Three San Antonio City Council members are calling for an immediate halt to new data center construction across the city, arguing that the facilities are draining local water supplies, polluting neighborhoods with noise and light, and straining a power grid already buckling under demand. Council members Teri Castillo, Ric Galvan and Ivalis Meza Gonzalez signed a memo requesting a moratorium on all applications for concept plans, site development plans and permits tied to data center construction within city limits.
The memo, first reported by the San Antonio Current, also asks for a pause on site permits for facilities classified as office data processing and management operations. The three council members plan to hold a press conference on Friday to detail their push, and the memo requests a special council meeting on the issue no later than August 31. Residents have complained about noise, light and air pollution emitted by data center sites, according to the memo.
The moratorium push is not council's first attempt to rein in the industry. Galvan, who represents District 6 on the city's far West Side, filed the city's first Council Consideration Request on data centers back in October, noting that nearly 50 facilities were already operating or planned locally, with the heaviest concentration in his own district. By April, San Antonio's Planning and Community Development Committee had recommended updating zoning codes to require specific use permits and stricter noise and environmental standards for future projects, establishing a community working group to refine those rules.
Water Use During Drought Restrictions Fuels Outrage
Underlying the political fight is a resource fight. Data center opponents argue that the industry's large-scale power and water consumption strains finite resources and endangers Texas's stand-alone electrical grid. A San Antonio Water System analysis found that two major local data center campuses used a combined 463 million gallons of water during 2023 and 2024, a period when San Antonio residents were under Stage 3 drought watering restrictions limiting lawn watering to once a week, according to the San Antonio Current.
Statewide, the numbers get even larger. Research from the Houston Advanced Research Center and University of Houston Energy, cited by Texas Public Radio, projects that Texas data center water consumption could climb from an estimated 25 billion to 46 billion gallons in 2025 to as much as 399 billion gallons annually by 2030 — roughly 7% of total state water usage. Evaporative cooling systems used at many facilities lose millions of gallons to evaporation every day, per the same research.
CPS Energy Warns of Costs Shifting to Ratepayers
The power side of the equation is just as stark. San Antonio's municipal utility, CPS Energy, disclosed in March that 2 gigawatts of data center capacity were already in the contracting stage — enough electricity for roughly 500,000 homes — while total commercial large-load pipeline requests reached as high as 17 gigawatts, according to the San Antonio Express-News. Utility leadership has warned that overbuilding infrastructure for speculative projects could ultimately shift financial burdens onto residential ratepayers if expected demand never materializes.
That concern echoes far beyond San Antonio. Gina Hinojosa has said the fight over data center development represents a major political battle over whether Texas serves its people or billionaires, and she has called for a statewide pause on new data center construction until a special session of the Texas Legislature addresses the matter. Tom Weeks, meanwhile, has said local and state lawmakers have ignored constituents' concerns, telling reporters that bitcoin mining in his North Texas community is causing health issues ranging from high blood pressure to seizures.
Abbott's Statewide Audit Adds Pressure
The local moratorium push lands just days after Governor Greg Abbott ordered the Public Utility Commission of Texas and ERCOT to audit data centers waiting to connect to the state power grid, freezing new approvals statewide as of August 3. According to the Office of the Texas Governor, Abbott cited grid stability concerns and is requiring data centers to detail their tax incentives, water use and self-generation efforts as part of the review.
The scale of the backlog helps explain the urgency. ERCOT is evaluating more than 474 gigawatts of total grid interconnection requests — more than five times Texas's record peak electricity demand — with roughly 90% of those requests coming from data center facilities, the governor's office reported. Officials note much of that queue consists of speculative load requests that may never come to fruition. The state's existing regulatory tool, Senate Bill 6, signed into law in June 2025, already authorizes ERCOT to order mandatory power curtailments during grid emergencies and requires large facilities to cover their own transmission interconnection costs, as detailed by Utility Dive.
Legal Complaints and Political Divides
Beyond zoning and grid policy, the industry is also facing legal scrutiny. On July 22, environmental groups including the Sierra Club, Public Citizen and the Environmental Integrity Project filed an air-quality complaint against two San Antonio data centers operated by Vantage Data Centers, raising concerns over on-site natural gas power generation units, according to the San Antonio Report. Developers have increasingly turned to on-site gas generation while awaiting grid interconnections.
Not everyone in the political fight favors a full stop. During a San Antonio stop last week, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico rejected a blanket data center moratorium, instead proposing an end to the state's data center sales-tax exemption and a mandate for closed-loop water cooling systems. Data center developers and technology-industry officials maintain that the facilities create good-paying jobs and support services used in artificial intelligence, web browsing, streaming and digital banking — services opponents acknowledge even as they push back on the resource costs. Whether San Antonio's council can secure enough votes for a moratorium, or whether state curtailment rules and zoning tweaks will suffice instead, remains an open question ahead of the requested special meeting by August 31.
