From Newsgroup: comp.ai.philosophy

Data centers need a lot of water and energy. State officials want to
know how much, and they hoped a survey sent to data center companies
would give them the answers.

But at a legislative hearing Tuesday in Austin, they were told less than
a third of the companies surveyed responded.

“Bad data, bad study,” said state Rep. Brad Buckley, R-Salado, a member
of the House Natural Resources Committee.

Texans have been thirsty for information on how much water data centers
in Texas use — and plan to use — as a rush of proposed new projects has
flooded communities across the state. With more than 248 proposed data
centers, Texas is challenging Virginia to become the No. 1 market for
data centers in the U.S.

Communities and some state officials have aggressively pushed back
against the growing industry. Their impact is being felt as Texas has
shifted from aggressively courting data centers to tightening oversight
— the latest move, by Gov. Greg Abbott, directs public utilities to
ensure that the infrastructure costs required to serve data centers are
not passed on to their customers.

Abbott has also issued recommendations for legislative action, including requiring data centers to use the most efficient, and more expensive,
water recirculation systems to cool their servers.

Google recently announced their commitment to use 100% air-cooled,
closed-loop cooling systems for new data centers. And the industry says
its cooling technology is improving to require less water.

The water survey, developed by the Public Utility Commission of Texas in collaboration with the Texas Water Development Board, was a step by
lawmakers to get more transparency on how data centers work. It’s
intended to inform future water planning and help policymakers better understand the relationship between water use and energy demand at large industrial facilities.

It asked operators to provide information about water consumption,
cooling systems, water sources, electricity demand and whether
facilities are connected to the state’s electric grid or have their own
on-site power source such as a gas-fired power plant.

The agency received responses from only 28 companies representing 92
facilities at various stages of development, according to Chris Brown, a program manager and economist at the PUC.

It’s unclear how many surveys the PUC sent out, but lawmakers noted that
the 92 facilities represent only a small fraction of the state’s
existing data centers.

Several legislators questioned whether the survey results would provide
a reliable foundation for future planning. Buckley criticized the
response rate, calling the participation level “pretty pathetic” and
warning against making major policy decisions based on incomplete
information.

“That’s just how science works,” Buckley said. “You either have enough
data or you don’t.”

Lawmakers repeatedly pressed PUC staff for more details about the
responses, including how many facilities were traditional data centers
versus cryptocurrency mining operations and how many surveys were fully completed versus only partially completed. Those figures were not
available during the hearing. Brown said the agency could get those soon
to lawmakers.

“On transparency, this is a fast moving and highly competitive industry. Companies must protect proprietary, confidential, and competitive
information,” said Dan Diorio, vice president of state policy with the
industry group Data Center Coalition. He added that he’s working with
the TWDB and the PUC to see how his coalition can help get more data
centers to respond to the surveys.

He suggested that agencies could perhaps “aggregate and anonymize
information to alleviate any confidentiality concerns moving forward.”

This isn’t the first time the state has received few responses to a
survey. The Water Development Board has been sending mandatory water consumption surveys to data centers since 2023. The number of
individually surveyed data centers has grown from 22 to 341.

Only one-third of data centers surveyed in 2024 responded and in 2025
only 17% responded, according to an agency official. The consequences
for noncompliance are minimal — a Class C misdemeanor with a maximum
fine of $500.

Unlike the TWDB surveys, the PUC survey is not mandatory, and agency
officials said there is no incentive for data center operators to submit
the requested information.

State Rep. Jeffrey Barry, R-Pearland, said lawmakers can’t rely on
“sparse information” to make long-term policy decisions about
increasingly scarce water resources.

“We see this pattern of continuing to use either, you know, half-baked information or old information to make futuristic determinations on
where we’re moving forward, we need to be a little bit more consistent
in the types of data,” Barry said.

https://www.texastribune.org/2026/06/23/texas-data-centers-puc-water-surv
ey/
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