The Lacy Lakeview City Council will hear Tuesday from a company promising to take the city’s sewage and turn it into treated wastewater that could cool the proposed Infrakey data center.
The meeting is at 6 p.m. at Lacy Lakeview City Hall, 501 E. Craven Ave.
The Indiana-based Energy Systems Group is presenting its wastewater reuse or “sewer mining” technology to council members.
The city is a partner in a “data district” intended to develop a 520-acre rural site with Infrakey, and the council could vote as soon as next month on a contract with Energy Systems Group, Mayor Charles Wilson told The Waco Bridge on Monday.
Wilson said a wastewater reuse system would solve several problems at once: improve capacity for the city’s aging sewer infrastructure, reduce the freshwater needs of the data center and provide a sustainable source of water for future development.
Lacy Lakeview and Infrakey have not provided a firm estimate of how much water a data center might require or how much recycled wastewater might be available for it.
Concerns over water data center consumption have remained a top issue among opponents of the data center project, which has become increasingly controversial in McLennan County.
The wastewater recycling will come at the cost of public debt, however. Wilson said the project could cost in the “tens of millions of dollars” range and “the sale of effluent (to Infrakey) will service that debt.”
He added that Lacy Lakeview is hoping to bring Waco in on the project. Waco currently provides Lacy Lakeview’s water and treats its wastewater through a regional wastewater system. The meeting can also be streamed on the city’s YouTube channel.
