The data center scorecard for the county hearing
Ten questions for any data center hearing, in a table where each answer is logged as known, forecast, pending or not disclosed, with who supplies it and a due date, filled in from the posted agreements, one signed and one still a draft, for one real vote.
Credit: Taber Andrew Bain, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
How to use the list
Ask each question out loud and write down which of four kinds of answer comes back. Known means a document is in hand. Forecast means a number with the assumptions behind it stated. Pending means a named study or decision, a named decision-maker and a date. Not disclosed means the developer declines and says why. A pending answer with a name and a date is an honest answer at a first hearing. A shrug, or a promise to get back to you with no date, is the one to follow up.
| # | Ask | A complete answer | Who supplies it | Status and due date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Load. How many megawatts on opening day, and how many once the whole campus is built? If the later phases never get built, who pays for a substation sized for all of them? In Dominion’s Virginia territory, the exit-fee and capacity-reduction terms in Part 6 are where that is answered. | Opening-day and full-build megawatts, by phase, and who pays if a phase is cancelled | Developer; the utility’s load study | Known / Forecast / Pending / Not disclosed; date: ______ |
| 2 | Tariff. Is there a big-customer rate that holds the company to a minimum bill even if it cancels? In Dominion’s Virginia territory, the State Corporation Commission’s final order of November 25, 2025 created the GS-5 class, and Part 6 has every term with its order page. | The rate class, the minimum charges by component, the contract term, the collateral, and whether the contract is signed before construction | Utility; state regulator | Known / Forecast / Pending / Not disclosed; date: ______ |
| 3 | Queue. Where does this site sit in the line for a grid connection, and what year is its study scheduled for? | A queue position, a study year, and the party running the study | Utility or grid operator | Known / Forecast / Pending / Not disclosed; date: ______ |
| 4 | Water in. How many gallons a day, and where does the water come from? Is it drinking water? Does it evaporate or get reused? A meter shows what is delivered. Consumption is withdrawal minus discharge in the convention Google’s 2025 Environmental Report uses, so ask for both figures. Then ask whether the meter figure you are shown matches the company’s withdrawal figure: a city or utility series can match neither column, as Part 2 shows for The Dalles in 2024. | Withdrawal, discharge and source, with the metering method | Developer; the water utility | Known / Forecast / Pending / Not disclosed; date: ______ |
| 5 | Water out. Where does used cooling water go, and where does stormwater go? Under which permit, and who tests them? | Permit numbers, discharge points and the testing schedule | Developer; the permitting agency | Known / Forecast / Pending / Not disclosed; date: ______ |
| 6 | Jobs. How many full-time people will work on the site after construction? Separate direct employees, contractors and local hires. A job-year is one job held for one year, which is a different number from headcount. | A headcount by category for the first year and at full build-out, with job-years kept on their own line | Developer; Part 3 has the sourced figures | Known / Forecast / Pending / Not disclosed; date: ______ |
| 7 | Abatement. How many dollars of tax break, over how many years? How many jobs must the company deliver to keep it, and does the county get money back if the headcount falls short? What property and equipment taxes will the facility pay? | Dollars per year, the term, the job minimum, the clawback terms, and the taxes the facility will pay | County; state economic development agency | Known / Forecast / Pending / Not disclosed; date: ______ |
| 8 | Nuisance. How loud is it at the property line? How many hours a year will generators run, for testing and for emergencies separately? The hour limits for emergency generators, 40 CFR 60.4211(f), are set out in Part 8. Ask separately about turbines or engines that supply primary power, which are not emergency engines. Is a new transmission line planned, and who pays for it? | A decibel limit at the property line, generator hours by purpose, and the line route and cost split | Developer; county permits; the utility | Known / Forecast / Pending / Not disclosed; date: ______ |
| 9 | Exit. Who owns the land, the substation and the water line, and who pays to keep them or remove them if the tenant leaves in year eight? Ownership varies by deal. | Named owners and a written cost responsibility for each asset | Development agreement; utility contract | Known / Forecast / Pending / Not disclosed; date: ______ |
| 10 | Veto. Which government can still say no after the vote: the county, the state, or neither? | The next approval, who holds it and when it is due | County attorney; state agencies | Known / Forecast / Pending / Not disclosed; date: ______ |
Reading the answers
The pattern in the answers matters more than any single one. If the load, the tariff, the queue position and the water figures come back public and specific, or pending with a named owner and deadline, a town can weigh the deal on its merits. If the load is described as “flexible,” the water figure is “proprietary,” the jobs number turns out to be a construction total and the development agreement has already given up the county’s veto, the county is deciding on less than the developer knows. What is left behind if a company leaves depends on the agreement. A substation and a water line stay where they are, so ask who owns them.
The card asks for proof that the project is real, and for the name of whoever pays if it falls through. That is a fair request of a company seeking years of tax breaks. Part 3 has the sourced per-job figures, including a Columbus abatement and Good Jobs First’s testimony, and shows why a tax-break total means little without the years it covers. Make the developer show that arithmetic, with the years, before the county signs.
The cloud has an address
The same four numbers come up throughout the series: power, water, jobs, tax break. And every time, the developer is the one who decides whether the public gets to see them. The cloud is a building. It has an address, and that address has an electric meter, a water line, a payroll, and a lawyer at your county hearing.
Ten answers from one real vote
On April 21, 2026, the Guadalupe County, Texas commissioners voted 3-2, with Commissioners Ott and Germann voting no, first to approve a development agreement and then a tax break for CloudBurst Texas, LLC, for a data center campus on about 706 acres along the Hays County line, according to the court’s minutes. The court met on a Tuesday. The minutes record a recess at 12:05 p.m., the court reconvening at 12:21 p.m. and adjournment at 2:59 p.m., and both votes come after the reconvening. The county posted its agenda packet, which holds the proposed development agreement and the proposed tax abatement agreement with the company’s application attached, and its website carries the abatement notice filed January 23, 2026. This table uses those documents, so most rows can be marked from a document in hand. Two cautions apply. The packet versions are marked draft, but the minutes attach the abatement agreement as a signed and notarized copy dated April 21, 2026 (Commissioners Ott and Germann signed “Nay”) that includes the company’s application, plus the draft’s text of the development agreement with blank signature lines. The signed abatement terms match the packet draft in every figure and page we compared; no signed development agreement turned up. Page numbers are PDF pages. The deck cited below is what CloudBurst showed commissioners on April 21 (minutes item 4B), posted with the minutes. Where the documents are silent we say so, and where press accounts add a figure the documents do not carry, the row names the outlet. The company is named because the vote was public; the table demonstrates the form and says nothing about whether the project is sound.
| # | Question | Answer, with status and source |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Load | Forecast, from the company’s own papers, and the two papers disagree. The company’s application, dated October 16, 2025 (abatement agreement PDF pages 27 and 30), says Phase 1 is a 250,000 square foot, 145 MW facility (28% in Guadalupe County) and the “full campus potential” is 1.45 GW (68% in Guadalupe County), in ten buildings. The deck CloudBurst showed on April 21 (PDF page 7) shows three phases of 400 MW each, 1.2 GW in all, in twelve buildings. Neither agreement states megawatts: the abatement agreement (PDF page 2, section 1.2) says Exhibit B shows ten buildings, with “more or less” possible, built from 2026 to 2030, and the development agreement (PDF page 7, section 3.06) describes a 250,000 square foot building. DatacenterDynamics reports 1.2GW in three 400MW phases, which matches the presentation. The Herald-Zeitung reports a resident citing water-district records for a 1.2 and then a 1.45 gigawatt gas-fired plant, which fit the two company figures. The documents do not say why the figures differ. Who pays if phases are not built: for the abatement, a phase not started within twelve months of the last one’s completion drops out of the agreement (PDF page 2). Who pays for a substation sized for the whole campus: not stated. |
| 2 | Tariff | Known as a plan, and no utility tariff appears in either agreement. Section 3.06 says the power for the data center equipment will be generated behind the meter by natural gas turbines and fuel cells, and that if power is later allocated through the Lower Colorado River Authority or Pedernales Electric Cooperative, the owner may buy it. The application (PDF page 30) adds that the site has a 24-inch Energy Transfer natural gas pipeline with long-term contracted capacity. No rate class, minimum bill or contract term is stated. |
| 3 | Queue | Not disclosed. Neither document mentions an interconnection queue position or study year. A site that makes its own power may not be in a utility queue, but the documents do not say. |
| 4 | Water in | Forecast, and the documents differ. Section 3.06 (PDF page 7) says each building will need approximately 2,000 gallons a day from Crystal Clear Special Utility District, based on the owner’s application and an engineer’s feasibility study, and that cooling water for the closed-loop system will be commercially sourced. The application (abatement PDF page 29) gives 5,400 gallons a day from the same district. The deck (PDF pages 7, 9 and 12) gives 24,000 gallons a day, which is twelve buildings at 2,000 (12 x 2,000 = 24,000) or 96 “living unit equivalents” at 250 gallons each; ten buildings at 2,000 would be 20,000. The county judge said, as the Herald-Zeitung quotes him, that “we have validated, per the special utility district application that was resubmitted, that only the 98 or 96 [living unit equivalent] have been requested.” That resubmitted application is not in the packet. Water for the power plant is not in either agreement. A marked-up copy of the application filed with the minutes multiplies a rate of 2,635 gallons a day per megawatt, which the annotation attributes to a company disclosure we have not seen, by 1,450 MW to get 3,820,750 gallons a day (our check: 2,635 x 1,450 = 3,820,750), and the same rate on 1,200 MW is 3,162,000. Those match the 3.1 and 3.8 million gallons a day the Herald-Zeitung reports a resident citing. Withdrawal and discharge: not stated. |
| 5 | Water out | Forecast. The application (PDF page 29) lists septic disposal, with an estimated 6,455.4 gallons a day of effluent across three on-site drain fields; the application’s own figures disagree, as the section after the lawsuit paragraph shows. Cooling-water discharge, stormwater and permit numbers are not in the documents. |
| 6 | Jobs | Known as a contract term, Forecast as a count. Section 3.1 (PDF page 6, abatement agreement) requires an average of at least 30 new full-time jobs per building by the end of the fifth year of the first building’s abatement period, held by the owner, its affiliates or tenants, with payroll averaging at least $3 million per building a year. At ten buildings that comes to 300. The application (PDF pages 28 and 31) estimates 204 new jobs over six years, 43 managers, 142 staff and 19 supervisors, payroll of $29,529,000, “majority will be Tenant’s employees,” and 1,300 construction jobs at the peak; the wage table beside it multiplies out to $29,545,000, which is $16,000 more than the stated payroll (our arithmetic). The presentation (deck PDF pages 3 and 13) says 480 permanent direct jobs, 160 in each of three phases. For scale, the application’s 204 jobs across ten buildings is 20.4 a building (our division) and the agreement’s floor is 30, while data center representatives told Virginia’s legislative auditors that a typical 250,000-square-foot building may have approximately 50 full-time workers, about half of them contract workers (Part 3). Local hiring is a “best efforts” order, Guadalupe County residents first, then contiguous counties, then as the owner determines; it is not a requirement. |
| 7 | Abatement | Known in the signed form. Sections 2.2 and 2.3 (PDF page 4): ten years for each building, starting the January 1 after its certificate of occupancy; county taxes abated 90% in years 1 through 5, then 80%, 70%, 60%, 50% and 40%, which averages 75% over the ten years (750 divided by 10); the county’s lateral roads tax is not abated. The owner represents a minimum new investment of $500 million, and at least $125 million per building to qualify (PDF page 3); the application values new improvements at $9,860,000,000 (PDF page 29) and the presentation says about $14.5 billion (deck PDF page 3); the January notice gives an estimated cost of $10 billion. Those are different measures and the agreement uses the minimum. Clawback: after notice and a cure period of 30 days, extendable to 180 days for non-monetary defaults, the county may recapture the abated taxes with penalties, interest and fees, less taxes paid, with 6% interest if the bill is not paid within 60 days (PDF pages 14 and 15). The owner must also keep operating for ten years after the abatement ends or the county may recapture (PDF page 5, section 2.4(g)). The agreement does not name a missed job count as a default. Section 5.2(3) makes failing any covenant a default after notice and the cure period (PDF page 13), and the jobs term is a covenant, so on our reading a shortfall would be handled that way. Dollars per year: the agreement does not state them. The presentation (deck PDF page 4) estimates county taxes of $4,883,139 a year averaged over years 1 through 10 with the abatement and $23,374,009 a year averaged over years 11 through 15 without it. The difference is $18,490,870 a year, our subtraction of the company’s two figures, which cover different years and which the deck does not label as the abatement’s value. |
| 8 | Nuisance | Partly disclosed. Neither agreement states a decibel limit or generator hours. The company’s presentation (deck PDF page 12) says “Noise – 85 Decibels at 10ft.” The only setback in the agreements is 100 feet from a county right-of-way (PDF page 7, section 3.08 of the development agreement). A new transmission line is not mentioned. The site’s power is described as gas turbines and fuel cells (section 3.06), which are primary power and not emergency backup, so the hour limits for emergency generators in 40 CFR 60.4211(f) are not the limit that matters for them. Part 8 sets out those hour limits and argues for writing them into permits. |
| 9 | Exit | Partly disclosed. The development agreement runs ten years from its effective date, with two five-year extensions by written agreement that shall not be denied or delayed while the owner is pursuing development; the same section also describes automatic fifteen-year extensions, and the two passages do not match (PDF page 10, section 9.02). The abatement agreement says the tenant is “a third party yet to be determined” (PDF page 1) and has the ten-year operating covenant in row 7. Who owns and pays for the substation, gas plant and water line if the tenant leaves: not stated. |
| 10 | Veto | Known for the county; open for the state. Section 2.04 (PDF page 6, development agreement) says the county will not, during the term, impose a moratorium or any land use or development regulation that limits the rate or timing of approvals for the project, and section 3.02 supersedes conflicting county rules except what state or federal law or a court order requires, which the section says includes Texas Commission on Environmental Quality rules. Texas counties had little power to say no to begin with: a Texas A&M governance director told KBTX, “Unlike a city, counties don’t have zoning capabilities,” and said counties may do only what the state permits. Which state permits remain, such as water and air: not named in the documents. The state has also ordered a pause. On September 21 Gov. Greg Abbott directed the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to halt all permits sought by data centers until the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) and Texas Water Development Board audits are complete (governor’s release). TCEQ’s October 19 letter says it has paused the issuance of permits for infrastructure directly supporting data centers, and watchdog groups counted 35 permitting actions on data center projects after September 21, which the governor’s office says were not approvals (Part 4 has both sides). Whether the pause reaches this project is not stated in the documents. |
The documents answer more than the press accounts did, and they still leave gaps that a hearing could close. Queue position, a noise limit and the owner of the substation are in neither agreement, and megawatts are in the company’s application and presentation but not in either agreement. The table below sets the company’s two papers beside the agreements, because the same project is described three ways. A hearing that gets two numbers for one question can ask which document each came from.
| Measure | Company application dated Oct. 16, 2025 (abatement agreement pp. 28-31) | Company presentation, April 21, 2026 (deck) | The two agreements |
|---|---|---|---|
| Site | 220 acres, 142.5 in Guadalupe County and 77.5 in Hays County (p. 30); the three base-value parcels on p. 31 add to 142.90484 acres (our sum) | 706.40 acres (p. 3) | About 706 acres, “wholly within the County” (development agreement p. 4) |
| Load | 145 MW Phase 1; 1.45 GW full campus (p. 30) | Three phases of 400 MW, 1.2 GW (p. 7) | No megawatts |
| Buildings | Ten (p. 30) | Twelve (p. 7); 10 to 12 (p. 3) | Ten in Exhibit B (abatement p. 2) |
| Investment | $6.5 billion buildings and $3.4 billion equipment (p. 30); $9,860,000,000 new value (p. 29) | About $14.5 billion (p. 3) | $500 million minimum, $125 million per building (abatement p. 3) |
| Jobs | 204 over six years (p. 28) | 480 permanent direct jobs (pp. 3, 13) | At least 30 per building by year five, 300 at ten buildings (abatement p. 6) |
| Water | 5,400 gallons a day (p. 29) | 24,000 gallons a day (pp. 7, 9, 12) | About 2,000 gallons a day per building (development agreement p. 7) |
The vote is also being challenged. Community Impact reports that the Data Center Action Coalition has sued the Guadalupe County Commissioners Court over the approvals of two data center projects, alleging violations of the Texas Open Meetings Act, the Texas Tax Code and conflict-of-interest laws, including that at least one commissioner took part in a “walking quorum” through private conversations before the April 21 vote. Community Impact and KSAT reported it on July 24, 2026. KSAT says the Save Our Springs Alliance filed the suit, quotes its attorney Bobby Levinski, and describes it as concerning how the county handled public meetings; we cannot say how that name relates to the one Community Impact gives. The county attorney’s office declined to comment on pending litigation. These are the plaintiffs’ allegations, we have not seen the petition, and we found no ruling.
Where the application disagrees with itself
Four statements in the applicant’s own filing (abatement agreement PDF pages 27 to 31) do not fit together, and nothing in the packet says which is right. The three drain-field sites on page 29 are printed as 1,936.62, 3,227.7 and 1,936.62 gallons a day, which add to 7,100.94 (our addition), 645.54 more than the 6,455.4 the same line gives as the total. That 6,455.4 gallons a day of effluent is 1,055.4 more than the 5,400 gallons of water a day the application says Crystal Clear Special Utility District will supply (the page prints 5.400; we read it as 5,400, the figure used throughout this page), or 19.5 percent more going out than coming in, and the application does not say where the difference comes from. Attachment 1 says “Currently 10 buildings @ 250,000SF per building,” which would be 2,500,000 square feet, while its own building table lists sizes from 70,000 to 250,000 that add to 1,698,000. And it says “Applicant is considering Oklahoma City metro and other Texas sites for investment.” A hearing can put each to the applicant as a plain question: which drain-field figure is right, what accounts for the extra water, and how large the buildings will be.
Correction and update, October 29, 2026: An earlier version of this page said load was not disclosed in megawatts and treated 1.2 and 1.45 gigawatts as press-only figures; the company’s application states 145 MW and 1.45 GW and its presentation to the court states 1.2 GW. It also said no signed copies were found and that the Texas freeze waits only on ERCOT; the minutes attach a signed abatement agreement, and the governor’s release also names the Texas Water Development Board audit. The 220-acre and 706-acre figures, the water, job and investment figures, and the abatement dollars are now set side by side from the application and the company’s presentation. Earlier today: GS-5 is now described from the State Corporation Commission’s order (separate minimums of 85 percent of contracted demand for distribution and transmission and 60 percent for generation; a 14-year term), with its other terms linked to Part 6. A Columbus abatement term of 15 years was removed because the source gives none, and the Good Jobs First figures now link to Part 3. The checklist became a table that logs each answer as known, forecast, pending or not disclosed, with who supplies it and a due date; the water question asks for withdrawal and discharge. The worked example is rebuilt from the proposed agreements and application in the agenda packet Guadalupe County posted for its April 21, 2026 vote, with the Veto row answered for Texas and the Texas permit freeze added from Part 4. Page numbers in the example are PDF page numbers of the posted files. Later on October 29: the Texas line now reports TCEQ’s October 19 letter and the dispute over 35 permitting actions in place of a flat statement that the state froze permitting; the page no longer calls the example a night vote (the meeting ran from 10:02 a.m. to 2:59 p.m.); the section on the application’s disagreements, the jobs comparison and a note that only the first table is meant for printing are new.
- The scorecard draws on the reporting in the earlier parts of this series: PJM market-monitor cost findings, Virginia’s GS-5 large-load tariff, data-center water disclosures, jobs and tax-break data from Good Jobs First, and interconnection-queue research from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. See the full series hub.
- Virginia State Corporation Commission, final order of November 25, 2025, Case No. PUR-2025-00058 (GS-5 terms; page numbers are in Part 6). Water convention: Google 2025 Environmental Report. Generator hours: 40 CFR 60.4211(f).
- Guadalupe County vote, April 21, 2026: agenda packet, minutes, proposed development agreement, proposed tax abatement agreement, abatement notice; attached to the minutes: signed abatement agreement with the company’s application, development agreement text (unsigned), CloudBurst presentation to the court, marked-up copy of the application; press accounts: Herald-Zeitung, San Marcos Record, DatacenterDynamics; lawsuit: Community Impact, KSAT; Texas county authority: KBTX.
Editor written. AI used for spelling and grammar only.
