HAYS COUNTY, Texas (KXAN) – After finding out that two data centers are coming to a rural part of Hays County, a community is worried about how it will affect their lives.
CloudBurst Data Centers announced in early February it had plans to build in 2025 an AI data center outside of San Marcos. Through county appraisal and Texas Secretary of State records, KXAN has confirmed the site location is on Francis Harris Lane, bordering Hays County and Guadalupe County.
“We own a property right across the street,” said Jennifer Lindsey, who has lived in the area with her family since 1994. “We purposely moved out here to be in the country — to own land, to have farm animals, to get away from the city center.”
“[It’s] a gut-wrenching feeling to know that that’s the kind of development that they want out here,” she continued.
CloudBurst President Roy Davis said the company did not wish to make any public announcements at this time.
The CloudBurst data center is one of two planned to be constructed in the area. Plans for a non-AI data center, not connected to CloudBurst, were presented to the San Marcos City Council at its Feb. 18 meeting. According to city documents, the location for this data center is at the cross streets of Grant Harris Road and Francis Harris Lane, around three miles from CloudBurst’s planned site.
“The first two [concerns] that come to mind are the noise and the lighting,” Lindsey said. “I don’t know how you live besides that.”
Lindsey said the second concern is the environmental impact. Data Centers are known to need a great deal of energy and water to function.
CloudBurst touts on its website that its facilities utilize green or renewable energy solutions. It said it strives to have the smallest carbon footprint possible. The company reported also that it has a contract with Energy Transfer to supply natural gas via a pipeline to power the facility.
The amount of water the facility might require is still unclear.
“This area has been in a stage three drought,” Lindsey said. “We are very concerned about the water usage.”
What is an AI data center?
A data center is a large physical facility that houses servers to store information.
“Data centers have been part of computing in recent decades and have been hugely important,” Samantha Shorey Ph.D, a visiting assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh where she studies AI, told KXAN in early February.
“When we think about AI, we’re witnessing an acceleration of the need for data center storage and to compute power,” she continued.
Shorey said the facility would also likely be a boon for San Marcos’ economy.
“When we think about the people that are required to protect data centers – keep them secure, to observe them, make sure that they’re working as they’re intended, maintain them, keep them working,” she said. “Those are all different types of labor and job roles that are going to be required in a place with a significant data center.”
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