Lubbock City Council members passed a nonbinding resolution directing city staff to propose standards addressing infrastructure and resource concerns before any new large-scale data centers are built in the city.
The resolution passed unanimously during Tuesday’s city council meeting. The initiative comes from the council’s desire “that no data centers be developed within the municipal limits of the City of Lubbock until the City Manager has developed and the City Council has adopted adequate regulations protecting public resources and the public health and safety.”
According to the resolution, the move stems from concerns residents raised during previous meetings regarding “the potential negative health impact” of data centers, as well as the energy-intensive projects’ water and power usage.
Residents urged the council to be transparent, with one resident stating, “we want to know the results of the studies, we want to know what the experts say, we want to know how you plan to enforce those regulations.”
The resolution directs city staff to develop regulatory guidelines addressing the impact data centers may have on city’s resources and infrastructure, “including its impact on the City’s long-term water supply, the use of electrical power resources and the impact on the local electrical infrastructure reliability, the current zoning regulations, and the utilization of any other city resource or infrastructure.”
A special meeting is scheduled for September 10 for city staff to present proposed development standards for large-scale data centers to the Planning and Zoning Commission.
Following the presentation, the Planning and Zoning Commission will consider issuing “a recommendation to the City Council.”
The council also held a public hearing on a proposed 18-month data center moratorium, which is expected to be voted on later this month.
Several community members voiced that the proposed moratorium does not go far enough and instead expressed a desire for the city “to collectively say no to this.”
Data centers have come under immense scrutiny in Texas as citizens grow concerned with the projects’ water and power needs.
Recent polling indicates that more than half of Texans oppose data centers.
Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered state regulators to conduct a comprehensive audit of all data centers advancing through the interconnection process before any additional projects are approved. Abbott said projects that fail to comply with state requirements or with state law must be denied connection to the Texas grid.
