The Data-Center Shaped Elephant in the Room

EDITORIAL

When it comes to covering news, there are a few cardinal sins that you need to avoid, or so I’ve been told.

Never misspell someone’s name, and if you do, apologize profusely. A person’s name is the most important thing they own.

You’re not allowed to make up quotes, and if you find a particularly delicious piece of writing that you’d love to use, it had better be in quotation marks.

Lastly, and this is a big one, you’re not supposed to become part of the story.

This axiom is part of why I have not addressed something directly, because it would pull the Concho Observer into the story that I would rather be an outside observer of, not a part.

But, out of an abundance of hesitation (another deadly sin of the news trade) I have allowed the Concho Observer to become a part of the story, albeit a small part.

This morning, while I was researching this weeks developments in the ongoing data center struggle, I came across an article by “State of the Division” – which if you’re an observer of local government in Tom Green county is an ongoing blog that covers the topic quite well, that nevertheless did contain a statement that I realized I needed to address.

There’s a lot of context one needs to have to fully understand every part of that statement, so if you happened upon this article not knowing about:

• Developments about the Beacon Data Center at Commissioner’s Court
• Developments About Air Quality Permits
• Public Reaction to Beacon Data Centers
• Initial Public Meeting Regarding Data Center Construction near Dove Creek and San Angelo

Please feel free to read any of these articles which address the subject directly.

Nice to Meet You!

Now, let me begin my response with an introduction: my name is Will McDaniel, and I am the owner of the Concho Observer as of July 1, 2026.

I have owned the Concho Observer since July 1, and have been running it with full editorial control a few months before that, in March of this year. Before that, I was just a reporter.

I took over editorial and publishing on March 1, 2026, after our previous owner, Jon Mark Hogg, told us (Concho Observer staff and freelancers) that we would have to stop publishing due to lack of funds.

In response to this, I offered to take over the publication, and over the last several months we have continued to cover news in Tom Green County and San Angelo.

The editorial, advertising, reporting, and other responsibilities that came with being publisher quickly took up a lot of my time, and it was in June before we were finally able to do the paperwork necessary to complete the transfer of the Concho Observer.

I also had to make sure that this could be something that was somewhat sustainable.

I formed my own LLC, and while I am awaiting further paperwork from the State of Texas, the Hogg Media copyright has remained on the website.

This has led to obvious confusion over who exactly it is that owns and publishes and controls the Concho Observer. I hope that I have cleared that up.

The Nature of Our Coverage

To quote Ronald Reagan (hold your comments): “If you have to explain yourself, you’re losing.”

Since we’re breaking the rules, I might as well break this one too, and explain what I have thought to myself while covering the data center topic for about seven months now.

September of 2025 is the first time I became fully aware of data centers and what they were, having first heard about the massive server farms in previous years, where they gained a reputation for spiking electricity bills and massive water consumption, and as we’ve all read about cryptocurrency mines and et cetera.

When the concept was explained to me, I realized that of course there were already data centers in San Angelo, the surrounding area, and the entire state.

These new centers were different, however, and at that time I was writing a lot of articles about floods, flood planning, and water planning.

Learning more about hydrology than I ever thought I would know and realizing also how little I still know about it.

That month, I sat down with Shane Kelton, then San Angelo Public Works Director, and interviewed him about San Angelo’s water situation, and about planning for future resources.

At the time, I had no questions prepared for him about data center development, and it seemed like something that was going to be too far down the line for him to adequately comment on.

Kelton made something abundantly clear in that interview, mainly how serious the drought of the early 2010’s really was; that the city went from 18 months of fresh water on hand, to 12 months.

“The main priority is ensuring the water security for San Angelo, not just today, or next year, or five and ten years from now,” said Kelton, “When we look at the situation 30, 40, 50 years out, we must be preparing now for our water security.

“With the hickory coming online, through the indirect reuse project, and then with the Fort Stockton water, based off historic trends, that gets us out there to that 2060 to 2070 [timeframe]. But that’s still us relying on surface water.”

My key take away from that interview was our reliance on surface water, meaning that we rely on seasonal rains.

While this statement is blindingly obvious, I compared the two facts in my mind: the first, that San Angelo can and has in the past almost run out of water, during times where it simply did not rain enough in the right places.

Secondly, we are currently relying on rainfall in future projections to account for future water supply. It’s an unavoidable fact about water planning. One cannot see around corners.

The last thing I considered, and this was the simply a “nature of the beast” thing, was that the most recent Water Plan for our region, a massive report that accounts for all the water of our conservation planning area, included an increase of industrial water use over time, but because of the long time frames that these things have to be developed in, does not specifically mention if that industrial increase includes more water being used by data centers.

In November, I took a trip to Austin for the Texas Tribune Festival. I had a great time, wrote an article that was way too long, and nobody read.

While I was there, I got the chance to talk to some people who were pretty concerned about data centers, opposed to them from pretty much every possible angle, usually with quite well worded and thought out reasonings.

I heard tales of the extent that big tech and high finance have truly sunk their claws into the state’s capital, and wrote about them in my article.

Then came the stories about other data centers, and the millions of gallons of water they consumed on a regular basis. I thought to myself, if one of those were built here, and in fact, if several of them were built in San Angelo, consuming millions of gallons per day, that these sorts of facilities could end up becoming a massive drain on the local water infrastructure.

I didn’t have to put two and two together myself, the nations best reporters had already been on the trail for months, and pointed out the obvious discrepancies. Part of the nature of the 24 hour news cycle is that you eventually have to stop worrying about some stories, and start worrying about others. Though the number of newspapers have declined, the amount of news happening has tripled.

Then in December we received word that indeed, a data center was coming for San Angelo.

We got the cities side of the story, and then to balance the argument, we decided that I needed to start nailing down the counter arguments. Then the rest of this year has happened, and before I knew it, I was faced with that reality I mentioned above: there are other news stories. In order to write about some of these topics, one must conduct a lot of research, perhaps far too much research.

Each hour I spend writing articles for the Concho Observer could be matched with the 5-6 hours it takes to gather the proper information, to make sure I’m actually reading that ordinance correctly, to prepare graphics and to run calculations. To double check those calculations.

Trying to research data centers, and trying to actually nail down numbers, real concrete numbers about water usage proved very challenging in these early months. It was clear that they said they planned to used a closed loop cooling system, so now we need to look into that. Housing was an obvious concern, water was an obvious concern.

In February of 2026, executives with Emergent Data Centers appeared at the San Angelo Economic Summit, which though I did cover and receive free entry being a member of the press, was a paid ticket event held in the early morning on a weekday.

As many critics have pointed out correctly, this is something of a barrier for entry to the public. This move, in and of itself, I know inspired particular rage among many. Besides that, there weren’t too many questions answered specifically in that gathering, something that will continue to be a trend throughout the rest of this story.

It seemed that things were moving ahead rather quickly, and that the hearings the city was going to have on amending the ordinance to regulate data centers were going to become the public arena where this topic was debated. It also became clear that the only firm number we were going to get was going to be the regulations the city was putting in place.

Since then, big public meetings have been held, hundreds, possibly thousands of opinions shared each month at meetings and social media. Some developers are a little more open about the matter, a little more sales pitchy. Some are a little less interested in informing the public fully. Recall campaigns against San Angelo leaders have been held; one succeeded in forcing an election as of writing, and another one failed.

A perfect storm for this day and age where people fundamentally do not trust others.

Fun With Numbers

So I wrote this article, in which I explained and tried to predict what future water use would look like by data centers based solely on what the city was going to require them to comply with. In the early draft ordinances, the first number emerged: 15 gallons per square foot.

Easy math, a 10,000 square foot data center would be required to only draw around 150,000 gallons, once every three years. This to me, knowing how much water San Angelo uses per day (around 25-30 million peak summer usage), seemed to be a pretty conservative requirement, and I compared the two facts in the article.

Despite the water part of the equation being quite conservative, and putting aside the compliance to those rules being another topic, what I wanted to do was make a very clear statement that this is what the city says they will do. This is so if, in the future for some reason, the city doesn’t do what they said they would, you can hold them to it, and have a firm thing to nail down to.

This article was not received particularly well, and thats probably my fault. The way I worded it seemed to make people think that what I was saying is: “Dont worry about the data center, it’s not gonna use that much water.”

Being a reporter, we’re tasked with a sometimes difficult job. In order to write a well rounded news story, one has to consider every angle, and in a way, educate themselves as much as possible.

I try and put things into context, and context is sometimes not as flashy or fun. Last month, when I received word that Westline Holdings had filed for an air quality permit, I looked at the amount of carbon dioxide that was going to be released by the facility, a little over 1,100 tons per year.

I was curious, what does the energy equivalent of that carbon dioxide look like if materialized? According to the EPA, it would represent the same pollution in CO2 of that around one million pounds of coal would produce, though without the extra bits that make coal smog so particularly awful.

It would represent many hundreds of thousands of gallons of gasoline consumed. These numbers, I pointed out, do sound remarkably awful, but should be understood in context.

Carbon dioxide will probably not be the biggest environmental concern of a data center project, and the emissions that it releases once constructed pale in comparison to the emissions that would be required to build the facility in the first place. I personally see a little bit more of an environmental concern about the centers location next to a tributary of the Concho River.

The next thing I wanted to point out, which it seems did not get talked about in my comment section, was that Westline had paid the fee to expedite the application to the TCEQ, a literal wheel greasing that is written into law.

I wrote that the statute itself that allows Westline to file for this expedited permit is written into the government code of the state, and that the code itself even includes language about how the TCEQ accepts the fee, which is made payable to the TCEQ via check, money order, or credit card.

I was hoping that people would read the article and say “I wonder how much it will emit during construction?” “Why does the TCEQ allow for this expedited process in the first place?” Indeed, all very good questions. That was not what a lot of folks took away from the article, unfortunately.

For the data center story, one needs to have a pretty firm grasp on how local government works, how water and hydrology work, how construction, planning, zoning, local politics, and about a half-dozen other topics which intersect and tangle each other up. Doing this, and then presenting it in an easy to understand manner, with clear and concise writing (I’m clearly pretty bad at that second part) is not always the easiest task.

In essence, a jack of all trades the reporter must be, but a master of any of them? Unlikely.

Alright, So What Do I Actually Think?

Now it’s time to commit my third and final sin, completing the hat trick: you’re supposed to keep your own feelings out of the news story.

In order for people to trust an author, they have to believe that the author has gone out of their way to make sure that they are correct. This requires objectivity.

This requires taking people at their word to some degree, asking questions that might challenge their statements, trying to find holes and flaws in arguments on both sides, while trying to identify with arguments for both sides.

One big argument for bringing data centers here became clear when I was covering the city’s budget workshop earlier this year.

Cities all over Texas are running out of money, with property taxes recently being capped at the state level to 3-percent. Without getting into everything, which you again can read about here, San Angelo is not flush with cash.

City bosses are seriously considering economizing measures, cutting back services. Listening to this workshop, a lot clicked into place.

If data centers are going to be as valuable as they have been reported, the massive amounts of money that they would pay into local taxes would be a huge boost to local municipalities. It might mean, in theory, that the city could avoid cutting services, and maybe even pay for new ones.

Someone with prior experience in local government, who themselves are skeptical of the massive benefits advertised along side data centers, told me that that “if a billion dollar business wants to come to your town, thats something you have to look into.”

I wish — I sincerely wish — that money did not decide everything. To quote county commissioner Shawn Nanny who asked of data developers: “is everything about money?”

In America, in the state of Texas, the answer is “Yes, Commissioner. Yes it is.”

Foster Park

The historian Howard Zinn once said “you cannot be neutral on a moving train.”

I am not personally thrilled about data centers coming to my town. I have major reservations about the role of big finance and tech in the affairs of small towns. I personally am myself a bit of a luddite.

Of course, the laptop is my tool of choice, I sometimes like to use my Remington Rand Quiet-Rite manual typewriter to make early drafts of articles. I don’t like sorting through excel spreadsheets, though I’ve gotten pretty good at it.

I would much rather be in the library looking through books, than wiping eyes tired from straining at the bright white computer screen.

I don’t particularly care for rich developers, or how they bully towns, and how big business in general bullies just about everyone in the state into submission.

I don’t like seeing it in my hometown, or near my hometown (I grew up in Mertzon). I was raised, like so many in town, by people who were more old fashioned.

Most of all, I don’t like how data centers have showed up in this state in a big way, and have essentially hijacked just about everything that they can hijack. Land, money, and mental real estate.

I don’t like that when it comes to building hospitals and water conservation projects, these projects can only be thought of in decades, but for massive data centers the State of Texas can consider the whole picture in an 18 month timeframe, while its out of session at the legislature.

I don’t like that in covering the story that most people are still asking the same questions they have been for months, and I don’t like going to bed at night thinking about how little say people have in the affairs of state.

I do like reading. And I do like fishing.

I’ve spent many an hour at Foster Park reading in the early morning hours after dropping my sister off for school in Christoval. I’ve spent many more fishing along the banks, and kayaking up to the dams of Spring Creek when there’s enough water in the creek.

If you paddle up Spring Creek in the early spring, you can catch some pretty dinky bass, but they stock catfish during the summer and trout during the winter. You can paddle along and watch little caves in the bank that have been carved away by raccoons, where little dripping wet raccoon babies watch you from their hideaways. All around of course, shells from little mussels that grow in the river, shucked by little raccoon hand and cast into the river bed.

I get pretty sad thinking about a giant data center being built right on this exact spot. I get pretty sad thinking about the fact that someday there wont be any water in the creek, nor will there be any of the discarded shells from the raccoons.