Until this fall, Texas did not require data centers to report their water use. In September 2026 the Governor directed the Texas Water Development Board to enforce mandatory reporting, but those numbers are not public yet. These are the numbers that have come out anyway, through public records, company reports and the press. Most projects have disclosed nothing.
Compiled by Grail Systems and the East Texas Legacy Coalition. Checked Oct 31, 2026.
In gallons per day, converted where needed. Bars are drawn to scale against the largest request. Red marks requests and caps; green marks actual or expected use.
Lufkin's 20 million gallon request and WattBridge's 1.5 billion gallon a year request came out through public records, not press releases.
Meta's El Paso cap is 2.5 million gallons a day, about five times its expected average. A cap that loose protects little.
Google's air-cooled Pflugerville site used about 10,000 gallons in all of 2024. Its Midlothian campus used 182 million.
Several developers say they'll save "billions of gallons" without saying how much they will actually use. Ask for the number, the source and the cap, in writing.
A gigawatt of data centers with its own power plant can need 10 to 21 million gallons a day, depending on cooling. Ask about the power plant's water, not just the data center's.