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Cedar Creek Data Center Facts

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Cedar Creek Data Center: Did the Community Get a Good Deal?

Notice to Readers: This is a work in progress. You will see these papers, pages, and stories change as new information comes to light or we make revisions to better reflect this evolving deal. Our goal remains the same: to give you up-to-date, factual information.

1. Closed Loop, Open Question: Water Issues

In December 2024, Bastrop County leaders approved a deal letting a data center campus be built off FM 535 near Cedar Creek. Residents have been trying to find out what that deal actually means ever since — and the facts have been hard to come by. A few open houses with the lead developer left people more confused than when they walked in.

Aqua

Aqua Water Supply Corporation and Lost Pines Groundwater Conservation District have both been clear about one thing: this isn't a partnership with EdgeConneX. When the developer publicly described Aqua WSC as a "Regional Partner," both agencies rejected that characterization outright, the same day — Aqua WSC stating it's under a legal obligation to provide water service, and LPGCD requesting that any references implying a partnership be removed.

With the right application for a large water service agreement, Aqua is legally required to provide service to eligible customers in its territory. That obligation covers up to 210 gallons per minute (GPM). Water service to this facility hasn't started yet; Aqua WSC says it's not expected until 2027, pending infrastructure upgrades. A second data center campus nearby has already been announced — but no written contract or water agreement has been signed for it.

If drawn continuously at the full 210 GPM cap, that's over 300,000 gallons a day — during a drought that shows no sign of ending before 2027 arrives.

Whether that figure covers just Building 1 or the entire four-building campus once it's built out isn't clear. Could each future building mean a separate large-volume agreement? Nobody's said whether that's the plan, or even possible under Aqua's own capacity. This needs an answer before it's too late — and the gap between "unanswered" and "written down" could be a liability that Cedar Creek residents live with for the next 25 years.

The Aquifer

For comparison: one nearby private well on record is 252 feet deep, drilled in 2012, rated for 20 gallons a minute — a rough sense of what an ordinary household well around there looks like.

Bastrop County is under active drought conditions right now — not hypothetically, confirmed. LPGCD's role here is narrow but real: they're the ones who'd permit any new well, and they set the drawdown targets this aquifer is supposed to stay within. We have not found anything showing LPGCD has said anything specific about this project's impact one way or the other.

And there's the structural problem: LPGCD's review cycle for those targets runs roughly five years, and it doesn't appear to automatically accelerate no matter how large a new industrial user is. This entire project has moved from land purchase to construction faster than one full review cycle.

Has an independent geologist ever actually examined this specific site and produced a real impact assessment — not the applicant's own "no expected adverse impact" checkbox? Given the drought, and given how fast this is moving relative to how slowly the review process moves, that seems like a reasonable thing to ask for before approval, not after. Whether that risk is even real might come down to something simpler: what kind of cooling system actually gets installed.

Coolant Tech

Looking into today's actual technical ability to cool data centers, there are two common approaches residents may hear described as "closed loop" — and they're not the same thing.

The first is closed-loop, direct-to-chip liquid cooling. Coolant runs directly to the chips, absorbs the heat, and recirculates internally. It gets rejected outside through a "dry cooler" — essentially a giant radiator, the same idea as your truck's, just building-sized. Almost no water lost — companies using this technology describe needing to "top off" the system only once every few years. This newer, low-water approach depends heavily on which generation of chips a facility runs; many older deployments weren't built around it.

The second is a closed-loop cooling tower. This one still rejects heat by evaporating water into the air, the same as it always has. It only earns the "closed loop" label because the equipment side of the system stays sealed off and protected from outside air — not because it uses less water. It's closed loop for the machines. Most of that water is still lost to evaporation or discharged as waste, the same as it always has.

Both get called the exact same thing. Only one of them explains why a facility might need a contract for up to 210 gallons a minute.

Commissioner David Glass and EdgeConneX VP of Site Development Evan Pierce jointly told residents at a March 2026 panel that water-consumption concerns are largely a misconception — Glass specifically described "new closed-loop systems, which use very, very little water. Once we fill it, it stays filled." But nothing written backs this statement up.

CoreWeave — the company whose equipment will sit inside Building 1 — says on its own website that its standard architecture uses closed-loop, direct-to-chip liquid cooling, the low-water kind. But CoreWeave's actual flagship Texas facility, in Plano — operational since late 2023, now about 2.5 years old — runs on older-generation hardware. Whether Building 1 gets the newer, low-water systems or something closer to what's running in Plano isn't confirmed either way.

Brackish Water

EdgeConneX told residents at a June 2026 town hall it's exploring brackish groundwater — water too salty to drink on its own — as one option alongside closed-loop cooling and xeriscaping.

Brackish or not, it's still groundwater under Texas law — same basic framework, same LPGCD jurisdiction. But the state does allow for a separate, faster permitting path specifically for brackish water once a district designates what's called a Brackish Groundwater Production Zone. Bastrop's stretch of the Trinity hasn't gotten that designation yet, as far as we've found — but nothing says it won't. Either way, we have not found project-specific permitting or enforcement documents addressing brackish groundwater use here.

Where's My Checkbox?

Is this deal moving too fast, without real oversight? Where are the checks and balances? Where's the honest, fair risk assessment of a 25-year contract? Up to 210 gallons a minute, for 25 years, and no independent environmental review by engineers or geologists made public? Just a single checkbox on the application itself: Air Quality, Water Quality, Solid Waste Disposal, Storm/Water Runoff, Floodplain/Wetlands, Noise Levels, Other. Every one of them left unchecked. No detail, no study, no explanation. Just "no expected adverse impact," and the county accepted it as-is.

Why are residents the only ones worried about the future of our community's water and other resources? Where are the elected and appointed guardians of our county?

Where's my checkbox? Why do I need more paperwork to put up a fence or pour a driveway on my own property than a $200 million business needed for this deal?

2. So — Where Do We Get Answers?

David Glass has political accountability — he championed the deal, sits on the Commissioners Court that approved it, and sits on Aqua WSC and the Appraisal District too. He can answer "why did you vote for this," but he's not a signatory to the abatement agreement itself — he can legitimately say "the terms are the company's, not mine," even though he helped shape them.

DFW33220N, LLC is the actual contractual counterparty — the entity that signed the abatement agreement and holds the Base Value, the job commitments, the "TBD" local-hire language. This is who legally owes answers on deal terms. But it's a single-purpose shell LLC — it has no spokesperson, no public face, and functionally cannot be interviewed the way a person or a real operating company can. County Judge Gregory Klaus signed the original agreement on December 9, 2024, on the county's behalf — he may have the answers.

CoreWeave owns computing equipment inside Building 1 and holds tax-abatement rights on that equipment specifically — confirmed by a September 2025 assignment. But the entity actually operating the facility, per that same document, is DFW33220N Operations 1, LLC — an EdgeConneX-controlled entity, not CoreWeave. CoreWeave was never named publicly as having any presence here until now — nobody outside this research has known to ask them anything, so no one ever has.

Or is there a fourth person or entity we can ask? Who knows. We've filed open records requests and are hoping the answers are in there.

3. What a Good Deal Looks Like

To know whether this was a good deal, we need to know all the terms of the deal. That information still isn't fully available. Right now there's a big disconnect between what we're hearing, what people are saying, what's on the news, and what actually exists in writing as the facts of the deal. We understand this is a process, and the final answers may not be known yet — but there exists enough written information that the community could use it to determine whether our elected and appointed representatives made an effort to get the best terms, and that there are written remedies in place that protect our interests and our community's resources.

EdgeConneX is calling it a $1.4 billion deal — but that's the number for the full four-building buildout, not what's actually under contract. Bastrop County approved a 75%, 10-year property tax abatement in December 2024 for the proposed Cedar Creek data center campus — though the real commitment runs 25 years once the required operating period after the abatement is factored in. Only Building 1 has both a signed tax agreement and a signed water agreement right now:

Other cities dealing with data centers that got real terms out of these deals share one thing in common: they nailed down the specifics — water, jobs, environmental terms — before signing off, not after.

As far as we can tell, Bastrop got none of that. Bastrop seems to have signed first and is still filling in the blanks:

Bastrop's agreement does have some real enforcement teeth the comparison deals may not have:

If the company walks away, the county does have real recourse. What it doesn't have is anything extra while the company stays here for 25 years.

The deals we did look at for comparison spell out performance, inspections, safety, and environmental terms clearly enough that both sides know exactly where they stand — no ambiguity, no wiggle room, no loopholes. This one doesn't read that way. Part of a good deal is the environmental concerns, which we'll cover in a separate piece.

4. Sources