Texas governor wants penalties for data centers that don’t report water use - Water Finance & Management

The order targets companies that operate large scale water consumers across the state, a category that includes data centers built to run computing and cloud storage operations. Abbott's directive says these operators appear to have committed civil and criminal violations by not providing the required information to the board under state law.

The governor also told the board to team up with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas on its ongoing audit of data centers, pulling in additional water use data as part of that review. Abbott framed the move around accountability. He said data centers must share the duty to protect Texas water, and that state code demands a complete and accurate water use survey.

For neighbors here, the fight is really about who gets to know how much water big industrial users are pulling from a state that already stretches its supply thin during dry stretches. Data centers use enormous amounts of water for cooling, and as more of them get built across Texas, tracking that demand matters for every city managing its own water planning.

Abbott wants the reporting gap closed before the next drought forces harder choices about who gets water first.