board to use its enforcement authority and report back by mid-October, the governor is putting the agency on a public timeline. And the separate grid-interconnection audit adds a far sharper tool: if a data center cannot get permission to connect to the Texas power grid, it cannot operate.
The TWDB said it would "compel all water users" to comply. Whether that language translates into actual enforcement remains an open question. The board has never demonstrated the capacity, or, arguably, the legal muscle, to force compliance on its own.
The water-survey crackdown is one piece of a broader shift in Abbott's posture toward the data center industry. The governor has issued a moratorium on new data center development pending audits of all pending projects. Fox News reported that roughly 90 percent of the 474 gigawatts of projected large-load interconnection requests under ERCOT review come from data centers, more than five times Texas's record peak electricity demand. Abbott directed the PUC and ERCOT to review and deny grid connection requests for facilities that fail to meet state requirements, effectively pausing all pending projects.
Texas provides more than $1 billion annually in tax breaks for qualifying data center projects, making it one of the nation's largest hubs for the industry. Abbott framed his position in terms of protecting residents.
"Our top priority is to protect Texans' safety and quality of life. Texans must come first."
That stance puts the governor on a different track from President Trump, who has promoted data center development and warned that Americans who refuse to embrace the industry will be "left behind." A poll by Overton Insights and the Texas Public Policy Foundation suggests Abbott's more cautious position resonates better with Texas voters, including Republicans. The data center debate has become a measurable political issue in the state, with local resistance growing.
That resistance has already produced concrete action at the municipal level. San Marcos, a small city between San Antonio and Austin, became the first Texas city to ban data centers outright, a move that faces the promise of a legal challenge and tests the limits of local authority over tech infrastructure.
Abbott's directive quoted the Texas Water Code's requirement for "a complete and accurate water use survey" and framed the issue as one of basic accountability.
"Data centers must share the duty to protect Texas water. The Texas Water Code requires a complete and accurate water use survey. I direct the Texas Water Development Board to use its enforcement authority to penalize past failures and to impose legal consequences for any future failure to comply."
The TWDB itself acknowledged the stakes in blunt terms: the board "is charged with developing a state water plan that meets the needs of Texans and cannot perform that task if it is denied detailed information on existing and anticipated water consumption." In other words, the state cannot plan for its water future if the biggest new users refuse to say how much they are drinking.
The survey does not even ask about cooling technology, historically the single largest driver of water consumption at data centers. Whether that gap will be addressed remains unclear.
Several critical questions hang over the enforcement push. No public record shows that a single Class C misdemeanor charge has ever been filed against a data center for ignoring the survey. The TWDB lacks prosecutorial power and relies on local officials who may have little appetite for the fight. And the governor's mid-October reporting deadline, while it creates a public benchmark, carries no obvious consequence if the board comes back empty-handed.
When an industry can ignore a state law for years, consume a small town's worth of water from a single facility, and face no recorded penalty, the problem is not a lack of rules. It is a lack of will to enforce them. Abbott's directive is a start, but only if someone actually follows through.
