Gov. Greg Abbott has directed the Texas Water Development Board to pursue enforcement against data centers that fail to submit legally required water-use surveys. The move escalates state scrutiny of facilities whose rapidly growing demand could affect local water supplies and long-range infrastructure planning.
In a September 14 letter to board Chair L’Oreal Stepney and Executive Administrator Bryan McMath, Abbott said major water users, including data centers, appear to have violated provisions of the Texas Water Code by withholding required information. The board collects annual water-use data to support state and regional planning. Surveys covering the 2025 calendar year were due March 1.
Texas Scorecard reported, citing unnamed sources, that roughly 80 percent of data centers required to file a survey did not respond. That figure is the publisher’s report and has not been independently verified by TPI. State law makes failure to return a required survey a criminal offense. Noncompliant entities also may be ineligible for certain Texas Commission on Environmental Quality water permits, amendments or renewals.
Abbott instructed the water board to refer potential violations to the appropriate county or district attorneys and to alert the environmental commission when a company may be disqualified from a permit. His letter also called for coordination with the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, linking water oversight with the state’s parallel review of data centers’ electricity demands.
The governor ordered a separate audit of large data-center grid requests in August. Texas Scorecard reported that pending interconnection requests totaled about 474 gigawatts, more than five times the state’s record peak demand, with data centers accounting for approximately 90 percent of the total. Requested capacity does not necessarily represent projects that will be built, but the scale has prompted closer examination of the assumptions used in state planning.
The water board must give Abbott an initial enforcement update within 30 days and provide continuing reports afterward. The directive matters for public integrity because agencies rely on complete usage data when projecting supply, reviewing permits and deciding where taxpayers may need to fund new infrastructure. It also turns a reporting problem previously raised in legislative oversight into a test of whether existing penalties will be applied consistently.