DATA CENTER DEVELOPMENT
SAN ANGELO, TX – After their regular Commissioner’s Court Meeting on Tuesday, Commissioner Shawn Nanny was asked if they had received any studies on a potential data center development in the county’s 4th precinct. Nanny answered simply: “not a word.”
Beacon Data Centers still have two weeks to keep their word and supply information to Tom Green County Commissioners after company VP Joseph Shovlin’s promised of a “four-to-six weeks” time frame. June 30 marks four weeks.
The company is under no legal obligation to provide these within the time frame, nor did they say previously that they would supply these studies before applying for state permits.
Beacon have, however, applied for their air quality permit from the TCEQ through their holding corporation Westline TX, the name for the proposed project. According to the latest information available from the Tom Green County Appraisal District, Westline TX Holdings is not yet listed on the parcels of land, which are privately owned.
At their June 2 meeting, Tom Green County Commissioners requested studies of potential sound and air pollution, along with environmental impact, traffic, along with other studies Beacon would produce during the development of the project. Their air quality permit was filed earlier this month.
According to their permit, which you can read in greater detail about here, the approval process is being expedited as allowed by law.
The proposed data center construction has aroused anger from locals, who fear that the rural site could become an industrial park quickly. Many residents cited noise concerns, potential water management misuse, and its location near Spring Creek and Foster Park, two well loved Tom Green County fixtures.
On June 10, Gov. Greg Abbott issued a letter to the Public Utilities Commission and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas directing them to “take immediate steps to protect residential ratepayers from the costs of data center expansion.” Though this letter was sent to the PUC and ERCOT, and not to the state legislature as many watchers had hoped.
In their permit, Westline TX Holdings says that the data center campus would be powered through on-site natural gas combustion, which would in theory avoid any ratepayer subsidy, and might help the project break ground faster than the hundreds of other data center developers currently stymied at the utility regulation level of state government.
At recent meetings, County Commissioners Rick Bacon and Shawn Nanny have both criticized lawmakers in Austin for failing to provide counties with regulatory power in recent years, a problem which Nanny attested to before the Texas House Committee on Natural Resources earlier this month.
Nanny spoke for around eight minutes before the committee, where he repeated many of the same warnings and concerns he had outlined at previous public meetings. He remains one of the most outspoken critics of data center construction in local government.
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