The person this lands on owns the cooling spec for a Texas site that already has a land option and an energisation date. Water has been sitting in the permitting column and power in the fight column. Paxton's four-point plan and Talarico's plan both put closed-loop water in the fight column [3][4], and neither the plans nor the reporting put a number on what a closed-loop redesign costs or how many months it adds.
The two platforms diverge on plenty. Talarico wants the state sales tax incentives gone and local communities given more say [4]; Paxton wants a federal DATA Act, a ban on Chinese technology inside facilities and criminal liability for AI safety violations [3]. On water they land in the same place [5]. So for anyone modelling risk, the party question resolves identically on cooling and stays open on tax treatment.
Site teams tend to read a long interconnection queue as proof that demand is real. Texas regulators are reading the same queue as an unverified claim on shared infrastructure, because the state has no reliable way to tell which of those projects will be built [8]. About 90% of the requests are data centres, roughly 427GW of them [2], and the "more than five times record peak" comparison implies a state record peak under about 95GW [3]. A queue slot is an option, not a build, and the state now treats it that way.
The disclosure record made that easier. Of the companies Texas asked about water and electricity use, 7.4% answered, which leaves 349 that did not [1]. Rules get written from the numbers that turn up. Governor Abbott says the grid operator's data is incomplete and that lawmakers can handle it when they return in January [11], while his Democratic challenger Gina Hinojosa wants a moratorium and a special session on the grounds that developers arrived in neighbourhoods with no rules in place [10]. Abbott has also directed the Public Utility Commission and ERCOT to protect residential ratepayers from data centre infrastructure spending [12], which concedes the household cost argument rather than rebutting it. National polling in the same report has local opposition at 61%, up 12 points since March [13][4].
The industry answer so far has been community funds and local hiring promises [15]. Separate that from the thing actually being done, which is water and grid rules drafted in an election year by people who did not get their questionnaires back.
The useful cut for Monday is two questions, not one. Does the design survive a closed-loop mandate without a rebuild, and does the schedule survive both the interconnection audit and a January legislative session? Yes and yes, proceed. No on water, yes on schedule: buy the redesign now, because it is cheaper than re-permitting. Yes on water, no on schedule: hold the land and re-time. No on both: move the load, though Texas has the most permissive power market and the largest project concentration, so tightening there gives other states a template [16]. Closed loop is the one line both campaigns have already signed [5], which makes it the cheapest assumption on the sheet.
