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Honestly, for most individual facilities — including this one — we don't really know:

• Usage depends heavily on cooling method, and operators aren't required to publicly disclose actual figures
• A large evaporative-cooling facility can use up to 5 million gallons a day — comparable to a town of 10,000–50,000 people
• A comparable Texas facility with real, disclosed closed-loop cooling — Switch, in Round Rock — reports roughly 2 million gallons a year, about the same as 15 homes
• A recent state survey (PUCT + Texas Water Development Board) asked operators for real numbers — only 92 of 582 facilities responded, less than 16%. It reopened July 1–10, 2026 after pushback on the low response rate, but even those 92 facilities' actual figures still haven't been made public

Until real numbers are disclosed for this facility specifically, any figure — ours included — is an estimate, not a confirmed one.

No. Closed-loop systems recirculate water instead of evaporating it, typically using only 5–10% of what an evaporative system withdraws — but they still need an initial fill and small ongoing makeup water. See "Closed Loop, Open Question: Water Issues" on the "Did We Get a Good Deal?" page for the full breakdown.

Most large "closed-loop" systems actually run two loops. The inner loop is sealed and low-water. The outer loop rejects heat either evaporatively (spraying water, losing most of it to the air) or via a dry cooler (no ongoing water loss, like a car radiator). "Closed loop" alone doesn't say which type the outer loop uses — that's the number that matters.

In evaporative systems, roughly 70–80% of withdrawn water evaporates directly into the air. The remaining 20–30% ("blowdown") carries concentrated minerals and treatment chemicals and is typically discharged to a sewer/treatment plant — not returned to the local aquifer.

Campus 1 (6752 FM 535, "AUS02"): proposed as a 4-building, $1.4B campus. Only Building 1 has a signed tax abatement agreement and a confirmed water contract (up to 350 LUE / 210 GPM via Aqua WSC). Buildings 2–4 remain proposed scope only — no abatement, no water agreement, no construction commitment confirmed for them individually.

Campus 2 (6682 FM 535, ~180 acres): a separate site, announced March 2026. No tax abatement has been filed for it. No water agreement figures have been publicly disclosed for it. Nothing about Campus 1's terms should be assumed to carry over.

Open discrepancy: EdgeConneX's own June 2026 town hall referenced a "6-building" campus, and a separate news report cited "up to 9" buildings — it's unconfirmed whether either figure means Campus 1 expanding, a combined Campus 1+2 total, or something else entirely. We're tracking this as an open discrepancy, not reporting it as resolved. See our Discrepancy Register for detail.

Possibly. Groundwater doesn't respect utility service boundaries — a large industrial draw from the shared Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer can affect nearby private wells regardless of who the utility customer is. Texas follows the "rule of capture," which generally allows landowners to pump groundwater beneath their property with limited liability to neighboring wells, making this a difficult legal claim to bring even where interference is real. No site-specific well-interference study for this project has been made public.

Noise (constant hum, 40–59 decibels measured in one case), water quality/availability concerns, air quality from backup generators, and property value/quality-of-life impacts.

Five things, as far as we've found:

• A 75% property-tax abatement for 10 years (Dec 2024)
• A water contract with Aqua WSC for up to 210 GPM / 350 LUE, not yet active
• A requirement that construction begin by December 31, 2026
• A 25-year total operating commitment (10-year abatement period, plus 15 more years of required operation after it ends)
• A named legal party bound to all of it — DFW33220N, LLC, the entity that actually signed the agreement (a related entity, DFW33220N Operations 1, LLC, handles day-to-day operations)

Buildings 2–4 and Campus 2 remain proposed, unconfirmed, or unfiled. See "Your Water and Your Taxes" above for detail on each.

Because it is. Bastrop County hired PFM Group Consulting in March 2026 — over a year after the December 2024 abatement was approved — specifically to compare this deal's structure against an alternative (Chapter 381 PILOT), benchmark it against similar Texas data center deals, and recommend "best practice" terms going forward. That's a genuine after-the-fact evaluation, not analysis done before the deal was signed.

Separately, the county's own Tax Abatement Policy requires every application to include a feasibility study and meet a 25% local-hire minimum. Whether the original application included the required feasibility study is unconfirmed. On local hire, the application itself left that figure as "TBD" rather than committing to the 25% floor.

None of this means the deal was improperly approved — Chapter 312 gives counties real discretion, and the PFM review may find the terms hold up. But the sequence is worth stating plainly: this kind of scrutiny is happening after the ink is dry, not before.

The list above is genuinely all we've found that's formally, publicly locked in as of this writing. More could likely be confirmed here — but right now it requires waiting for the response to our filing rather than being proactively disclosed. CCDCFACTS currently has four separate Texas Public Information Act requests outstanding: the County Clerk (Dec 9, 2024 vote minutes), Aqua WSC (tariff terms and drought plan), Bastrop County (the PFM economic analysis), and LPGCD (well permit file). This section will likely grow as those responses come in — public bodies aren't required to disclose more than the law requires, and nothing here alleges otherwise. It's a real, specific access gap, not a vague complaint.

335 operating, at least 248 more planned, per a Texas Tribune analysis (June 2026). 56 of the planned projects are in Central Texas.

Cities have zoning power and can restrict or ban data centers outright — San Marcos did in June 2026. Counties generally don't have that same authority, making unincorporated land an easier path for developers.

Primary drivers, roughly in order: power availability and cost, water access, fiber/telecom connectivity, and climate for cooling. Tax incentives sweeten an already-qualifying site; they don't fix a weak one.

No. Nationwide, 888 data centers were planned as of April 2026. Comparable fights are active in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Virginia, Arizona, and Maryland.

There's a real structural parallel, worth naming carefully. In Arizona, a Saudi-owned company (Fondomonte, a subsidiary of Almarai) leased state land since 2014, pumped groundwater at as little as $25/acre to grow alfalfa exported to Saudi Arabia — where the crop is illegal to grow domestically because of its water cost. Neighboring wells ran dry. The state didn't act until 2023, and even then, gaps in state law still limit the ability to restrict pumping on privately owned land. Arizona's Attorney General filed a public nuisance lawsuit in December 2024, still active.

The pattern that matches: an outside capital entity, cheap access to a stressed local resource, weak local regulatory teeth, and public pressure arriving years after the arrangement was already in place.

The pattern that doesn't match: Fondomonte's harm is undisputed and directly measured — alfalfa is a physical export commodity leaving the country. EdgeConneX provides cloud/compute infrastructure, a different and more ambiguous case where usage numbers are still unconfirmed. Treat this as a cautionary structural comparison, not a claim that the two cases are equivalent.

A moratorium pauses new approvals temporarily. A ban prohibits them outright. San Marcos is the first Texas city to ban data centers via zoning. Hill County tried a moratorium and reversed it after a $100 million lawsuit threat.

Abilene is home to OpenAI's Stargate data center campus — a different company, a different scale, but the same state, the same tax incentive structure, and many of the same unanswered questions Cedar Creek residents are asking now. It's not a prediction. It's evidence these questions are worth asking before construction is finished.

Yes, typically where a binding community benefit agreement was negotiated up front — Cedar Rapids, IA (20-year tax exemption tied to wage minimums), West Des Moines, IA (100% renewable power commitment), Lancaster, PA (water-use cap, noise/air controls).

A January 2026 Pew survey found more negative than positive views on environmental impact and home energy costs near data centers, but more positive views on local jobs and tax revenue. A CBS News/YouGov poll found more Americans oppose than favor a data center in their own area.

Land use conversion from rural/agricultural to industrial, light pollution affecting wildlife, and grid-linked emissions where electricity comes from fossil-fuel generation.

File public records requests, attend and speak at Commissioners Court and utility board meetings, or report tips to CCDCFACTS. See How to Get Involved for the full toolkit — templates, portal links, and where to send things.

Recently amended zoning code adding "data centers" as a permitted industrial use, large land purchases by unfamiliar LLCs near power lines, closed-session economic development meetings, or a utility filing a large new industrial interconnection request.

No. This isn't an anti-growth or anti-technology project. It's an effort to get straight answers to specific questions — about water, taxes, and enforcement — before final commitments are locked in.

No. This is an independent project. Every factual claim is sourced to public records, agency statements, or independent journalism.

Unknown — Section E of the tariff has not yet been obtained and reviewed. This determines whether the utility bills for the full 350 LUE reservation regardless of actual draw, or strictly by metered usage. Status: unverified.

No water service agreement figures have been made public for this site as of the most recent reporting. Tracking for updates.

No public record found either way. Tracking for updates.

None found publicly. Tracking for updates.