In the middle of ranch country outside Fort Stockton, Poolside Infrastructure Company is pitching Project Horizon as the anti‑data‑center data center: a sprawling AI compute campus that makes its own power, recycles its cooling water and, on paper, keeps both heavy traffic and heavy water use away from town. The concept lands at a tense moment for rural Texas, where skepticism about energy‑hungry, water‑thirsty tech projects has been building fast.
Developers' design: water, power and isolation
The proposed campus sits more than 25 miles from Fort Stockton on roughly 559 acres next to the Mitchell family’s Longfellow Ranch. The site is positioned so that mechanical noise is not audible from populated areas, according to the project website. Poolside says server cooling will rely on a closed‑loop liquid‑to‑chip system, with all water drawn from non‑potable groundwater within existing permitted allocations, not from Fort Stockton’s municipal supply, according to Project Horizon.
How much water and where the power comes from
The company tells reporters that its closed‑loop setup will keep daily water use to about the irrigation equivalent of two acres of West Texas alfalfa. Day‑to‑day electricity is slated to come from on‑site natural‑gas aero‑derivative turbines equipped with selective catalytic reduction and paired carbon‑capture capability. "We'll use more water for toilets than we do for cooling the data centers," CEO Robert Bonar told Forbes.
Financing and anchor-tenant questions
The road to buildout has been bumpy. DataCenterDynamics reported in April that CoreWeave pulled out of a planned 15‑year anchor lease and that a Nvidia‑linked $2 billion funding round stalled. That left Poolside searching for new partners and sizing options. The reporting highlighted a familiar tension in the sector: even when the engineering case for a massive, behind‑the‑meter campus looks solid, developers still have to convince someone to back long‑term demand for all that compute.
Power station and site activity
Public trackers suggest Poolside is building a sizable captive power stack to support the campus. Global Energy Monitor lists a 250-MW pre‑construction unit and additional announced generation capacity at the Project Horizon site, while satellite imagery shows mass grading on the parcel in March. Those signals, site prep plus power planning, indicate the development has moved past the concept stage even as negotiations over tenants and financing continue, according to industry trackers such as Aterio.
Jobs, training and housing pledges
To sell the project locally, Poolside says it will prioritize hiring from the area for long‑term operations and set up training pipelines with Midland College’s Fort Stockton campus. The company also pledges to provide temporary on‑site housing for construction crews and subsidized permanent housing in town for operations staff. Those community‑focused promises are central to Poolside’s argument that Project Horizon will act as an economic catalyst rather than a resource drain, according to the project website.
Why locals and activists remain skeptical
Despite the assurances, activists and some county officials are not exactly rushing to roll out the welcome mat. They point to a string of fights around Texas over water use, grid strain, and limited county‑level authority over large industrial projects. Rural residents rallied at the Capitol earlier this year, and multiple counties have floated moratoria or called for a special session to revisit permitting rules. Reporting by The Texas Tribune and regional outlets shows those clashes are already reshaping how data centers are reviewed and approved across the state.
The bottom line
Project Horizon bundles together technical fixes, workforce promises, and on‑site power generation to answer some of the loudest complaints about AI‑era campuses. The project’s fate, though, will ultimately depend on how regulators grade its permits, how transparently water use and emissions are monitored, and whether Poolside can lock in stable, long‑term tenants. Industry coverage that detailed the collapsed anchor lease and stalled fundraising round suggests there is only so far a polished engineering story can go without firm commercial commitments and regulatory sign‑offs, according to DataCenterDynamics.
