(Seguin) — With plenty of questions and debate before it, the Guadalupe County Commissioners Court made sure to give CloudBurst Data Centers an opportunity to defend the facts behind its future facility in northern Guadalupe County. Providing more information about the proposed project during Tuesday’s meeting was Cynthia Thompson, co-founder and chair of the board for CloudBurst Data Centers.
Prior to her presentation, Thompson was able to hear the first round of comments shared during the citizens-to-be-heard portion of the meeting. As already mentioned, many of those concerns revolved around water resources, electricity demand and infrastructure.
Thompson says perhaps one of the biggest misconceptions surrounding the project involves fears that the facility would drive up electric bills for local residents.
“And our power, that’s okay. Our power is behind the meter. When people worry about us driving up their electric bills, we will not be driving up your electric bills because we are not taking from the grid. We are using what has been a dormant line from energy transfer that no one, no power agency, the community has not asked to use for this gas — it’s just been sitting there. So we are using a gas line on our property to create our energy and we will not be driving up local electric bills to the community,” said Thompson.
Thompson also attempted to ease concerns about the financial impact of the tax abatements, particularly as it relates to Navarro ISD.
“It goes down every year. The orange piece (shown in a pie graph) that you see up there, the $106 million is the average that the school district will receive, Navarro. We do not get an abatement from Navarro ISD. We have met with (Superintendent) Dr. Epley, trying everything we can to work with the community. She is very excited about the idea that evidently, Navarro ISD is at the highest tax rate permitted by the state of Texas. They are working on a bond today that they desperately need. And she’s very well educated on the pluses and minuses of data centers. So, I encourage anyone who has questions to also speak with Dr. Epley. She’s very well educated in this arena, but this is a game changer for the school district. So, it’s money that they need, desperately need, and there is no abatement on the school district.”
While the project would receive abatements at the county level, Thompson says CloudBurst would still contribute significant tax revenue and other payments.
“We do, while the tax abatements are in place, it’s at the county level, not at the school level. And we still pay, as you’ll see over that 10-year period, $488 million basically in taxes to the county, $4.5 million for roads that we’re contributing for roads per year. And then the $394,000 is for York Creek Water District to help preserve the creek. So that’s annually to the county,” said Thompson.
Thompson also outlined the project’s phased construction schedule, projected job creation and expected water use.
“So, this kind of lines out our construction and development phases of where we create and how many jobs we create starting in 2026, which is 160 jobs, in ’27, another 160. It’s 160 jobs for each phase. (It is) 10 to 12 buildings. It is 1.2 gigawatts of total capacity, and 480 jobs and roughly 24,000 GPD, which is low water usage. We’re asking for water from Crystal Clear, which I know came up earlier about the data centers need to pay for the studies — we have paid Crystal Clear for our study. We’ve paid them for two studies. The first study, when we didn’t know exactly who our tenant would be. So, our first study, not knowing how much water we would need. And then the second study, which then takes into account exactly the amount of water we need. We are asking for water only for our employees to be able to use the restrooms, use water every day, just like you would in any office building or any manufacturing process,” said Thompson.
Sharing more on the water usage, Thompson says the facility has a plan.
“We’ve been introduced to three sources of wastewater, which we can utilize for our closed loop system and utilize for our landscaping, etc. There is a tremendous amount of wastewater available to us that we were not aware of in the past. So, there are three different sources right now, and we are working with them to have a permanent wastewater flow to the project,” said Thompson. “We have a fire storage that we need a million gallons for and our closed loop system 7.2 million gallons, but we will be filling those with wastewater. I mean, we can bring in — for the closed loop system commercially sourced water, which is what we were planning. But since we’ve been approached about using reclaimed water, that’s a much better solution because it cuts down on the environmental impact of having those trucks bring in the water. We were only going to do that because we didn’t want to take more water than we needed to from Crystal Clear.”
During her presentation, Thompson also responded to public concerns about the chemicals used in the water system.
“People were talking about the chemicals that’s used in this closed loop system. Ours is propylene glycol. And so, for most of you, which was — I may have mentioned this in the past, but I personally was shocked. I think of that as antifreeze, 20 percent of the fill. But upon researching it, I had no idea that we use it in so many food and drug products that we consume. It’s in your NyQuil? It’s in a lot of medicines. I mean, I couldn’t stop researching it once I started. It’s in a lot of food products. This is food grade,” added Thompson. Thompson also confirmed that additional studies, including noise evaluations, have been or will be conducted as the company works to be a better neighbor to nearby residents.
Thompson says there is a great deal of misinformation surrounding data centers. She added that this facility has already evolved from concerns that communities around the world have raised about older centers.
The company also plans to hire locally with an emphasis on veterans. In addition, it hopes to work closely with the Texas State Technical College and Texas State University to build a future workforce. Wages are expected to reach into the six figures for some positions, while security jobs are expected to start at more than $60,000 annually.
At the end of the day and despite opposition, the Guadalupe County Commissioner Court ultimately approved the Cloudburst Data Center in a 3-2 vote.