The Two Arguments at the Data Center Hearing, Checked Against the Record
Statements from the federal AI Action Plan, one company's April 21, 2026 presentation and the public comments at the same county hearing, checked against the agreements, the grid monitor and PJM, with the unknowns left in.
Credit: Architect of the Capitol, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Each side’s own words
Where the cost-shift is real
Beside the grid data, the objectors’ argument has the harder evidence in one place: the mid-Atlantic grid operated by PJM. The grid’s independent market monitor, Monitoring Analytics, told the PJM Members Committee on July 27, 2026 that data center load accounts for $29.4 billion, or 46.2 percent, of capacity-market charges over the last four capacity auctions, and for $6.3 billion of the $16.4 billion in capacity charges it counts for the 2028/2029 auction (38.2 percent), per its report to the Committee. The monitor gets those figures by comparing the charges with and without data center load, so they are a counterfactual, a count of what the load added to the price. They do not trace dollars from one household to another. (On the rounded dollars, 6.3 divided by 16.4 is 38.4 percent; the monitor’s 38.2 probably comes from unrounded dollars, which we have not seen.)
PJM, which runs the auction, puts a limit on the $16.4 billion. Its July 14, 2026 release says “the cleared supply procured in the auction times the clearing price totals $16.4 billion,” then adds: “The total value does not equate to the total cost to load because load that is hedged through self-supply or bilateral contracts is not exposed to the clearing prices.” That auction cleared at $325 per megawatt-day, the cap, and PJM said it fell 6,831 megawatts short of its reliability requirement. The monitor’s stated position is that such load “should be removed from the capacity market and procured through a dedicated auction.” Utility Dive adds that PJM buys capacity “normally three years in advance” on its demand forecast and that “it is unclear exactly how much data center load will materialize.” Capacity charges are one part of what a household pays. Part 1 has the capacity-price history and the measured retail changes.
The figures are real and they come from the grid operator’s own monitor. They also cover PJM, not Florida or Texas, which have their own utilities, fuel costs and weather. Virginia regulators responded in PJM territory with a separate GS-5 large-load rate class (Part 6 has its terms). The case against building is strongest inside PJM, where the hard numbers are, and it thins out the further it is carried from there.
The claim ledger
Each row takes a statement from the lists above, names where it was said, and sets it beside the document that tests it. Page numbers are PDF pages of the deck, the development agreement and the signed abatement agreement. The last column holds what a hearing could ask before anyone votes.
| What was said, and where | On the record | What the record shows | Still unknown |
|---|---|---|---|
| Federal plan, July 2025: build faster, with streamlined data center permitting and new NEPA categorical exclusions (printed pages 1 and 14). The implied claim is that delay hands the lead to a rival. | CloudBurst’s own timeline slide (deck page 6) lists “Requirements by Investment Bank to Close Funding”: “1) County Abatement” and “2) Customer Contract.” The abatement agreement (page 1) calls the tenant “a third party yet to be determined.” | For this project, the stated conditions for funding were the county’s abatement and a customer contract. A federal permit is not on the slide. | What a given permit delay costs, and whether power, chips or construction set the schedule for a site. |
| CloudBurst, April 21: “~24k GPD” and “LOW WATER USAGE” (deck pages 7, 9, 12), against 843,000 gallons a day for a 3,000 to 3,500 home development. | Development agreement section 3.06 (page 7): about 2,000 gallons a day per building from the water district, with cooling-loop water “commercially sourced.” The application: 5,400 gallons a day. | 24,000 is twelve buildings at 2,000 (12 x 2,000 = 24,000); the application describes ten buildings, which would be 20,000. The comparison is to homes. It does not cover the on-site gas power plant. | Water for the power plant, and where the commercially sourced cooling water comes from. Part 7 sets out the water row. |
| Public comment: “copious amounts of water.” A resident’s marked-up copy of the application, filed with the minutes, multiplies 2,635 gallons a day per megawatt by 1,450 megawatts. | The marked-up copy attributes the 2,635 rate to a company disclosure we have not seen. The application states 1.45 GW; the deck states 1.2 GW. | The multiplication is right: 2,635 x 1,450 = 3,820,750 gallons a day, and 3,162,000 at 1,200 MW. The annotation calls the 3,820,750 “projected power generation water demand” that “does not include cooling systems.” The deck’s 24,000 is its water demand for the buildings (96 living unit equivalents), and its cooling is a separate one-time fill of 600,000 gallons of water and glycol per building, 7.2 million in all, “commercially” sourced. So the two sides measure different things, a gas power plant without cooling on one side and the buildings with a one-time cooling fill on the other, and no document reconciles them. | Whether the per-megawatt rate is the company’s, and how much water the power plant and the cooling loop would use in a year. The deck gives no power-plant figure. |
| CloudBurst: “480 permanent Jobs by six years” (deck pages 3, 7, 13). | Abatement agreement (page 6): at least an average of 30 new full-time jobs per building by year five. The application (page 28): 204 over six years. | The deck’s 480 is 160 jobs per four-building phase, or 40 a building across twelve (12 x 40 = 480). The agreement’s floor is 30 a building: 300 at ten buildings, 360 at twelve. | Whether a shortfall triggers recapture of the abated taxes; Part 7 gives our reading. |
| CloudBurst: “$1.163B” of property tax for the community over years 1 to 10 and “$48.8M” for the county with the abatement (deck pages 3 and 4). | The deck’s per-jurisdiction figures for years 1 to 10 (page 4): Navarro ISD $106,519,771 a year, the county $4,883,139, lateral roads $4,529,791 and the water district $392,001. The deck’s footnote: the abatement applies only to the county’s tax. | The four add to $116,324,702 a year, or $1,163,247,020 over ten years, so the headline is consistent with its own chart. The school district is 91.6 percent of it and the county 4.2 percent. | Whether the $14.5 billion value behind the estimate holds; the application values new improvements at $9.86 billion. We did not check the school district’s side. |
| CloudBurst: “Noise – 85 Decibels at 10ft” (deck page 12). | Neither agreement states a decibel limit. The only setback is 100 feet from a county right-of-way (development agreement section 3.08). | The figure is the company’s statement, and no limit is written into the posted agreements. | The distance to the nearest home, and any county or state noise rule that applies. |
| Public comment: “the lack of independent studies from Cloudburst.” | Deck page 13 cites no source for “6.4 Indirect jobs for every direct job” or “$3.3 of labor income.” Page 14 cites a “DCC member survey” and a PwC report for its 2.7x multiplier. | The multipliers rest on an industry survey and a source-free slide. The only study the agreements name is an engineer’s feasibility study on water (section 3.06). | Any estimate for this site by someone with no stake in it. |
| Public comment: one speaker opposed “this specific development agreement (9.02, 3.02 and 2.04)”; Commissioner Wolverton asked the county’s attorney about those three sections, and the minutes say he addressed them. They separately say he noted steps to exclude property from the agreement if it is not purchased within two years and “feels the County is protected.” | Development agreement: section 2.04 (page 6) bars the county from a moratorium or any rule limiting the rate or timing of approvals; section 3.02 (page 6) supersedes conflicting county rules; section 9.02 (page 10) sets a ten-year term with two five-year extensions that “shall not be denied or delayed” while the owner is pursuing development. | The text says what the speaker feared about 2.04 and 3.02. Section 9.02 also describes automatic fifteen-year extensions, and the two passages do not match. | How a court would read the mismatch. The attorney’s reasoning is not in the minutes, and neither is which provision his “protected” remark covers; it follows his point about unpurchased property. |
The claims each side can prove
The case for building can prove that federal policy favors faster permits, that the company’s tax and water figures add up on its own papers, and that its jobs number sits above the agreement’s minimum. It has not shown what a permit delay costs, who the tenant is, or what the on-site power plant draws in water. The objectors can prove that the water multiplication is correct, that the agreement bars a county moratorium, and, inside PJM, that the market monitor attributes a large share of capacity charges to data centers. Their water rate rests on a company disclosure that the annotation cites but does not reproduce, and nobody here has shown the same effect at retail outside PJM.
Ask each speaker to defend the smaller claim and decide on that. A county does not have to pick a side. The largest gap on both sides is whether a site has a documented path to power. A national queue figure does not answer that: Berkeley Lab’s 61-month median covers generation and storage projects, not data-center service, so the record to ask for is the site’s own study and utility agreement (Part 6).
Correction, October 29, 2026: An earlier version built its argument on two composite speeches we wrote and a hypothetical 80-acre site; they have been replaced with statements from the federal AI Action Plan, the CloudBurst presentation and the public comments in the April 21, 2026 Guadalupe County minutes, tested row by row against the county’s documents. It also described the PJM $16.4 billion as a sum charged to customers (PJM says the total value “does not equate to the total cost to load” because hedged load is not exposed to the clearing prices), put a paraphrase of the monitor’s position and of Utility Dive in place of their words, and carried a closing row whose first half read as an unfinished sentence. Earlier corrections stand: the New York pause names no end date, the $29.4 billion is a with-and-without comparison, and the national queue figure covers generation, not data-center service. Later on October 29: the water row now takes its scope from the marked-up copy’s own note (power-generation water that “does not include cooling systems”) and the deck’s separate cooling fill, replacing a gallons-per-building versus gallons-per-megawatt framing; the attorney’s “protected” remark is tied to the unpurchased-property point it follows in the minutes; and the page now says it describes one hearing, not every hearing.
- Monitoring Analytics, PJM’s independent market monitor: report to the PJM Members Committee, July 27, 2026; PJM Inside Lines, July 14, 2026 release on the 2028/2029 auction; Utility Dive, July 20, 2026.
- The White House, America’s AI Action Plan (July 2025), the plan’s printed numbering.
- Guadalupe County, Texas, April 21, 2026: Commissioners Court minutes; CloudBurst presentation (item 4B); development agreement text; signed abatement agreement with the company’s application; resident’s marked-up copy of the application (Part 7).
Editor written. AI used for spelling and grammar only.
