Megan Navarro
HAYS COUNTY— Texas State House Rep. Erin Zwiener has formed a working group with Hays County leaders to address community concerns surrounding data centers, water use and local authority.
This comes on the heels of multiple proposals for data centers in Hays County — in the San Marcos city limits, extraterritorial jurisdiction and in unincorporated areas. Due to this, there has been massive community confusion and frustration about the proposals, along with what tools are available for city and county officials, Zwiener explained.
“My goal with creating this working group is to bring the players, people who have either some sort of legal authority over these issues or a stake in these issues, together to talk about the problem and brainstorm solutions, so that the community here in Hays County actually has a voice in the outcome,” the state representative said.
One of the challenges that Zwiener has noticed with the discussion surrounding data center issues is having the various entities not fully understanding the legal obligations or challenges faced by other entities, such as what water supply companies and special utility districts are requiring and what the county is allowed to do.
“Texas has a fairly complex network of local government entities and I think city and county almost everyone's familiar with, but for at least one of these data centers, the identified water provider is a special utility district, which has a completely different set of rules and legal authority than a city or a county. And most Texans, I would venture to say, don't even know they're a governmental entity,” she said.
This heightens the importance of these partnerships and having the conversation with all of the different entities at the table.
Two of these partnerships include those with Hays County commissioners Debbie Ingalsbe and Morgan Hammer, who have been at the forefront of helping establish this group.
For Ingalsbe, it was an easy “yes” to be a part of this group because every data center, to her knowledge, that has been proposed in Hays County is in Precinct 1, which she oversees, and she felt a responsibility to step up.
She emphasized that the concerns should not be solely focused on data centers, however — even though that has been a vocal issue recently — as they are about all of the development that is occurring in Hays County and surrounding areas.
“Hays County is currently going through a revision and update of our subdivision rules and regulations. And so, I think, some of the things that are of interest [include that] we want to strengthen our water availability requirements. I'm not exactly sure what that's going to look like. I'm not sure what authority we have, but anything that we can do to strengthen our water availability requirements, I think it's going to be extremely important. We're also encouraging and wanting to incentivize rainwater harvesting and we're encouraging conservation development where cluster development is happening and they leave open space,” Ingalsbe shared. “I think it's important for people to know that as a county, we are trying to do whatever we can to help the water situation.”
The group is also important for Hammer’s jurisdiction in Precinct 3 on the western side of Hays County, especially when it comes to water and development.
“We rely on the Trinity [Aquifer] for all of our water needs from Wimberley to Woodcreek to Driftwood and the Trinity is in dire straits currently. It's an aquifer that's not like any others, with very little authority from their groundwater conservation district,” Hammer said. “So, although the data centers are not pulling water from the Trinity, it's nice to have these conversations about how to create sustainable development within our water space and exploring areas where we can have some type of say from a county level, because there's not a lot of say from a county level on where these developments potentially could go, what water they could be using [and] how to hold them accountable for just overall environmental impacts. There's just a lot of development side of things that we need to explore as a county and the area that these data centers are currently proposed are in San Marcos, and I represent half of San Marcos.”
Along with Zwiener and the commissioners, the initial invitees for the working group are:
- Amanda Rodriguez, Place 6 San Marcos City Council member
- Zane Porterfield Liston, Wimberly Watershed Association
- Vanessa Puig-Williams, Barton Springs-Edwards Aquifer Conservation District
- Virginia Parker, San Marcos River Foundation
- Andrew Weber, Trinity Edwards Springs Protection Association
- Garrett Allen, Wimberley Water Supply
- Cy Weaver, community member
- Lon Shell, community member
- Adam Haynes, Texas Conference of Urban Counties
- Marisa Bruno, Hill Country Alliance
- Dr. Robert Mace, executive director, The Meadows Center
- Deborah Trejo, Kemp Smith Law
“I am so grateful for all the folks who are willing to lend their time, their energy and their expertise to this group. The base laws in Texas make addressing big industrial facilities and development in general in Texas very difficult for cities and counties now. It’s a conversation that's been necessary across the board,” Zwiener said. “It just doesn't just come up with data centers; it comes up with other types of industrial development and it comes up with residential development. I'm really grateful that Hays County has people who are ready to dig in and lead on coming up with our solutions.”
“I’m just looking forward to getting with the individuals in this group that has now been created … [to] just come up with real solutions to try to address not just our water issues, but other issues that we may be seeing as development continues to occur,” Ingalsbe shared. “I’m just really excited to be given this opportunity.”
“We have some really impactful people within that group … We see water in the same lens of ‘This needs to be sustainable. This needs to be able to be here for our kids’ kids to come.’ It's not really an issue that has to be one side over the other and I can't wait to explore some of these options and to see where this could lead us,” Hammer emphasized.
The goal of the group is to identify the tools that local entities already have that can be used to address community concerns around data centers, along with what is needed to take to the legislature and request changes, Zwiener said.
Both Ingalsbe and Hammer echoed that they would like to see changes in the authority that is given locally to help control efforts in development and protecting water resources.
“I've been a part of our state and regional associations, county judges and commissioners associations. I've been the president of both our region and our state association, and we've been working for many years with the legislature to ask for more control for both cities and counties and, unfortunately, we just have not had the support at the capitol for that,” Ingalsbe explained. “I think the representative is absolutely going to play a key role in helping us craft legislation that we can present at the capitol to ensure that counties and cities get the authority to help protect not only our water resources, but other issues that we are facing.”
“Do I think it's feasible for us to ask the legislature to just be able to say no to development? No, but I would like some type of say from a county level on where to place these potential developments. How do you work with them and to be able to hold them accountable, rather than just kind of saying, ‘Oh, our hands are tied. There's nothing we can do,’ And that’s kind of where we are at right now.” Hammer said.
Hammer added that she would like to start exploring options and authority that the county already has and how to creatively work with that, but the big thing she wants from the group would be a policy decision that the legislature could view.
“Water is for everybody. The legislature is focusing on water this next legislative session, so I'd like to see a good chunk of either one or two policies being passed that gets us where we need to go from a county perspective because our constituents are relying on us to take care of our county and, right now, we just don't have the tools or resources to be able to do that,” she said.
The issue is not limited to Hays County, Zwiener said, so she is hoping that the group can come up with some tools to share with other communities around the state.
The group is still figuring out schedules, but Zwiener anticipates that they will meet between four and six times, with a goal of those meetings happening this year in order to make recommendations in time for the next legislative session that starts in January.
