Texas Orders Water-Use Enforcement for Data Centers, Linking Disclosures to Grid Access

Texas is turning data-center water disclosure from a planning exercise into an enforcement test. Governor Greg Abbott has directed the Texas Water Development Board to penalize major water users, including data centers, that fail to provide complete water-use information required under state law.

Reporting now carries legal consequences

Abbott’s September 14 directive tells the board to use its enforcement authority against past and future reporting failures. The governor said recipients of the state survey must complete and return it; facilities that do not can face criminal penalties under the Texas Water Code.

The enforcement tools Abbott directed the board to use

• Refer noncompliant facilities to the appropriate county or district attorney.
• Notify the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which could disqualify a facility from water-related permits, amendments, or renewals.
• Work with ERCOT to seek more detailed data on water consumption, supply sources, and water-efficient technology.

The order is not creating a new survey system. The board already lists data centers among the facilities covered by its Industrial Water Use Survey, and says incomplete filings remain administratively incomplete until the missing information is provided. Its current instructions also provide a route for submitting past-due surveys.

Water data becomes part of the connection review

The new enforcement order is closely tied to Abbott’s August grid directive. That audit requires projects seeking interconnection to disclose water consumption, water sources, and efforts to use water-efficient technologies. A project that does not complete the audit must be denied interconnection to the Texas power grid.

That creates two distinct pressures around the same information: the grid audit can block a project’s connection, while the water board can pursue its own enforcement remedies when survey information is missing. Abbott instructed the agencies to coordinate, making water reporting part of the state’s practical scrutiny of incoming computing capacity.

A fast-growing sector meets a drought-focused demand for detail

The reporting push arrives as Texas adds data-center capacity at unusual scale. The state has 335 data centers and at least 248 additional projects in the pipeline, according to figures attributed to the Pew Research Center. That scale makes the audit less about a single facility than about whether regulators can assemble a usable picture of a rapidly expanding industrial load.

The Houston Advanced Research Center estimated that Texas data centers used 25 billion gallons of water in 2025 and projected annual use could reach 161 billion gallons by 2030. Those figures are estimates and a forecast, not a finding that any particular company failed to report. But they explain why the state is demanding details on both consumption and supply.

The next test is enforcement, not disclosure alone

The first visible measure of the directive will come quickly. The water board must report its enforcement progress to Abbott’s office by October 14, with further updates required afterward, including when the audit is complete. Texas has now made the reporting obligation explicit; the next question is how often regulators use the penalties and permitting leverage they have been told to enforce.