Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office pressed 156 data center developments to follow state water-use reporting rules, backing Gov. Greg Abbott’s push to make big facilities answer for the water they draw.
Breitbart News reported that Paxton’s office said Thursday it had mailed the letters to projects spread across more than 30 counties.
The demand is simple. State law already requires these facilities to answer the Texas Water Development Board’s water-use survey. Many had not.
Paxton framed the letters as basic accountability to the people who live with the strain on local supplies.
“Data center developers must follow the law and respect the Texans and communities affected by their operations,” Paxton said in the release.
"Data center developers must follow the law and respect the Texans and communities affected by their operations."
The attorney general’s letters land after months of pressure from the governor’s office. Abbott has ordered a crackdown on data centers that skip the mandated water survey.
He directed the Texas Water Development Board to use its enforcement tools against past failures and to hit future noncompliance with legal consequences.
“Data centers must share the duty to protect Texas water,” Abbott said. “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.”
"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."
That message matches what taxpayers expect when industrial users pull heavy volumes from the same aquifers and rivers that serve farms, cities, and families.
Every year since 2020 the Texas Water Development Board has surveyed data centers and other industrial facilities for monthly water-use figures. State law says facilities must respond.
Failure to answer can bring a Class C misdemeanor. The board itself is not a prosecutor. Staff have said the agency is non-regulatory and cannot bring the cases. Local district attorneys and law enforcement carry that duty.
In July, board staff told the Texas Tribune they do not even track how many fines, if any, have been issued. That gap left the requirement looking optional until Abbott and Paxton moved.
Letters from the attorney general’s office now put the non-responders on formal notice across a wide slice of the state.
Water reporting is only one track. Abbott has also slowed the approval pipeline that data centers need to grow.
In August his office directed audits and placed a moratorium on new data-center grid approvals. In September he halted environmental permits for data centers until an audit is finished.
A Monday directive told the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to stop processing data-center permits until the Electric Reliability Council of Texas finishes auditing the backlog of projects waiting for grid connections. TCEQ must report compliance back to the governor’s office by Oct. 19.
Monday’s order extends the earlier freeze from power-grid approvals into environmental permits. The sequence shows a governor and attorney general treating large power-and-water users as subject to the same rules as everyone else.
Fox 7 Austin noted that Paxton’s office announced the 156 letters in a news release, tying the mailing directly to the water-survey mandate.
Data centers bring jobs and tax base. They also bring steady demand for electricity and water in counties that already manage drought risk and growth.
When operators skip a required survey, state planners lose the monthly figures they need. Communities lose visibility into how much is being drawn from shared supplies. Abbott’s order and Paxton’s letters close that loophole on paper and start the clock on real follow-through.
Enforcement still runs through local officials once the board flags a non-response. The Class C misdemeanor is not a corporate slap on the wrist in name only; it is the tool the statute gives sheriffs and prosecutors if the letters are ignored.
Paxton’s mailing reaches developments in more than 30 counties. That spread underlines how fast the industry footprint has grown and why statewide rules matter.
The same attorney general who sent the letters has built a record of pressing institutions to follow written law rather than treat it as advice.
Facilities that received the letters must answer the Texas Water Development Board survey with complete and accurate water-use data. The board has collected those figures annually since 2020.
Abbott has told the board to penalize past failures and to impose consequences going forward. TCEQ’s permit pause remains in place until ERCOT completes its grid-connection audit and the Oct. 19 report reaches the governor.
None of the steps invent new obligations. They enforce the Texas Water Code and existing survey rules that industrial users already knew about.
Developers who treat reporting as optional now face coordinated pressure from the governor, the attorney general, the water board, the environmental commission, and the grid operator.
For readers watching heavy industry expand across rural and suburban Texas, the practical test is straightforward: do the monthly numbers finally arrive, and do local prosecutors act when they do not?
Paxton’s office has put 156 projects on written notice. Abbott has frozen permits and demanded penalties. The statute and the survey have been clear for years.
Texas communities should not have to guess how much water industrial newcomers use. Law-and-order governance means the same rules bind the biggest operators, and elected officials who send the letters and stop the permits are doing the job voters hired them to do.
