Abbott orders Texas water board to penalize noncompliant datacenters

Texas datacenters could use 161 billion gallons of water annually by 2030

Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Monday directed state regulators to penalize datacenters that failed to disclose their water use, escalating pressure on an industry that already consumes billions of gallons annually in a drought-prone state. In a letter to the Texas Water Development Board, the Republican governor said major water users including datacenters “appear to have committed civil and criminal violations” of the Texas Water Code.

“Data centers must share the duty to protect Texas water,” Abbott, who is seeking a fourth term, said Monday. “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.”

The directive builds on an audit Abbott ordered last month. That earlier order directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (Ercot) to conduct a comprehensive audit of datacenters advancing through the Ercot interconnection process.

The audit requires datacenters to provide information about their water consumption, water sources and efforts to use water-efficient technologies. Projects that fail to complete it will be denied permission to connect to the state’s power grid, Abbott said.

“TWDB’s water use surveys serve a similarly important purpose as this data center audit,” Abbott wrote in his Monday letter. “TWDB must coordinate with PUC and ERCOT to ensure that covered entities provide critical water use information in response. Any failure to respond to the audit’s request for water use information would trigger TWDB’s independent enforcement authority.”

Texas has emerged as the heart of the U.S. datacenter boom. The state hosts 335 datacenters — the second-most of any state — with at least 248 more in the pipeline, according to a tally by the Pew Research Center. Experts believe Texas could surpass Virginia as the world’s largest concentration of datacenters by the end of the decade.

The industry’s water footprint is substantial and growing. Texas datacenters consumed an estimated 25 billion gallons of water in 2025, according to the Houston Advanced Research Center. Water use by datacenters in the state could rise to 161 billion gallons a year by 2030 — about 2.7% of all water used in Texas, or roughly the amount consumed by 1.3 million households across the country.

Abbott’s tightening of datacenter oversight comes amid growing public concern over construction and the strain the facilities place on the state’s power and water supplies.