Texas data centers are booming. Who is watching out for homeowners?

The Burnett family says they feel like guinea pigs. Last October, they learned Giga Energy was building a data center 600 feet from their backyard in Brazoria County.

The company assured the Burnetts and others noise wouldn’t be an issue when operations began. But when Giga Energy flipped the switch on what is actually a bitcoin mining facility, the Burnetts say the constant noise is impossible to ignore.

“It’s just, I don’t want to be the guinea pig. And I feel like that’s what we are,” Melissa Burnett said.

“To me, it sounds like a plane that’s sitting on the runway and it’s just never going,” Wesley Burnett said.

The family says they can feel vibrations from the low-frequency rumble inside their home. They say they can no longer enjoy their backyard the way they once did.

An iPhone app registered the sound as high as 79 decibels in one area of their backyard. That noise level is comparable to a noisy restaurant or a ringing telephone.

The Burnetts say it’s not what they expected when they bought the property planning to retire there.

“Quiet. You could hear the birds,” Wesley said. “If the cows are running around, you can see them playing or even deer in the background. But I haven’t seen a deer out here in a while.”

Texas’ Data Center Boom

The Burnetts’ experience is part of a much bigger conversation happening across Texas.

Artificial intelligence has exploded in popularity, and companies are building data centers to keep up with demand.

Data centers are the buildings that house the computers and servers used to store information in the cloud and power AI.

Google, for example, has two data centers in Texas and six more in the pipeline.

Bitcoin mining facilities and traditional data centers are different businesses, but they both consume large amounts of electricity to power and cool their equipment. This is why both are referred to as “data centers” by industry watchdogs and ERCOT. Giga Energy even described the facility it built as a “data center” while it was under construction last year.

During an interview with Giga Energy co-founder Brent Whitehead in July, Whitehead told us the Bitcoin mining facility in Brazoria County is an open-loop, air-cooled facility made up of modular data centers housed in shipping containers.

There are already more than 300 data centers in Texas. ERCOT won’t release the names and locations of individual data centers, making it difficult to get a true accounting of all of them. Instead, ERCOT releases which counties data centers are located in and how much electricity the data centers use. This is also called its “load.”

In an open requests record to ERCOT, we asked for the total number of large load facilities already connected to the grid, and the number and location of those businesses requesting access to the grid. An ERCOT spokesperson responded that prior to 2022, ERCOT did not keep track of data centers requesting to connect to the grid. Once they started tracking large load category businesses, they only included businesses that use 75 MW or more. The bitcoin mining faciity next to the Burnetts in Brazoria wouldn’t even be included in ERCOT’s list.

ERCOT sent us a list showing the total number of operational data centers and total number of planned data centers in each Texas county with the caveat that there are likely many more that are using less than 75 MW and that opened prior to 2022. We used that ERCOT data to extrapolate that there are more than 300 operating data centers across the state and more than 200 additional facilities in the works.

The Pew Research Center reports Texas has more data centers than any state except Virginia.

Why are data centers moving to Texas?

There is a lot of land in Texas; and property is inexpensive, compared to other parts of the country. There are also fewer restrictions and regulations for property owners, especially in Texas counties, outside of city limits and ordinances.

Brazoria County Judge Matt Sebesta says county governments have very little power over what can be built.

“The Legislature gives us extremely limited powers on what we can regulate,” Sebesta said.

County leaders in other parts of Texas have tried to regulate or pause data center development.

Hill County, just north of Waco, passed a one-year moratorium on new data centers. The county later reversed the ban after a developer sued for $1 million.

Many counties have instead passed resolutions expressing their concerns.

Sebesta said those resolutions are not enough.

“It’s really not worth the paper it’s written on, but it tells our constituents how we feel and what we feel should happen,” he said.

The three biggest concerns: electricity, the grid and water

As data centers spread across Texas, there are three main concerns: electricity, the reliability of the Texas power grid and water.

Could data centers increase electric bills?

Data centers require massive amounts of electricity.

As utilities build additional transmission lines and other infrastructure to deliver power to these facilities, those costs can be passed on to customers through electric rates.

In Texas, those costs show up in the transmission and distribution, or TDU, portion of electric bills.

There is also the question of whether Texas has enough electricity to meet all of the new demand.

If every data center currently requesting access to the Texas grid were allowed to connect, they would require about 474 gigawatts of electricity.

That is more than five times Texas’ all-time peak electricity demand of 91.1 gigawatts.

The supply issue sparks memories of Winter Storm Uri in 2021, when the Texas power grid failed to meet demand and hundreds of people died.

Some companies are taking different approaches to powering their facilities.

Google says it has put 7 gigawatts of electricity into the grid — more than twice the amount of electricity the city of Austin uses in a year.

Amazon is among the companies building its own power plants next to data centers rather than relying entirely on the grid.

Giga Energy’s Whitehead argues there may be another option: allowing data centers to be powered down during an emergency so that power can be redirected to other customers.

He believes keeping all power generation connected to the broader grid will create a more resilient system.

How much water do data centers use?

Water is another major concern.

Some data centers use millions of gallons of water to cool the servers and other equipment.

This method is called evaporative cooling. It pulls water from municipal systems or wells.

Newer data centers are increasingly moving toward closed-loop cooling systems that use far less water from the surrounding community.

Giga Energy says its system uses a water-glycol mixture that is filled once and continuously circulated rather than repeatedly drawing water from the community.

Data Center connections in Texas paused

In August, Gov. Greg Abbott directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas and ERCOT to audit every data center requesting to connect to the state’s electrical grid.

Data centers must report what type of cooling systems they will use, where they will get water and electricity, how much they plan to use and they must report ownership information.

The audit is expected to be completed by Dec. 10.

Federal and state efforts to regulate are voluntary

There are also voluntary efforts aimed at addressing concerns about who pays for the infrastructure needed to power these facilities.

President Donald Trump rolled out the Ratepayer Protection Pledge in which major technology companies promise to pay for the electricity generation, and infrastructure needed for their businesses.

Abbott also established a data center coalition made up of data centers and utilities that agree to meet standards created by the governor, including bringing their own power and paying their own way.

But neither program is law.

They are voluntary, leaving questions about what happens if a company does not follow through on its commitments.

There are also questions about what happens to the hundreds of facilities already operating in Texas — including facilities that were built before these new efforts.

The Burnetts still want answers

Back in Brazoria County, the Burnetts say they are living with the consequences of the facility built next door with little oversight.

Giga Energy told the family it would install a sound barrier as a good-neighbor effort.

A chain-link fence and noise-mitigation material intended to reduce the noise have not solved the problem.

Whitehead said the company is working on another solution and has ordered equipment and new materials to address the noise, even though he says Giga no longer owns the facility.

Secrecy and Silence surrounding data centers raises suspicions

Whitehead told us Giga Energy built the facility for an investor group from Fort Worth and later sold it.

He said Giga Energy signed a nondisclosure agreement with the buyers and could not identify the new owner.

The Brazoria County Appraisal District lists the property owner as Giga 7 Brazoria LLC, a company registered in Delaware.

That lack of transparency is one of the issues fueling concerns in communities across Texas.

At a data center forum in Matagorda County, one resident described it as “a vault of silence.”

Another said residents are not getting the transparency they believe they should have.

Those concerns are spreading beyond individual communities.

“This is not a red issue or a blue issue. It’s not a Republican issue. It’s not a Democrat issue,” Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said in front of a crowd of about one hundred people. “This is one of those red, white and blue issues about protecting our communities.”

Who is watching out for homeowners?

Gov. Greg Abbott declined our request for an interview about these issues; but weeks later his campaign invited us to a small event in Pasadena.

“How are you protecting citizens from data centers that say they’ll be good neighbors, but then go back on that once they’re built?” ENOUGH’s Amy Davis asked Abbott.

The Governor reiterated his data center that has temporarily paused new connections to the grid. He admits that the guidelines and guardrails he has laid out for all data centers to follow is not law now, but says it will be passed in the next legislative session.

“I’ve set the standard of what the law’s going to be that I’m enforcing now, but also is going to be passing in the next session that provides these guardrails that protects our communities,” Abbott said.

ENOUGH team is getting reaction from Texas lawmakers

We also reached out to all 150 Texas state representatives and all 31 state senators with the same questions:

• Will you or have you introduced legislation to regulate data centers in Texas?

• Do you support requiring data centers in Texas to provide their own electricity or bring the same amount of power onto the grid that they intend to use?

• Do you support requiring data centers in Texas to limit water usage by requiring closed-loop water systems or another cooling method that conserves water?

• Do you want the governor to call a special session to address data center issues before the 90th legislative session begins Jan. 12, 2027?

As lawmakers respond, we will share their answers because the data center debate is not going away.

And for homeowners like the Burnetts, the question is simple: who is making sure Texas’ data center boom does not come at the expense of the people who already live here?

What you need to know about data centers

We are continuing the conversation on ENOUGH.

We took your questions to the experts in a separate discussion with experts on Data Centers. Our guests tackled the questions Texas communities are asking — including who actually has the power to approve a data center, what happens to the electric grid and water supply, and where homeowners can turn when they have a problem?

Contact the ENOUGH TEAM on the KPRC 2 Help Desk!

More from ENOUGH is coming.