Officials behind a billion-dollar data center under construction below the Lake Whitney dam appeared Monday in Clifton for more than two hours of questioning from area residents, whose concerns about water, energy use and tax abatements mirrored similar data center discussions in nearby McLennan County.
Officials with Houston-based CyrusOne told a group of some 60 people that the 400-megawatt data center would not draw down Lake Whitney as many in the area have feared.
The project is a fraction of the size of the $10 billion data center that Infrakey is proposing for the Ross area in partnership with the city of Lacy Lakeview. But its impact is expected to be huge in rural Bosque County, which has a population of about 19,000.
Bosque County officials said the project would amount to a 120% tax base increase for the county, generating an estimated $70 million to local government entities over 30 years.
Bosque County commissioners held the town hall meeting at the Clifton Independent School District’s Performing Arts Center.
The commissioners court in November 2024 agreed to a 10-year, 30% tax abatement deal with CyrusOne. Company officials said that is the smallest incentive they have received for their projects.
County officials pointed to CyrusOne’s track record as an established data center company in several comments regarding the abatement. The company operates more than 20 data centers in Texas.
“I want to set the record straight with the facts,” said John Hatem, president of CyrusOne, who suggested online misinformation was stoking distrust of the company’s project.
Since August, nearly 6,000 people have signed a petition claiming Lake Whitney’s level could drop due to data center construction and a planned water reallocation.
The Brazos River Authority is partnering with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in a study of how Lake Whitney’s hydropower portion could be reallocated, but it would not lower lake levels, authority CEO David Collinsworth said in an online statement.
He added that “there are no agreements or discussions between the BRA and the owners of any data center for water supply.”
Hatem said the data center will not require water from the Brazos River or Lake Whitney to cool computer chips housed inside. Instead, Hatem said, the facility will use a closed-loop system filled once every 15 years by water trucked into the site. Any wastewater from the site would be trucked out, not discharged into the nearby Brazos River.
Up to 500,000 gallons a year will still be required to support basic plumbing for the facility and the estimated 40 employees to be staffed on site, Hatem said. CyrusOne is seeking well water permits from the Middle Trinity Groundwater Conservation District to meet those needs.
The estimated amount is about eight times the water an average Texas home uses per year, based on Texas Municipal League estimates.
The project’s first phase is expected to wrap up this fall. It is located on 270 acres next to the Calpine gas-fired power plant. An agreement between the two companies will see Calpine’s 800-megawatt plant supply the data center with 400 megawatts of electricity at full buildout.
Hatem said that because the plant already provides steady or “baseload” energy to the grid, the agreement will not result in additional indirect water consumption. In other words, the data center will not make the power plant run more than it already is, Hatem said.
Fossil-fueled power generation can represent a substantial fraction of a data center’s water consumption, according to a 2024 report by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
County officials estimate the project will bring in $70 million in tax revenue to Bosque County, Clifton ISD, the Bosque County Hospital District and others over the next 30 years.
“It looks like these two phases will add 1.2 times the whole value that Bosque County gets to tax right now,” said Jeff Snowden, a Bosque County financial consultant with the Capex Consulting Group, who spoke to the Waco Bridge Tuesday.
Meridian High School music teacher Daniel Yguerabide urged CyrusOne officials to consider investing directly in Bosque County communities and organizations.
“Get to know our needs and how you can better help us beyond this conversation that we’ve had tonight,” Yguerabide said.
Jeff Dorrill, an attorney representing CyrusOne, said residents can take solace in the company’s experience. He contrasted CyrusOne against a new crop of companies seeking to cash in on data center hype.
“I think one of the things that’s really good news is that this data center is being built by a company that has been in the business forever,” Dorrill said. “They view themselves as being a partner. It’s not like a private equity firm is doing this one deal and they’re out.”
