All right, good evening, everybody. I'm mayor mark mcgrayer, and because this is a
scheduled city council meeting, I need first
to call this meeting to order and gavel it in. So this meeting of the lubbock
city council is now called to order. To be clear for everyone, there is no action item on our agenda for tonight. This council is not taking a
vote on anything tonight at all. Instead, we are handling this like a normal city council meeting where we would have a work session a
work session is usually where our staff come and make presentations on some subject that we need some more
information on, and then we will always have that followed by a time of citizen comments. If you've
come to any of our city council meetings, you know
that's how we operate them. So we've moved this meeting here from city hall so we could accommodate the crowd we
anticipated, and it's a good crowd tonight. We're glad that we're able to fit everyone
in here that wanted to be present tonight. We are also live casting this. As well. And we're going to
discuss some very important issues regarding data centers. I want
to keep my comments short here to begin this meeting because the purpose of the meeting tonight is
to hear from you. We want to know what your biggest concerns
are and to hear different perspectives and maybe even hear some things tonight that
we as a council have not yet thought about as we've dealt with this issue over the many months that we've been dealing
with it. First, let me thank you for taking the time to come, and I want
to thank you for taking the time to fill out the survey that we had online for a while. We compiled the
results from those, from that survey, and when we discuss them further in a moment, I think
you'll see that what the survey
showed were your concerns are also our concerns as a council. Water use, electricity demand, utility costs, noise,
environmental impacts. Those are our concerns as well. Now, we've seen how many other
cities around this country have handled this issue and have
voted oftentimes
on data centers before actually having the public have an opportunity to speak on it.
and this has led to a lot of frustration and distrust on the part of citizens. So we
want to avoid that. That's why we're having this meeting before we have ever taken any
action on any data center at all. We're in a much better
position now than many other cities because we've been able to watch and learn from them
and see what they have done well and what they've done wrong and what concerns perhaps
they have failed to address along the way. So let me be clear. First of all, this
city council has not approved any data centers at all.
in fact, our planning and zoning commission has already voted one data center proposal down,
and the proponent withdrew it before it ever came to the council for a vote. So
no large-scale data centers have been voted on by this council. We're not
currently, we don't currently have a proposal in front of us to vote on. We've not entered
into any contracts with any developers or data center groups, and none of us have
signed any nondisclosure agreements with anybody. What we have done, though, is
instruct our city staff months ago to begin studying the impact that large-scale data centers will have on our water
and our utilities and on nearby residents from noise, light, and emissions. Importantly, all these impacts would exist
whether or not the city council ever actually approved a data center or not to be located inside the city. The only
difference is that if a data
center exists outside the city limits in the county, it's not subject
to very many restrictions at all on what they can do, where the city has much more
control through its zoning powers and our provision for utilities. So we've already
asked our staff to look at ways available to us as a city to address
those concerns that large-scale data centers raise. And we needed to do this because the
reality is that large-scale data centers are already built, being built near us in
abilene, in abernathy, in childress, and in dickens
county. Before long, they'll come knocking on our front door wanting zoning
approval so they can build inside our city limits.
lubbock's in a great spot right now to be able to address your concerns,
which are again our concerns too, before we consider any proposals for development
within our city. Tonight's public meeting is not intended to convince anybody that a
large-scale data center is either a net positive or a net negative for the city.
instead, it's, our goal here tonight is aimed at helping you understand
better how we, as your elected officials, are trying our best to address the issues and concerns that data centers
raise for our city. We want to make sure we're not missing
anything in our discussions, and we want to make sure we're not getting tunnel vision on this. We're not going
to have all the answers for you tonight, but I think we will be able to provide some answers to the
questions that have been raised. But the big part of tonight and the main goal
of tonight is to listen to you and hear from you, which means you will be
speaking to us after the presentation, but we will not be answering questions
as a council. We will be noting your questions. Our staff here are writing them down, and we will follow up if there's
something that we have not covered tonight and needs
to be covered in additional meetings. So the goal tonight is to hear from as many of you as
possible. I think I understand that 140 people have signed up to speak tonight. This meeting
we intend to last for 3 hours. I don't know that we will get through all 140 people. So if
we don't get to you tonight, hopefully you will write your question down or submit it.
but I also would ask you, as we call you forward here
in a little bit, that if someone has already asked your question, then you step aside
and let somebody else come forward to see if they would raise their question. And that will allow more people to get
their questions asked or their concerns presented tonight than if everybody presents the same
issue over and over again. But you can ask questions, you can present information. That's all fine. Hopefully some
of those questions will be addressed by our staff as we go through this so you see what we've
already done. But if not, there will be opportunities to answer those questions at a later time.
but we're not going to be responding to you tonight because that will eat into the time that people have
to come forward and ask their questions. All right. This is how the meeting will go
tonight. Our city manager, jared atkins, and our assistant city manager, eric rahino, are
each going to give us a short presentation presenting the research that they have done up to this point, as well as
discussing the surveys that many of you filled out. Then we're going to turn
on the mic up front to hear from those of you who signed up to make comments, and we'll be
up here taking notes along with our city secretary and other people here tonight. We're
fortunate tonight to have abner, abner uresti as our moderator for the comments portion
of our meeting. And he's not here on behalf of kcbd, but he will call on speakers. He will call you up to the mic
in groups of 3 so that there's always someone on deck and someone then behind them waiting to come to
the mic so we can do this as expeditiously as possible without wasting time. He's
going to also, after calling up speakers, he will help us keep track of time and facilitate any
discussions we might have to have. We scheduled 3 hours tonight to hear from you,
and we're going to have a short break in the middle of it. And my request is that you remain
on topic with your questions, the topic being large-scale
data centers, and everybody respects the clock so we can hear from as many of you as possible tonight.
abner will be watching the clock, and we've got 2 minutes. Some people have said, well,
you normally have 3 minutes for people to speak. It's 2 minutes tonight so we can get
as many people up to the mic as possible. So that's why we have limited that
time. I will tell you that we,
I expect this group of people to be respectful of the speakers. Citizens
comment time always in our council is for the people at the mic
to speak. It's not for just general comments from the crowd. So please be respectful of the person at the
mic because any interruptions will eat into their time and it will also reduce the amount of time available for people
to come and talk to us. So I hope that we don't have to deal with interruptions, but if interruptions occur,
we'll give one warning and that's all, because the purpose tonight is for the people who signed up to come and address us. All
right. I hope everybody understands that and will be respectful. And I expect this crowd, lubbock is a respectful
place. So I'm hoping that everything goes well tonight. So thank you all very much.
right now, I'm going to turn it over to our city manager, mr. Jared atkinson. Thank you.
thank you, mayor, city council. And mayor, let me
start off with an apology. I gave you the wrong number. We're a little over 60 signed up right now, so as that
changes, we'll let the council know. But thank you for that,
council. Thank you for being here. And okay, how's that? Whoa, how about halfway
in between all those two? Okay, mayor, council, thank you
for being here tonight, and certainly to all of those in the audience. Myself and
mr. Eric regino, we're going to go through a couple of quick presentations here. I'm going
to start by seeing if I'm smart enough to use the device. And apparently I am not. Lacey, how
about this? We practiced twice.
for my next trick, I'll ask miss lacey to hit the button for me. I promise I am not
trying out for american idol tonight. There we go. Okay,
matt, did you do that or did lacey? Okay, council, I'm not
going to read my way through all of these, but I
think it's important we mention large-scale data center. So
what we have learned as we've worked on this, the staff and myself, and we've been at this for most of a year,
we've done numerous site visits, other cities. We've done everything we can do. And we have learned there's not a
common definition. So the first definition up there actually comes from ibm, and it just
says, what is a data center? The next one,
we hear hyperscale. And for a while, I thought hyperscale was somewhat
of a unit of measurement, and it is not. It refers to the ability of one
of these systems to scale and to grow and to meet demands. And that's not our definition.
it comes from industry. So without there being a definition,
we offer one tonight. And this is similar to what we've been working on when we talk
about development standards. For today, we'll talk about it as a large-scale data center
uses 100 megawatts or more of electricity per day and/or,
either one will get you there, 100,000 gallons of water per day and primarily supplies
information or does processing for offsite users. We're not
talking about those data centers that are in a school or a hospital or a business.
large-scale data centers. With that, let's go straight to this thing that still doesn't
work and click to the next one,
which will be the results of the survey if they'll come up. You really don't want me
to sing. This is what a mayor's nightmares are made of. There
we go. Thank you. Okay. We had nearly 1,550 people take the
survey. So. To those that did that, thank you for doing so. 90% of those respondents indicated they
lived in the city of lubbock. 10% did not. The chart on the screen shows you the 10 items that we put on the survey
and asked those respondents to rank. As the mayor said,
water number 1, electric items number 2, environment number 03, noise, light number 4,
transparency of the government, and scaling
on down. So we're going to hit a few of those points here, and eric
will hit more as we go. Click. Click. If you could see
the next slide. It would be about water. Lacey, can you
just advance it on the computer? Need
to go back one more. Try the
clicker now. I switched to this one. Try this one.
okay, jumping back on topic. What we've got in front of us right here,
this is a description of what the daily capacity of the city of lubbock's water
system looks like. We have 3 separate sources of water that supply the water system here
in lubbock. As you see, none of those sources are from lubbock or lubbock county. We
have our canadian river municipal water authority allocation of a little over 33
million gallons a day. We have lake allen henry at 20 million
a day and the bailey county well field at 18 million a day. Your point-in-time capacity
of lubbock's water system today as we speak is 71.35 million gallons. In addition to the daily supply, you have
about 565 million gallons
of water that is held in 2 reservoirs. We call them terminal storage reservoirs. That is raw water that has
already been delivered. It has been brought to lubbock and it is sitting at one of the 2
treatment plants waiting to be used if needed. So point-in-time capacity, 71.35.
here's what the usage looks like. And these are all 2025
numbers. So last year, last year, the average day, the average day was 36.5
million gallons compared to your capacity, nearly 35 million remaining
on the peak day. So the day we hit the most usage ever in 2025, it was really relatively
low, about 50.2 million gallons on that day. That left 21.6 6
remaining. I think total usage is relevant and important because it highlights a lot of
work that this council and this community have done. In '23, your total system use was right
at 13.0 billion, with a b, gallons. 13.1 in 2024 and 13.3
in 2025. Compare that to 2011. In 2011, your system had to produce 15.3 billion gallons. The difference
in those numbers is largely, are largely the conservation measures that this community
has adopted and put into place. We have dropped what we call gallons per capita
per day, which is just a measure
of what we use per person. We have dropped gallons per capita per day by nearly 50 gallons
per person per day. To put that
into another example, there are 40,000 more people in lubbock today than there
were in 2011, and you're using 2 billion fewer gallons
of water. So the question,
what comes next? I mean, obviously the community will continue to grow. That is
everyone's goal. And you will need supplies as the community grows. Lubbock does have a 100-year water plan. I like
to say it is fully funded. Funded means you have those sources available to you. They
have not been developed. You don't develop until you need them and you bring them
to town. That's what those 3 on the screen are. The first is lake 7. That is a 12 million
gallon a day, what we call firm yield, which means it'll, it'll run
that number all the time. And somebody is going to ask me, well, what about weather? And
that's a great question for lakes. That is the most weather agnostic lake that you
will see because it's a reuse lake. It has a guaranteed inflow which is greater than
what you will take out. On a short-term basis, that lake would be able
to produce 25 million gallons a day. You wouldn't do that for long,
but if you have an issue with one of your others, that's what you would do. When that lake is built and done and
it's online and us and our 10 partners in crmwa move forward in time, move forward
in demand. The next project is crenshaw 2, very large project that originates in roberts
county and makes its way down to all 11 member cities. 32 million gallons additional
supply. The third is actually a lake allen henry project. It's what we call phase 2. A lot
of the infrastructure for lake allen henry is meant
to produce 30 if needed. We can produce it at 20 today. So with relatively simple improvements,
simple in the world of water, you have another 10 million
there. That is the farthest out project unless something changes and you need it sooner.
that's the quickest one to bring online if it becomes necessary to do that.
collectively, that's 50 years of your water future here in lubbock. So where's the water
coming from? Today, a little over 61% of that 71.3 million
gallons is groundwater, 2 different sources, roberts county and bailey county.
about 39% is surface water. Largest surface water supply is lake allen henry, then lake
meredith. After lake 7 comes online, those percentages almost reverse. So when lake 7
is up and running, your surface water portion will be 58% rather than 39%, and your groundwater will fall
to 42% from 61%. Relatively
unique in west texas that you're making moves more towards the renewable sources
than what we've done historically with the groundwater. So
questions on water, mayor and council, before I move into the next? Trying
to speed up and get us back. Any questions? So by groundwater,
you're referring to water we pump up out of the ogallala aquifer, right?
yes, sir. Okay. All right. Okay. Let's kind of move
into what we're going to call perspectives for the next couple
of slides. So any community needs growth, and it needs growth
in all sectors. And that is the only way to have a healthy, thriving, and community. One part of your community does not
grow if the others do not. So I'm talking residential, commercial, industrial, health,
all of it. You need to see everything rise together. Thus, your city's goal,
we want economic benefit for the entire community as a result of growth. Simple and
obvious ways that occurs are through jobs, revenue for city services that comes
from new growth rather than from those that are already here. And then it's economic
opportunity for our residents and for our businesses and for all of the legs
of the stool. A note to keep in mind, and you'll see this in a moment: $100 million
of taxable value generates about $472,000 to provide
for city services. Does not
matter what sector that $100 million comes from. Just that
amount of growth produces that amount of revenue for you to provide service
to the community. So to try to illustrate water growth and a few other items,
I've got a sequence of these charts here. So we've taken 3 pretty well-known
neighborhoods in lubbock. Each of those are roughly 640 acres
or 1 square mile. The lubbock business park is also roughly 1 square mile. I have doubled
all of their numbers because it is not fully built out. We have created an imaginary data
center, and it means what it says, I made it up. And then a 640-acre cotton farm. So let me
go through my notes real quick, and then we'll look at the
numbers. A 640-acre cotton farm under pivot is not 640 wet or
640 irrigated acres. It's more like 520. We've used again industry standard sources
to figure out the applied irrigation.
we've converted it back to an annual number. You don't irrigate year-round, you irrigate
during the growing season. But we've brought it back to a common denominator, and again we've doubled the
business part. But here's what you see: 2025 numbers for the first 4, the
imaginary data center, and then industry numbers for that cotton farm. If you
took a neighborhood such as bell farms, compared
to your top 20 individual users, that one neighborhood would fall between the number 4 and
the number 5 user today. Regal park would fall between the 3rd and the 4th largest.
tech terrace, 6 to 7. The business park doesn't come
anywhere close. If the data center was 110,000, note that that is bigger than the
definition, trying to make this obvious, it'd be
between number 13 and number 14. The cotton farm with 520 irrigated acres would be up
between the 4th and the 5th in terms of water use. So the
illustration, while 100,000 or 110,000, that's a big number, in the scale of a 13 billion
gallon water system, it's really not. So you can see
those comparatives. Let's talk about infrastructure. So neighborhoods, residential,
commercial, everything requires public infrastructure. The
takeaway from this, those 3 neighborhoods, as they finish up full development, they're all going
to have somewhere between 78 and 80 miles
of city infrastructure inside of them. Why? Because we build streets and alleys and those things you need
to be successful. The business park, large lots, larger users, not as many of them, about 33
miles. If we stay on a 640-acre imaginary data center, it won't have public infrastructure
on the inside of it. Another
way to look at that. How about public services? So calls
for service are what we used for this. So these are our dispatchable service. You call
for the police. For fire, for animal control, for code enforcement. We pulled those and we put them
on here. So again, this represents calendar year 2025. You can see the peak
of just under 2,500 dispatchable calls for service down to a low of 300. I don't
know what an imaginary data center would be, so we have question marks. All
of these things wrap into that economic growth. What we want to see that is good
for our community to be healthy and thriving and affordable. So we've only assigned a cost
to those dispatched calls for service. And you see what
we didn't put in there: street maintenance, alley maintenance, parks and
recreation, libraries, senior centers. Only dispatchable services. You take those values, again,
$100,472,000, produces the revenue, less the calls
for service, and you see the net. There are
numbers filled in for the imaginary data center. They're likely wrong, but what we've done is taken exactly
what's going on in the business park and assigned it to that data center. They may
well change, but you can see how those peaks and valleys trickle down
through that chart. Moving on, nearly done with my part of this. Who in texas has the
authority to do what if we talk about development standards?
we're here tonight to talk about large-scale data centers. I think it's important to understand this would apply
to any type of development. But in that vein, we talk
about water use. That lies within the authority of cities
in texas. It really does not with counties. And it really does not with the state. Yes,
the state regulates public water systems, but the state does not provide water. Same
thing is true with wastewater. Zoning authority, zoning authority resides
with cities. It does not with counties. It does not with the state. That may change
in the future, but that's where it stands today. The ability
to regulate noise, you have a check mark for the city. That means yes. You see the kind of sort
of lines on the county and on the state. That's because there is a state law that has a
noise number, a decibel number in it, but it's a large, large
number, and cities have the authority to have it lower. The others
don't unless state law changes. Light. Regulating light
on a development. That's a city authority. It's not a county or a state. It goes the other
direction, though, when we talk about air. So cities and counties do not
regulate air, air quality, air permits, those things you hear. The
state does, and that is primarily regulated through the texas commission
on environmental quality, the tceq. Economic incentives, and this is again for anything
that you might choose to do, any of the cities can do that.
electric turns around the other direction,
though. We put the maybe lines on the city, and that's only unique to the city of lubbock.
but it's important to note that that's only there because lubbock owns the distribution
utility. We don't control or mandate how much electricity could come
in or could get used. We can just deliver it. Counties do
not. State does. So when we talk about electric, electric
use, the grid, the cost of the grid, that is entirely the state, and it's
through the public utility commission, puc, and ercot, the electric reliability
council of texas. That leads me right into my next slide,
though. This is a june 10th, 2026 letter from governor
abbott to the chairs of both the puc and to ercot.
obviously, it's a small piece of that, but I've highlighted 2 that I think are very relevant
for tonight's discussion. The governor has instructed both of the leads of those agencies to take action
to require data centers to pay all of their electric
infrastructure costs so that the residential ratepayer is not. Traditional ways that you
expanded the grid in ercot, some portion of that cost did get passed
down to all ratepayers. Not all of it, but a portion. The governor has said no. Data
centers pay all their costs so that the residential ratepayer
does not. The final one, he's asked the puc or instructed
both the puc and ercot to look at those existing authorities they have today,
not authority they may get in the next legislative session, but what they have today, to
review their existing authority and to identify those actions that can be taken
to safeguard texans, our property, and our resources. It's a pretty bold statement,
and it is directed right at the 2 state agencies that do have the ability to do what,
in this case, a city or a county really does not. So,
council, this is my last one.
I'll take any questions before I hand it over, and if not, we'll bring up mr. Regino. Any questions
from the council? If you don't mind going back to the one that showed who regulates what. So a
hypothetical data center located in the city would be subject to our water, wastewater,
zoning, noise, light, and any incentives, be subject to our regulations on that. If
it was located in the county, it would not be subject to any of those limitations in the county except
for a very high noise level. Is that correct? Yes, sir. All
right. And again, the state overrides county and city, so the state does mainly
control air incentives and electricity. Okay. Yes. All right. All right. Thank you.
any other questions? Mr. Atkinson, can you hear me?
yes, sir. Something I've been very interested in is potential noise and light pollution
from data centers. In a lot of ways, data centers are like warehouses
from what I've seen, having driven across the state, state,
looking at several. I know we've got existing policies
whereby we regulate noise and light right now. Can you go into some detail
on what we've done to date to regulate these issues at similar projects? Yes, and I
think possibly you and I have seen some of those same currently operating data centers. So I'm going
to steal a little bit of eric's thunder. I'm going to leave some of the detail
for him, but today, we do regulate what type of use can go
in what particular zone. It's land use regulation. We already have noise standards, light standards. All
of that already exists today. The counterpoint to that, the way the zoning code stands
today,
a data center can be built in lubbock, and it can be built in a wider range of zones than
what staff is going to recommend to you here in the next presentation.
we're going to recommend things like on the zoning, limit the districts even
tighter, expand setbacks, require certain screening and/or berms. I mean, things
that will all directly affect that, as well as establishing a noise limit that is less than
what we currently have today. And the light, the lighting, what we call the spillover
today we do regulate that. We think there's a way to make that even more particular to these unique types
of uses. Thank you. I have a quick question. First of all,
thank you for that information. I do want to thank the public
for being here, for making the time to come and let us hear your perspective.
it's very important. Mr. Atkinson, underwater use, you selected different
neighborhoods and whatnot. I noticed that, and maybe I'm overlooking this,
but you didn't have any of the neighborhoods from
district 1 or 2, like actual neighborhoods. Can, do you have any of those
numbers that you can share with me on water usage? I do not tonight. I,
I can run those on any. I didn't want that chart to have one per district.
I would have had 6 neighborhoods. I mean, I know you put the lubbock business park. It is in
district 1. But I want to see my neighborhoods, at least 1 or 2, just so I can
compare water usage. And I know that the public's done a really
great job of conserving, but I want to know the use of neighborhoods in district 1 and 2. Yeah, I'd be glad to
give me the ones that you want. Now that we've got the formats filled out,
I can plug any neighborhood into them. Just takes a few days to pull the data. Okay.
and is it, am I correct that the greatest use of water in homes, residences, is
for watering lawns? Is that correct? Generally speaking,
yes, it is. Generally speaking, during the summer, more than half
of all the water that comes into our potable water system ends up as outdoor use. It's
going onto lawns, it's going onto gardens. Washing cars, those types
of things. And that's usually what it becomes, our peak use time
of the year, right? That'll generally hit in august. And in winter, it's usually a
lower, in winter, we can have days down in the mid-20s. So
significantly less than average. All right. Any other questions? All right. Thank
you. Okay. Thank you. With that, we're going
to turn it over to mr. Eric regino, he is going to present a set of draft
standards. I think they speak to councilman bruegel's questions pretty directly
on a few of those. Again, it's not what you have today. It's staff suggestions for what you
could do if you really want to kind of tighten some of this up. All subject
to change. None of it has been done. It's presented for discussion. So, eric. Thank you, mr. Atkinson.
mayor, council, I'm going to take the next few minutes to go over some draft standards,
proposed standards for large-scale data centers that my staff and I have been
working on. We've looked at several cities, have been studying data centers, and initially we have
a draft concept for you that we wanted to really get some feedback from, from you all as well as the
general public. Just to touch on this, the concept we've come up
with is that of establishing a specific use permit within your zoning code. Mr. Atkins touched
on it. I'm going to expand on it just a little bit more. So currently, large-scale data
centers are allowed by right in several districts. There's 4 districts. And what we're proposing in this is to
establish a specific use permit, require public input, require public hearings,
and limit it to just a couple of districts, which I'll touch on here in a little bit. All this is
within your authority. And again, going over the water usage, wastewater,
zoning and land use. And within that, you've got setback requirements that are existing that we're going
to propose that if you choose to move forward, to add to those, as well as
landscaping, screening, noise mitigation, and lighting. Those are things that you deal
with within your current code. And again, we would propose a specific use permit which would require additional public
hearings, public input, and limit it to a couple of your districts versus having
the broader districts that you have now for large-scale data centers. So let's, let's touch
on this. So what is a large-scale data center for purposes of today? Mr. Atkins, one quick question,
eric. The specific use is different from a by-right. Yes, yes. Explain the difference between them. So a
specific use is basically an additional criteria within a zoning district. So you have your base district
requirements and a specific use, which is a whole other set of criteria that's on top
of that. And again, that also triggers a public hearing in addition to a zoning,
a traditional zoning case. So good question. Thank you. So what is a large-scale data
center? Again, for purposes
of today, as we've touched on, it's a large-scale data center that either is 100 megawatts
per day of power usage and/or 100,000 gallons of water, as well as primarily supplying information or processing to
one or more offsite end users. They're primarily used to, again, house real and personal property consisting
of buildings, network computer servers,
data and transaction processing equipment, as well as the
related infrastructure to support the operation. They're there for the purpose
of storing, remote storage, providing data and transaction processing services, outsourcing information
technology, as well as distributing large amounts of data. As far as city of
lubbock's role, your authority, the city's role in that, I'm going to touch on what we can do and what we cannot
control. First of all, again, you have access and you have control over annexation,
zoning, noise mitigation, lighting infrastructure
requirements, utility service agreements, as well as any other enforceable contracts that the council chooses
to enter into. That's within your authority as it sits today. The city does not
control ercot, state electric policy, state tax incentives, as well as broader property rights. So really what I'm
going to focus my next several slides are on the next, here in the next few minutes is really based on what the council has
authority to do. Would you explain for everyone what ercot is if they don't know? The
electric reliability council of texas. And what does ercot
do? Ercot, I'm actually going to hand over to mr. Atkinson to touch on. He's far more of an expert than I am
at ercot. So ercot, or the electric reliability council of texas, is the body that manages and controls the
entirety of the state electric grid. Does not include the grid that's the panhandle
in the very far side of west texas, or really even what is south plains electric co-op,
but almost all the rest of texas is in ercot. The giant
power lines that you see, the big power plants, the nuclear plants that texas has, wind farms, solar farms,
all of that puts stuff into the grid. Ercot manages what is
coming in, thus what is available to go out. They don't own or
sell it, but I've heard it described as they are air traffic control
for electricity for about 90% of the state. They are
state-chartered, state-mandated. The regulator is the public utility council. They work hand
in hand. Public utility council does the projects, approves them,
vets them. Ercot is the one that says, yes, this is okay on the grid because we have
transmission from a to b, thus you have supply available for a new load. Thank you. So
going into water, one of the proposals in the specific use permit we're recommending as a proposed
standard would be to only allow large-scale data centers that are using a closed-loop cooling
system or an air dry cooling system, which significantly reduces water usage on a daily basis. In addition
to that, as part of that as part of the specific use application, we would propose that council require
not only what your initial water consumption is going to be, but what your total bill
that's going to be. So what do you use on day 1 and what's the buildout look like. And it
allows us as a city to plan for that accordingly. And as well as, I think it's an appropriate
item for the planning and zoning commission to consider, as well as city council to consider
in making decisions on any particular project, large-scale data center. And
staying along those lines of water, the other item we've discussed is let's just use a hypothetical 100,000 gallons a
day. You have a large-scale data center, or in fact just any other business that's going to use 100,000 gallons
of water. We reserve that 100,000 gallons of water as the project's being developed.
that water can then not be used for any other economic benefits. So we're having
to set it aside for if and when that project comes into fruition. And what we're proposing
in this water reservation fee, very similar to an option contract where you pay for the option
to basically buy land at a later time, we would collect a fee based on
estimated water consumption collected on a monthly basis. And when that project comes
into fruition, that fee that would then be credited back to that particular development
for water usage. If that project does not come into fruition, then the city
council, the city benefits from it and keeps that and is able to invest that in additional water-related infrastructure
in the future. So it's a, it's a fee, it's a benefit for lubbock. If the project
doesn't come, again, there's a cost for it, and the citizens ultimately end up benefiting from that,
that fee. We would assess it at the time of the execution of a development agreement. And again, only
for your really large users. And again, that 100,000 gallons is one we've discussed. That's, that's still really up
in the air and we would like some feedback on that as well. 100,000 gallons is right,
would be right at our 14th largest water user in lubbock today based on the 2025 numbers. So let's talk
more about specific districts. You know, we're proposing a specific use permit. That is an
additional set of regulations, requirements, standards that fall within any district that you set. We're
recommending that you scale back what you have now and limit it to your light
industrial and your general
industrial district. So if there's a proposed data center, large-scale data center, that is appropriately zoned
for light industrial, general industrial, they would still have to get that specific use permit. It
would still trigger public hearings. It would still take the city council taking those
on a case-by-case basis. I'm going to go to the next slide and just touch on this. It would require a public hearing, number one,
in front of the planning and zoning commission. They would then make a recommendation to the council. That
recommendation goes to the council during a regularly scheduled meeting. There's a second public
hearing. And again, any particular specific use or zone change must be approved by council with 2 reads
of an ordinance. So you're looking at 2 public hearings and 3 public meetings for that in order to do that. And doing
it with a specific use, that's the benefit of using specific use, is it
requires that additional public input and additional consideration
by the pnz and the council. Another item built
in that we're proposing within the specific use permit would be to require a power usage study
to provided by a licensed engineer including the type
of generation. So we want to know how much power, and number 2, what type
of generation. You're going to purchase it off the grid, or you're going to have generation on-site? Is
that gas turbines, wind turbines, solar? So we want to know that up front as you all consider every specific use
on a case-by-case basis. Such
on setbacks your current general industrial and light industrial districts currently
have existing setbacks. So I'm going to touch on these and what you have existing today in
the code and then what we're proposing. So for starters,
your minimum front, side, and rear setback, if it's not adjacent to residential,
in your general industrial it's 50 feet, in your light industrial it's 40 feet. If it's adjacent
to residential, your minimum front, front, side, and rear setback for general industrial is 150
feet and 100 in light industrial. What we're
proposing in again, the specific use permit would be to increase that if it's not adjacent, if, I'm sorry,
if it's adjacent to anything but light industrial and general industrial, we would
propose that you increase that
to 300 feet. If there's generation on site, so you've got gas turbines, wind turbines, solar,
an additional 500 feet or combined 500 feet. So going up from your 150 and 100 to, in essence, 300 and 500 feet
depending on whether they have self-generation on site. So an additional setback, which helps
with the concerns related to noise lighting, in addition to some of the other items and concerns. Not all data centers
produce their power on-site, is that correct? That's
correct. So if they didn't
produce it on-site, they'd be at 300, right? That's correct, yes, sir. But if they did produce it on-site,
they would be at 500? They'd be at 500. Okay. Yeah. All right.
and if they're adjacent to another light industrial or general industrial district,
then it would just be the traditional, the traditional numbers, setbacks as they're
written today. Okay. Mr. Rienow, a question I've gotten from a number of people and a
question I've often found myself what do we see these data centers used for? We've seen them in fort worth.
there's one going up by dickens and abernathy. What's the purpose of these, the industrial purpose? The
industrial purpose, I mean, process data. Um they're used as ai hubs crypto mining you
know, they're used for a combination of things. You know, one thing staying along the lines
of existing setbacks, the other thing we've seen is related
to setbacks is that of additional screening requirements. You know,
minimum of a 6-foot berm is what we're proposing. I've seen berms work quite well based on some
of the pictures I've seen from some of the site visits that our team has taken there. In addition
to having a minimum of a 7-foot solid screening fence around the actual infrastructure around the
buildings if there's onsite generation, any of the other, any of the other items.
staying along the lines of
screening and buffering the current code in your gi and li, and I'm thinking a general industrial
district you have to have a minimum of 10% landscaping on the property. We would
propose that you have additional buffering, additional landscaping. And
what we're proposing here is to have additional trees, 4 canopy trees per 100 feet, in addition
to what you already have in your general industrial and light industrial districts, to continue to help with that
buffering when adjacent to other non-light industrial and general industrial districts. Let's touch on noise. So what
we regulate today is at the 80 decibels. The 80 decibels, it's between a truck and a hair
dryer, between that 80 and 90 there. What we're proposing in the specific use permit would
be to go to 57. A 57-decibel read would be just shy of a, of
a conversation and a little
louder than a refrigerator running. So that, that would be
at all property lines. We would require a sound study, sound absorption barriers,
as well as let us know what type of acoustic materials and construction you're going
to be using to build and as well as if you have generators for just routine exercising of your generators on site
for backup power, we would require that they only be run monday through friday, 8 to 5.
again, that's just your
generator routine exercises for maintenance that those of us that have generators
for those purposes do. So, mr.
reno, would you say the loudest part of a data center typically would be the power generation
similar to the plant we've got on the slayton highway? Yes, sir. Thank you. And that's, this really ties back also to
that additional setback requirement. Again, if it doesn't have on-site
generation, 300 feet. If it has on-site generation, the 500 feet. So that, I think that
would help also address the noise concern. So that's why we're proposing the additional footage on generation for on-site generation. And
these decibel levels are measured
at the property line? That is correct. Yes, sir. So air quality, again,
is not something that is within the city's authority, the city council's authority. But one thing we could do that
you could consider in that specific use permit is to require that those permits
be provided, the compliance documents be provided to the city. And if you find that there's an issue, that
they're not compliant or that they don't have the permit, then you, we could then work with the texas commission on
environmental quality at that point. And hand it over and work
with our state partners. Even though it's not within your authority, it is within your authority to ask
for those documents if you set that as a criteria for your specific use permit.
and again, air quality regulated by federal and state. At the state level, it's the
texas commission on environmental quality. That's
who, who regulates that and issues those permits. So the next couple slides related
to lighting these are already within your existing code. We already have this in the unified development code. So
all luminaries with initial lamp output of over 1,500 lumens shall be face
down, as the pictures show. Again, this also ties back to the setback requirements.
in addition to this, you would have your additional setbacks that will help with lighting.
so 1,500 lumens is the threshold to require that lighting
to be shielded. In addition to that, we also have vertical illuminance. This is specific by district and it varies
by district. But in your light industrial and general industrial district, it's 2
foot candles. And you can see the visual there of about how far a foot candle would go out.
and this would be in addition to facing the light down as well as your setback
requirements. But these are in your current code today as they sit today,
and they're specific to your light industrial and general industrial districts. There's
been a lot of discussion about what if a data center comes and at some point in time they cease to exist?
the concern I think here is really more related to the on-site generation,
the gas turbines, wind turbines, solar. So what we're proposing is that you have the
applicant of the specific use permit provide a decommissioning plan as well as
a letter of credit. So if and when the facility, the operation ceases
to exist and council wants to address the decommissioning of the you know, of the, say,
call it the on-site generation, if the applicant does not do that, you have a letter
of credit that you can go claim on and then address that yourself and decommission as
appropriate depending on the type of generation that it is. So
right now we're recommending that you consider that really for only on-site generation as you know, obviously buildings
can always be repurposed, but this is we obviously have letters of credit throughout the development code
in other areas. So this is not a, not a new theme, but it would be again,
this would be specific for on-site generation decommissioning. Councilman
erica, can you hear me? I don't know if it's on. Can you hear
me? Yes, sir. Okay. In layman's terms, I know there's a lot of people here that want
to know what is the benefit of this data center? I know
it's for cell phones. I know that it's for the internet.
but in layman's terms, what real purpose does the data center serve as far as getting
a plant? Because we already have those services now. So what is the purpose? You know,
data processing is becoming more and more, and I think there's a lot
of folks here that probably, including myself,
that use some form of ai related
to just processing data, finding information. That is becoming more and more of a demand that I think is
requiring the additional storage of these data centers. That, I
think, is an everyday use that I think a lot of folks are using now. So we
need more now, or is this just getting things ready for the future? I think both. I think there's obviously a higher need
now you know, there's a for it as well as future demand for it that they're trying
to plan for. So, thank you. So
let's touch on power generation, transmission, and distribution. Again, when a data center has onsite power
generation, all the standards we've talked about will apply. There's some additional setback requirements
we would recommend. It's really important to note though, set the data center aside just
for minute. The current code requires that on-site power generation, transmission,
and distribution today in your current code have a specific use permit. We saw one of those that pnc voted
down that got pulled out, but that's in your code today. So that's a requirement today. There's
nothing you need to do to require a specific use permit for on-site generation. This,
this is in your code today as it relates to wind turbines, solar panels, simple cycle
turbines, and on-site generation.
parrish, I mean, mr. Regineo. Yes, ma'am. Going back
to that particular, just for clarification, a data
center could potentially also have wind turbines and then the simple cycle, I mean,
the solar panels, and then it could have a combination of all of, of all
of the above, right? Yes, ma'am. Okay, that really wraps
up the presentation that I have. Going back through these are all standards
within your authority, council. And going back to water usage, wastewater,
zoning and land use, setback requirements, landscaping, noise mitigation, and lighting,
those are all items. Some of it's already in your code now,
but you do have the ability to be cut to add to those. Again, the concept we presented
to you today is really tied to a specific use permit, which is a set of regulations within a current zoning code.
and again, we're proposing that you consider the lead
industrial and general industrial. And again, today it's, it's allowed
in a broader, broader spectrum of districts. So we would recommend that you consider
scaling that down to your districts. And then number 2, adding a specific use
on top of that to require that public input, that additional consideration
by the pnz, the council, and the general public. So with that, mayor, I'm going to turn it back over
to you. I'll be happy to take any questions or comments. I'd like to take you back to,
I think it's number 4. Let's look
at that particular slide. 4 slide. What we can and can't do? No, it's not about what we
can and cannot control. This is
what my question is. So basically,
when we're discussing ercot, where do the ercot lines, where do they lie right now
in the city of lubbock? Are they all over the city? Are they in district 1 and 2? 3,
04, 5, 6, where are they located right now? How does that work?
we'll let mr. Atkinson take this one. Yeah so the, the
very, very large lines, there's a set that comes in kind of from north to the,
to the center part of the north central part of lubbock. There's a large set
that kind of runs from south to north, kind
of south-central of it. They don't actually come
into town. Well, the north one does a little bit, but they generally don't. And
then the one that ties the grid from south to north, north to south, is over
on the east, to the east side of town. It's actually outside the east loop. So what I'm
understanding then is that these, since what you're saying,
the location then would be in areas like district 1 and district 2, what other district
would that also lie in? It depends on where,
how far they want to pull that power. It's, I don't see it coming
into the center part of town because you would have to have some pretty good-sized
lines. So it wouldn't go into district 3, 4, 5 or 6 because we don't have the lines
to support it. The southern end of district 3, I'm sorry, of 04, is not very far removed.
but would it be impacted? Are
those electrical lines in any other district other than district 1 and 2? Where they
touch the city limits,
they're largely in district 1 and 2. They're not all in the city. So
in other words, if we were going to place or approve data centers and they
would be located in districts 1 and district 2. Is that what I'm understanding? Generally,
the large ones want to be close to a big power line. How big,
I don't know. But with the specific use process that's being proposed, the location
criteria is general industrial or light industrial. And the
specific use permit. All right, I'm not gonna say this again.
any comments like that, you will be asked
to leave the room. We've got a time schedule we're working on. We've already gone over a little bit because
of our problems, so let's stick to what we're doing. If you want to make a comment,
you have to have signed up and come forward. But if you make a comment from the audience, I won't tolerate it because you're
imposing yourself on other people who signed up and followed the rules. So we're going
to follow the rules tonight in this meeting. This is the last time I'll say that. Thank you, mr. Can I finish though?
because so what we've clarified is that data centers, because of where the ercot electrical
lines to support the data centers would then be located in districts 1 and district 2.
that is confirmed, right? That's where a lot of the larger lines are. Now,
one thing to keep in mind, and this goes back to the governor's letter and demand,
some of that generation that's going to be required by these data
centers has not been built yet. So there will have to be an expansion
at some point of some of that additional infrastructure that hasn't been into account. I think the other part of,
it's not really a question,
it's more of a comment, is that district 1 and district 2 already have all of and most of the industrial companies as it stands. So now
we could potentially have all of the industrial,
and now we're going to add all of the data centers. Somehow that just is a little bit
concerning to me. And but this is about the public input, so I
think that I'm gonna just step back and let the public give their input. All right. All
right, eric, are you finished?
are you done? Yeah, I don't have anything else unless y'all have any more questions.
okay, any other questions for eric from the council? All right, thank you, eric. Thank
you. All right, now we're going to move on to our next part of the meeting. And let me
remind you, it's going to be moderated by abner uresti tonight. He's going to
announce and call the speakers up. He's going to call 3 at a time. And so when he calls
your name, if you're one of those first 3 he calls, please come up and take your
seat here to my right, to your left, those 3 seats. You'll step to this mic here. Here. You have 2 minutes
to make your comment. There's a timer over here which you can see. And then be prepared,
when number 1 is done, number 2 will step forward to the mic. Make your comments or ask your question. Then
between number 2 and 3, mr. Uresti will call an additional 3 people forward. All right?
so you will take your seat here and you'll be ready. That way
we can keep moving through and not waste a lot of time in between people wishing
to speak. We want to get, if we have 60 people, we might be able to get
through all of them tonight. That's about what I estimated for 3 hours. We will be here for 3 hours
from when we begin, including a break right in the middle.
but I think we can get through the 60 who have signed up tonight, and that's going
to be our goal. But the only way we can meet that goal is if you are respectful
to the people and we don't have to pause, or I don't have to stop them to get control of comments from the audience. Okay, so please be respectful
to everybody. So mr. Uresti, would you please come forward? And we will take a 20-minute break. You're free
to come and go during the meeting if you want to through the back doors. And we're happy to have mr. Uresti
here, and he will take over from this point. Thank you, mayor, and thank you all
for being here today. I want
to introduce lacey rose. She is
the director of communications and public engagement
for the city, so she is helping me out. Everyone has
to have an assistant in case things go wrong, and you can blame the assistant. Now, I do want
to say this out loud. By the way, the time, the 3-hour time, doesn't start
until I'm finished, so don't worry,
I'm not taking up your time. In the interest of allowing as many people as possible the opportunity to speak within the
time we have available, we respectfully ask everyone to refrain from applause, cheering, booing,
or other audible reactions to speakers' comments. We appreciate your cooperation in
helping us maintain a respectful and efficient hearing. We have a 2-minute timer here on the right side,
the 2-minute timer. We also
have, is this working? Is this going to work? We have the red
light that will come on once it is 2 minutes. Folks, I'm going
to be pretty strict about the 2 minutes. I know that's not a lot of time. I hope some of you have rehearsed your speech
because it's going to go by fast, and I am going to make sure that we stay at 2
minutes per person. So please understand that going
in so that I won't have to apologize and you won't think I am rude. I've only lost control of an event that I've emceed or
moderated one time, and I quickly regained control when I
said, let us pray. And I said a really long prayer,
so be forewarned. But I don't think that's going to come to that. I have full confidence that we are all
going to have a very civil discussion tonight. So we were going to start with randy
christian, riley rodriguez, and kylie ravel. Kyle, kyle
ravel. You're our first 3 speakers. If you'll come and
take these 3 chairs up here. And again, as the mayor said, when we have the second speaker
who finishes talking, I will call up the next 3 so
you can take your position so we won't, they can be on deck and we won't have a lot
of lag time there. Okay, chris is not here. We will add
joshua shankles. Y'all ready
for this? All right. My name is riley rodriguez. I'm actually
from abilene, so I'm kind of the ghost of data center past here. I've been traveling around the area kind of letting
cities know that are considering this or thinking about this what they can look forward to
on the ground level, that what we're seeing in abilene today. I heard a lot
of discussion about energy and resources, zoning. Those are all really
important. But we've had a data center, it's got 51 towers in it,
and what we're seeing on the ground are impacts that need
to be handled immediately. These aren't impacts that you can take some time and study.
some
of the social workers back home at big country family services are seeing recovering families,
young families, low-income families shoved into
tiny dwellings because their rent has shot up. They don't live on the south side
of town where the mall is. They live on the north side of town where the data center is.
disabled folks like the one I met saturday who's bound to a wheelchair has seen her water go up $200.
nobody's got anything to say about it. We have hardworking texans in abilene,
manufacturing jobs, like a man I met named adam who was stuck in his apartment
because he can't afford to give up the rent because he doesn't have to pay his utilities
with that rent, but he wants to move into another house and he's stuck. And he's going to be stuck regardless
of what happens. There are effects that happen immediately on the ground, and I want
to urge you as a city to take that
into consideration. Take those people that are going to suffer today into consideration because they
don't get 3 months. I don't know about you, but if I had to live on the street for 3
months, I'd have a little bit of trauma. You might have a little trouble getting over that.
but that's what we're seeing. You can speak to people at beyond trafficking. We have increases
in human trafficking. We have increases in homelessness. These are impacts on people, breathing, living people.
for what? Some cat videos that can morph into a dog? What are
we doing? Riley, thank you. Consider it. That's your time.
thank you. Kyle rabel. Howdy,
y'all. Mayor, city council, thank you. My name is kyle rabel, and like riley, I've
traveled across all of west texas, and I can tell you I completely agree
with everything he just said. In abilene, the costs have skyrocketed
to the point people are out of their homes. That is not something we can handle in west texas, and especially in
lubbock, because we already have a homeless population that we are incapable of doing enough for here. Here. I also take issue with
the fact that we're comparing cotton fields and homes to data centers. Cotton produces for us here in west
texas, and we live in our homes. Nothing is given to us from these data centers. We
cannot prove that these data centers bring jobs, which has been what we've been told is the economic driver
for choosing to bring these here to lubbock in west texas. Unless we decide
to have a community agreement with these data centers and force them to hire west texans
to build, maintain, and staff these places, which we have not been able to, these serve no purpose in our community. We gain
nothing from having data centers. They do nothing besides noise pollution, light pollution,
and take our water. Unless we are willing to compromise our entire identity of west texas
and stop growing cotton, probably stop raising cattle, then we need to stop having
this conversation push it away. This does not help west texas, and especially we should
not be building it in city limits where our folks, our poorest folks, tend
to live, which is exactly what our plans have been before, and we keep skirting
around that issue. We should not be building it in district 1 or 2. It should not be in the city,
and it should not be built in lubbock or lubbock county at all. Thank you all for your time. Thank you guys
for having me speak. Thank you, mr. Rabel. Let me,
let me call the next 3 people up. Malik williams, corey alexander, and jennifer
alexander. Jennifer alexander, if you would come
up, please, and take the seat right here. Thank you. Joshua shankles.
thank you. Thank you, mayor and council. Joshua shankles, lubbock compact foundation,
lubbock county democratic party. That was a very nice
presentation. I'm a little bit irritated that we gave mr. Atkinson a full 25 minutes to pre-but everything that folks
wanted to say, and folks, the public gets 2 minutes to address those things. Let's
jump right into some of those problems. Those are all nice and fine regulations.
the problem is your governing record has shown you cannot be trusted to actually deliver
those regulations for us. And you cannot be trusted to make a deal on our behalf,
and I will describe why. The number 1, 2, and 3 concerns of citizens on that list were all environmental. Well, you
and I both know that it's going to be on those people to police the environment,
because the city does not police environmental concerns in any way, shape, or form. Nor does the state, who has a
toothless regulation entity that doesn't do hardly any regulation
of environmental concerns. We had to go secure a federal grant to check air quality
in the city, which the city could have done at any time. Nothing is
stopping you from monitoring, but you wouldn't. So we had
to go do it. All of these environmental regulations will
be on you to police, people.
number 1, 2, and 3 were environmental concerns. The dead last, revenue and jobs. People don't want the money,
and we don't want the jobs, and we don't want the revenue. We want our quality of life. We want our way of life. We
want our peace and quiet, and we want our water. The water that we saved, the tax and ratepayers, the people who use water,
we saved that water, and we paid for it. So we want it. It would be morally and ethically wrong to put this
on the north or east side of lubbock because they have asked us repeatedly to stay stop doing that
in no uncertain terms. Mr. Mayor, you said that was the worst moral offense that this city had ever done, racially
segregated housing and zoning policy. That's your time, mr. Frankels. Keep your word. Thank you. Malik williams.
hello, everyone. My name is
malik williams. I am the democratic candidate that's running for texas house district 83. I'm speaking today
because I believe politics is all about what the people need.
and I'm sorry, but who the hell asked for an ai data center
to be here in lubbock? No one. People asked y'all to lower the cost of housing.
instead, y'all decided to give billionaires tax breaks to put these corporations
into our city. People asked for cheaper grocery prices. This. And we are living
in a food desert right now, people. Everyone needs help. And y'all decided instead
of giving people lower cost for groceries, let's give them more ai data centers. That's going to reduce our water,
put stress on people for electricity. And yet people are in need right now. People
are asking for lower cost when it comes
to child care services. You
have parents working 1, 2, even 3 jobs just
to survive. I myself have had to work paycheck to paycheck. How dare y'all? People need help. People need better
from y'all, our representatives, but you would
rather give tax breaks to billionaires and corporations.
nobody asked for ai data centers to be put here in lubbock. I've walked the streets talking to people. Kyle rabel has
walked the streets talking to people. Riley rodriguez and so many other candidates have talked to the people of
lubbock. Nobody wants these ai data centers. Everybody needs
more help. They want things to be more affordable. And I see you looking at the time,
but it's not going to stop me. People want more. Give them cheaper housing.
give them affordable groceries. Give them healthcare. People are sick right now. They are
having to scrounge up their, their savings to ensure that they have enough money
for their medication. They have to choose between paying rent or being healthy. That is not a
choice that they should have to make in the most, thank you, mr. Williams, for your time.
corey alexander. Good evening. I'm a grandson of a local farmer. And a
technical professional with 25 years in technology design, development, support. And I'm
adamantly against large-scale data centers built near developed communities. From my research,
data centers seem to be little more than shiny, trendy corporate drains on
communities where jobs and revenue generated are not kept
local. Okay, we are not fooled about job creation brought by these projects. They are largely temporary,
and large-scale projects tend to lead to increased prices for hotel rooms and other related amenities,
thus competing directly with sporting events, graduations, concerts,
and so on. City leadership has already committed to make lubbock a magnet for tourism and visitation, but
large-scale data construction projects would leave little room for affordable tourism or visitation to our city.
further, I've learned that practically all data center projects are offered tax breaks
or discounted utility rates, not the infrastructure, the rate. Everyone in this room already knows who makes up the
difference in those situations. We do, in the form of higher taxes and
utility bills. Any benefit offered to them will not help us locally, not in long-term jobs, not tax
revenue, not culture, art, or any meaningful way. Data centers consume vast amounts
of water, often pushing aquifers beyond natural replenishment rates, causing wells
to run dry or drop. Electricity is also consumed at drastically increased levels. Lubbock already has published
restrictions on water usage, and we've experienced events regionally where utility providers have struggled
to keep the power on during high demand or weather events, sometimes
with tragic results. Has city leadership prepared a commitment or implemented a firm, documented,
and legally binding plan to limit consumption by data centers first?
prioritizing might bring us some degree of comfort. If no such plan or commitment exists, then that says a lot
about the priorities. We cannot water crops, raise livestock, or sustain our bodies
on ones and zeros. People and wildlife before data centers. Thank you. Thank you, mr.
alexander. If we could have brooklyn duvall, jaden scott,
and isidro gutierrez come up.
you'll be the next 3. Thank you. Hi, my name is jennifer alexander, and that was my big
brother who knows all about technology. I, however, do not. I am just a regular girl. I am, like many
in this room, have deep roots here in west texas. My beloved late
grandfather left the farm, went to world war ii to fight, and came back
to this place he loved to raise his family and be a steward of the land. My father has been
in water-related industry and manufacturing here in lubbock for over 60 years, so I
understand full well a steadfast respect for our natural resources.
it's a way of life here. It's not just a means to a paycheck. I grew up here in lubbock, although miles away
from the farm life, but the lessons my grandmother and granddaddy taught me,
my parents passed down, and my teachers taught me here in lisd are with me every time
I brush my teeth, wash a dish,
or think about doing something drastic because of the bugs in my backyard. I think about my personal impact
on our ecosystem. Like my neighbors, I pray for rain, feel guilty when I
take a long bath because I want to read just one more chapter. And I can easily pay my water
bill, but years of drought weigh heavy on us, and we are tasked
with being mindful of our consumption as regular citizens. And it boggles the
mind to think that we have, and that we would invite a resource-hungry data center
into our community, our lives, especially when we can only estimate the cost
of this imaginary data center? What happens when they exceed the demands presented in studies? Obviously, I use
technology all the time. I'm reading this from my phone. I can't tell you all the zeros and ones and the bytes and the
gigabytes and the water usage, right? All I can tell you is
this, that our state our nation, our planet. Wars have been fought over resources, and
scarcity breeds fear. I don't want us to be scared. Put reason over want, human need over corporate greed. Thank
you, miss alexander. Brooklyn
duvall. Okay, good evening. My name is brooklyn duvall. I am
15 years old. And I live in idalou, and though I don't live within the lubbock city limits, I have family that lives here.
my dad works in lubbock, and all of my cousins go to school here in lubbock. So
today I'm here to speak on behalf of my loved ones, most of them which live in
districts 1 and 2. So I am here
today to tell you that any data center proposal before you will represent an unfair trade-off that will hurt local families
far more than they will ever help them. Despite governor abbott's order blocking data
centers from charging families for new power lines, local
utility bills are still likely to highly go up. A single massive ai facility consumes an
astronomical amount of electricity, drastically shrinking the region's overall
energy supply. Because of basic supply and demand, this sudden grid strain forces
wholesale power prices to skyrocket. Since lubbock residents choose retail
electric plans tied directly to these market rates, local families will ultimately face
higher monthly bills just to keep their lights on. We
live in a structurally drought-prone region where water is our lifeblood and our
most precious resource. In our dry climate, we must ask
if keeping computer services cool is the best use to use, is the best use
of our most precious resource.
if we allow our water supply to be funneled into cooling computer microchips, we are directly endangering our local
agricultural economy, stunting our future housing development, and threatening the long-term drinking water
supply of my generation and the children that come after me. An industry that depletes our water, strains our electricity,
and generates near-zero long-term careers is mathematically incapable
of providing a net benefit to lubbock. Therefore, I strongly urge this council here
to stand up for citizens, protect my family's future,
protect the future of kids to come after me, and to vote no on any data center proposals.
thank you, brooklyn. Jaden
scott. Hello, my name is
jaden scott. I am a student at texas tech university, and I've lived in lubbock for 5 years and the south plains
for my entire life. We are in this room today because the larger state government of
texas has not stepped up and protected the cities within its borders
from outside organizations. We saw the chart showing who has
development authority. Our state has a loophole allowing large-scale data centers
to be built in a different county without their development being
governed. These guys up here are right. If we don't allow a
data center to take root in lubbock, they will just move it outside the city limits. This
doesn't mean we should bite the bullet and allow data centers here. Rather, we should make sure we don't get a data center
in this city or near any of our neighbors. We should not lower our standards and say, well, we already use a ton
of water, so who cares if we use even more? We'll just plant some more trees around it. We
should be raising our conservation standards and decreasing our water usage to
10 billion or 9 billion gallons per year. Elections are coming
up, and I encourage everyone in this room to find who has been the most against ai data centers. Some
of those politicians, like kyle rabel and clayton tucker, are here right now
because they care about this issue, and they can tell you who they think can not
only represent lubbock but all of texas as it gets hotter and drier each year. I appreciate
the city holding this meeting. I implore the city officials
to do what is best for the people in this city, not for the profits, not
for growth, not, but only just do these things for your neighbors, because
your neighbors want won't care about more jobs if they have to move because the ogallala
has been depleted. Thank you. Thank you. If we could have the
next 3 come up, take your seat. William
griffith, naida marie
gonzalez, and susan stewart, isidro stewart. Has it started
yet? Mr. Mayor, my comments today are about public health.
I believe that the primary responsibility of government is public health,
and there is a problem with all data centers everywhere, and
that is that they emanate low-frequency noise. Now, this
noise that comes from the data center travels through the air and through the ground,
and it reaches long distances. Any data center that is located
inside the city limits of lubbock will invariably reach
large areas of neighborhoods and businesses. And the
low-frequency noise is known to cause pressure on the chest of people and also on the ears of individuals. It also affects
livestock and pets and wildlife. And so that low-frequency noise is
hazardous to health. And since the responsibility of government is
to protect public health, then I recommend that you abandon the idea
of building a data center within the city limits. There is no way that you can avoid
that noise from reaching homes and businesses and people. And the only way,
there's only one way to mitigate low-frequency noise, and that is
to build a data center far away from any
of the developed communities, away from the city limits. I recommend that you coordinate
in cooperation with the city, the city with the county and state government, and develop ordinances that will keep data
centers a safe distance away
from people. Thank you, cedro. William griffith.
right, got to make this quick. Hello,
mayor and council. My name is william griffith, born and raised in lubbock, texas. I
currently work in the it department of a local financial institution. Many
people in here probably bank with us. And working in it you know,
obviously the issue of ai gets brought up a lot.
it's a very ubiquitous thing. It's just part of daily life. So obviously,
as you can probably guess, I'm on the side against the data centers. Okay, this is bad stuff,
folks. Um and I'm not here to make all the arguments that have been made before. Um why
water, other types of pollution, noise, light.
those concerns have already been brought up by my fellow
citizens much more articulately than me. I'd like to make a little bit more of
like a, dare I say, like philosophical point about like the rise of emerging
technologies and why you should kind of be wary of it. You know, what we always see with
new technologies is that they always lead to kind of immediate improvements. In
like a material sense, but they almost always have detrimental effects long-term as far as the
mental, physical, and spiritual well-being
of mankind, right? Take the car for example, right? It's
certainly the most impactful technological innovation of the 20th century. And what
did that represent? It allowed us to go more and do more as humanity. But fast forward 100
years and what do you have now? Entire cities built around the car, and you can't
really be a functioning member of society if you don't have a car. So it went from having the freedom
to now you're not free to not have a car, okay? But anyways, this particular piece
of technology is growing at such a rapid pace and it would, given the universal opposition
it would not be unreasonable to assume that there may be
some financial incentive for the people in power. I just ask in conclusion, please do not
hoist our descendants into a dystopian nightmare just because some people can't write
their own emails. Thank you. Thank you, william. Naida
marie gonzalez. Good evening
to all of you. And all of you, thank you
for being here. Thank you. Right off the bat,
let me ask you to imagine your life without clean water. Water is
life. Ever since the governor came out
with his big push to give tax breaks to data centers,
some rural people in texas, I was rural once, have been left with nothing but dirty water.
they don't tell you about the heavy metals that are put into the aquifer and the water
systems. They don't tell you that the usage goes up
exponentially over time, and that's a massive amount of water. Do you think that's
sustainable? I don't think so. These companies, and
in my neighborhood, I live in east I have water pollution.
my well, my well is poisoned. The air is toxic. I have noise pollution. I have light
pollution. I have it all. Nevertheless, I wouldn't live
anywhere else. These companies
are used to intruding and invading our neighborhoods. Our opposition is
of no importance to elected officials. You do not listen to us when we say, not in my backyard. We have no
political clout. Well, I'm here to let you know that where I'm from, the city,
the tiny town that I was born, we have a saying, and that is,
that dog don't hunt anymore. I'd prefer to be optimistic, not pessimistic,
but we're fed up, and we have come here to burst your bubble.
prisoners are an existential threat to our neighborhoods and
to humanity. They will replace your jobs with ai and use them to invade our privacy. Look up
palantir. No, no, no longer will you,
the decision makers, not be held liable for the premature death and injury to our neighbors, friends,
and relatives. Thank you, naida. That is your time.
thank you. Now, as susan comes up, we'd like to ask I'd ask stefania garcia, clayton
tucker, and camille webb to come up and take your chairs, please. Susan. My understanding
was that I would have more time, and people have donated their time, but I'm told that that's
not going to be possible. We're told these facilities will either build their own
natural gas generation or pay to upgrade the electrical grid. Neither claim eliminates the impact on our community if they
are connected to ercot grid. They will still rely on transmission infrastructure, new substations, transmission
lines, and interconnections, which became part of our landscape. And if they build private gas generation,
that introduces additional industrial facilities, emissions, fuel supply,
infrastructure, and noise. The question isn't whether they'll provide power. It is what new
infrastructure our communities will be expected to live with for decades. Grid upgrades
aren't free. We need to know who exactly pays, not just for construction, but for future maintenance,
expansion, and replacement. Citizens should never have to have the cost shifted
to us. Can the city guarantee in writing that no future transmission upgrades, substations, expansions,
or reliability costs associated with these centers will ever be passed on to lubbock residents
and businesses? I'd like to point out that infrastructure built
for one large industrial user changes what comes next. One high-capacity, once
high-capacity power infrastructure is in place, it becomes easier to attract
additional energy-intensive developments. Tonight's decisions aren't just
about one data center. It's about the industrial footprint we're choosing for our future. We have the
right to know how much municipal water will each facility consume over its lifetime and who will
independently verify these numbers. We are asked to conserve water because supplies
are under pressure. If conservation is important for households, it should be equally important
to evaluate a 24-hour facility that we will have for decades. Closed-loop systems either use water or
electricity to cool. We have the right to know the expected annual water demand and the peak day demand. If the water
demand is truly insignificant in the, as these developers will have you believe, then will they publicly commit
to reporting its annual water consumption this evening? As far as the diesel generators, we're told not to worry about
backup generators because they are for emergencies, but large-scale data centers don't just leave general, thank you,
susan. That's your time.
stefania garcia? Stefania, yes.
so to continue on with her point, with the side generators,
all the ones you've shown in your examples were just the one ones that were a net positive,
such as renewable energy. But as we've seen with past data centers that have had site
generators, like the one up in alabama that was used for
gronk, it can cause health problems with breathing and such as more. We have seen
people get things such as asthma become severe and develop chronic cases
of copd. Is there any way y'all can guarantee to people that this would not happen here, that none
of our health would be at risk from an ai data center entering our city and harming our
people. There have been multiple towns that have been
abandoned and barely fighting to stay alive based off data centers being in them. Can you prove
to us that that wouldn't happen to our districts 1 and 2, districts 1 and 2 which already
have enough problems going in as it is? There are enough
happening here without the idea needed to light a fire that's going
to destroy more of our city starting from the northeast. We're already
letting so many problems happen there and develop. We're not working on them. We're not addressing them. The people
of the community would love to be a place that could just have better resources, better
requirements, not just a place of part of our city we're going
to let be destroyed by an ai data center because it's going to bring apart too many
pollutants and too many health issues to people. Thank you.
thank you. Clayton tucker. Mayor, can I ask
for whoever does speak to get close to the mic because it's hard
to hear? Well, I raise goats, so I talk very loud. So howdy, my name is clayton tucker. I am
the secretary of the texas farmers union, and we are calling for a full moratorium on these data centers. Now
look, y'all, I know these data developers will promise you the sun, the moon, and the stars. Thankfully, this is where us
ranchers come in. Having been raised around cattle, we know what bull smells like.
so let me tell you 3 stories, and that'll be my time. Let's talk about memphis,
tennessee. They've promised memphis, tennessee again the sun, the moon, and the stars.
they said they will build their own power, they'll have their own cooling
system, water. Everything I'm certain they're telling y'all. They built that data center
in 120 days. It doesn't take that long to build a data center. You're not building a power plant in
120 days. So they put 23 massive diesel generators, actually methane ones, and now the naacp is suing them because
they're creating a new cancer alley in memphis, tennessee.
is northeast lubbock going to be the new cancer alley?
and another gentleman mentioned that the noise these things create, and I talked to a lot
of farmers in texas and everywhere else. There are some farmers who have not had a new calf in multiple years once a data center came up. I've
talked to folks whose chickens stopped laying eggs, and they create heat domes where temperatures can be as high as
20 extra degrees within 5 miles. Last I checked,
it gets a little hot in texas, so maybe we should really put the brakes
on this, and let me end with this. Look, there are
05,000 data centers already in the united states. We have more data centers than
basically the entire world combined, more or less. So when
they say we need these things, we need these things, do we? Because I don't know about y'all,
but the moment I started talking about data centers, they put a damn flock camera right outside my ranch. Is this
about data? Is this about ai? Or is this mass surveillance? We need
to know what they're being used for before we approve any of it. Thank you, clayton.
okay, thank you. Would the following people come up, please? Steve rogers, mike
haggard, and pam stinnett. Camille, it's your time. Good
evening. My name is camille webb. Thank you for having us today. The impacts of large-scale ai data
centers are not being fully considered due to rush and demand, and rural,
lower-income communities are being targeted as a result. I was born and raised in
lubbock. My partner is from, excuse me, morton, texas, a
town of 1,200 people about an hour west. There are developers looking to build centers
out there as well. I love west texas, and I know y'all do too,
but these developers do not. They have money, and they think that means they can build whatever and wherever they
want. Data center and crypto miner operators were asked to participate in an optional survey by the
public utility commission of texas about water consumption, and less than a third of them responded. The numbers
we have on these centers do not tell the whole story. Developers need to be transparent about the energy and water demands and
consider the repercussions of multiple large-scale projects on the same depleting aquifer.
residents of morgan county, georgia are experiencing brown, undrinkable tap water after a meta data center was built
in their town, families have to ship clean water to their rural homes to use
for absolutely everything. Meta denies these claims, and the epa has not launched an
official investigation, as most of these residents rely on private wells that are not
regulated under government water quality standards. One resident in hamby, texas noted
a major influx of snakes on the road now that their habitat is being destroyed to build yet another data center. One
example of the many environmental impacts being glossed over as these projects
are frivolously carried out. There's not enough evidence to prove that this will not have a
negative impact on our community. The 2027 texas water plan completely ignores the data center surge.
there are currently 335 data centers already in texas with at least 248 more
in the works. We should be doing everything we can
to preserve our land, wildlife, and resources. Resources. I urge our officials and
representatives to freeze and reconsider any data center construction until impacts can
be more thoroughly considered. There has to be a better way. Thank you. Thank you,
camille. Steve? Hi, my name is
steve rogers. It's interesting, and I really appreciate all the comments that have been made.
I'm going to be brief. I, I think ai is a good thing. I think it can really help. It's
interesting, all the comments were probably done from a lot of research from chatgpt.
but my bottom line, I would like to ask the council, is what economic benefit is there
to the average citizenry of lubbock, texas to have this? Shouldn't that be the bottom
line? What is the economic benefit to me, to others? Are our taxes going to go down,
or are they going to go up?
are water rates going to go down or go up? Are we going to get anything out of it?
would anybody like
to answer that? Just one thing you've considered,
maybe talked about. We're just getting citizen input. Yeah, we've said we're not going to
respond tonight so everybody can have a chance to ask their questions. But yes,
that is definitely something we will, we didn't want this to look like we were out there promoting economic advantages
tonight. We're talking about concerns. Has that been discussed? How is that going to benefit the citizens?
you're asking the fundamental question right there. That is the fundamental question. Are we going to find that out? You
have to go meet with your council representative. A lot of that comes once you have a
specific data center coming, and then what do they want to build? What would be the tax
impact? We don't have one that we're dealing with, so we can't really lay that
out to you until we get an actual one. So that's why we can't answer your
question tonight. All we can tell you is how we are approaching this issue. But you
raised the right question. So has the data center courted the city, or has the city courted
the data center? Well, the city is not courting them. They are
courting the lubbock economic development association. That's where they go. They
don't come to us. They go to lubbock economic development. None have come to us for any approvals
at this point but the one that did come to pnz and was voted down. All
right. So, okay. Thank you, steve. Thank you, mike.
hello, my name is mike haggard. I wasn't going to speak here today,
but I have to. First of all, I want to thank you guys
for hosting all of your voters
to hear our concerns. I've heard a ton of concerns. The biggest one I have is the water. I wish we'd get together
like this to get water right now. There's, to the north and
to the south, there are homes that have no water. People are drilling wells, and some of,
a lot of them are out in the country. But you're talking about growth. We've had 40,000
people since whatever date was. We're
going to keep growing and there's no water out there right now. So it's
already an issue with the water. And mr. Atkins showed the slide that had the
mega houses, which I do not have. I don't live in her district. And thank you for bringing up your concerns
for your district. I'm concerned about your district and I live on the other side of town. The
small houses like I have, we don't irrigate
like the million-dollar houses. The ones I saw up there, most of them were other, maybe tech terrace, were big 1 to 5 acre
million-dollar houses. I don't have one of those houses. If you put my water on there,
what I use, it's going to be like this. It's going to be a little bitty. The
savings you were talking about, we're the ones saving all that
water. Y'all get onto us for runoff and all that stuff, which we appreciate. It's keeping us
from wasting all that stuff. But then we're talking
about bringing in something that uses the amount of water they do now and trying to compare it
to million-dollar homes with acreage that are irrigating. It's, it's not, compare it
to her district. I'm with her. Compare it to what her people are using.
they're either not irrigating their lawns or they're small lawns. They're not wasting all
that water. So it's a waste of water. I'm all about saving the water. So that's my biggest concern is
the water waste. There's other, I mean, you could, you could live with that and all that,
but water, thank you. Thank you. Could have caleb fryer,
anne marie monaco, and eric haley come up and take your
place. Pam. Good evening, mayor and council members. And I, my name is pam stinnett, and
I'm, step a little closer to the mic, would you? Yeah, thanks. My name is pam
stinnett, and I'm a lifelong resident of this region. Growing up
with grandparents who farmed, I was taught early that human survival relies on 3
fundamental pillars: food, water, and shelter. Right now,
proposed data centers threaten all 3. Just 10 days ago,
I drove from lubbock to plains. The stark contrast between our stunted dryland
cotton and irrigated fields is
a flashing red light.
according to the u.s. Drought monitor, 100% of lubbock county is in active drought.
we just survived our 14th driest start to a year
in recorded history. Right now, the city legally forces every
citizen to restrict lawn watering
to protect our grid. How can we justify rationing water for local families yet handing
millions of gallons a day to an industrial data center?
it will decimate our agriculture. And drain our
shared aquifer. Furthermore, placing heavy industry on the
northeast side perpetuates a dark history
of discriminatory zoning. The
residents of northeast lubbock matter. Yet they are being
asked to let this facility degrade their shelter and health through 3 invisible forces. Number 1, infrasound,
low decibel hums that cause neurological stress. Light pollution, a constant glow
disrupting sleep cycle. 3,
particulate matter, toxic diesel emissions. Pam,
that's your time. Thank you.
caleb? Good afternoon, councilman. My primary concern
is water. Without it, I live out in the country, our way of life will cease to exist.
our farmlands will die, our cows will die. That is the first thing that goes. None
of our stuff is piped into city. It is all groundwater. We all run off of the ogallala aquifer. If it
goes, we go. There is no way around that. It's a deep well drill. None
of us can afford that. That's 01,200 feet and then extra infrastructure
to process the water, and we can't do that. Second is electricity. It is constantly
rising, even with every precaution that we have taken with led lights,
anything that costs saves. But the primary thing that we're worried
about is freezer space. People that are in the country, they have food saved. They buy
in bulk. They save. They budget. If our electricity goes down,
whether it's rollovers or blackouts, you will kill years' worth of food overnight. There's no
way to come back from that. Third is I'm on spc, I'm not
on ercot, but we do back up the main grid when it goes down, and that has happened before.
and I have lost food and even plants when I ran hydroponics for like culinary herbs and,
and small, like berries. Lost my entire crop, so I can't run that anymore
with rolling blackouts. A third, ai data centers were
said that they're going to do crypto and ai. That's track tracing and cbdcs.
that is against our republic. It should not be allowed to stand. We should not participate in that. And
lastly, who gets held to account when they come and
destroy our way of life. Thank you. Thank you, caleb. Hi, I
just want to say thank you for allowing me to speak today. I am an expat. I am from
florida, and I brought my family here to live the texas way. I also am a little
concerned that you guys really don't know what's happening in the data centers,
knowing that in michigan they're making humanoids to train and sell. That is
another thing about trump's executive order that makes them militarized, not just chatgpt
making fun garage sales. But on that matter,
I'm here as a parent. I have 2 kids that I do not want
to be affected by what's going to happen when ai comes. I don't want them to get diseases
or learn things that we don't know is going to come back.
basically, my children are going to be ai's test subjects. I
want to highlight the issue of transparency. They don't have any,
and neither does this council. Most of the time, what we learned in the, when they did the big one for
texas was that most people did sign ndas. As you stated,
you did not, but I do not trust that anybody on this board would not. I
think we need to realize as a public that we can dismantle you and vote it on november.
no ais in lubbock, texas. Thank you. That was anne
marie monaco. If we could have the next 3 come up. Denise
colley, corey austin, and
josh chavez. I'm not so worried about water as I am character.
so you're supposed to represent us as the people. We just passed 4th of july. We
had a country that was built because people didn't want to listen. The grievances were
brought. You can go to youtube, you can listen to all these people, you can
see all the bad stuff that's happening with these data centers. So it's crazy to me that you would
consider pushing it forward. The fact that you're going to put it on the east side of town, okay, everybody knows
why, which is not right. It's not right. The amarillo project
that's just been done, lubbock matador stuff, tex aligned with that. They're on contract for 2.5 million
gallons per day. Whether they use it or not,
they have the contract to take it. Hopefully they don't. It's a closed-loop
system. Closed-loop systems still require water. You're going to say it doesn't use as
much water. They don't need that much water there. It's everything outside. It's the
energy that's being made. It's the other pieces that are being made for it. The only guy
at the may meeting that was honest about anything was the google guy. And all he said
was, we'll throw money at it. If there's a problem,
we'll throw money at it. If we run out of water, they don't care. They won't be
here. We'll be here. Most of us would say that we're
christians. This nation was founded on christian principles. Whether you want
to follow that god or not, that's the right that you were given based off
of those principles. You get to choose what you want to do, but you have to do it
within the boundaries of what the bible says, and the bible says
to take care of people. You've been put on the board to take care of people, not
for you, but for the common good. And there is no common good
for ai data centers. Drive around lubbock, look at all the flock systems.
every time you get online, you're trapped. Why do they need data centers? They're going
to collect more and more data. Thank you, eric. Denise, I just
want to say that there's been a lot of legitimate concerns that have been raised
by everybody that's been up to this podium. And you, as our council members and our
governmental representatives, I hope that you would absolutely
take everything into consideration and be that body that is for the people. Listen
to the people. They're talking to you today, and they've brought up some amazing facts, things that I learned today,
and I know many of us here have. So please consider, prayerfully consider,
what the people are telling you. It doesn't sound like it's a good idea for
lubbock, texas. Thank you, denise. Corey? Corey? Hi, I'm
corey austin, and I did have a statement planned, but y'all did that lovely slideshow,
so I'm going to respond to some things on that slideshow that I hope you'll take into consideration and you
ask yourself these questions when you're looking at this particular problem. I noted
that you said 100,000 gallons per day was the water usage
for a data center. Where are you getting that number? According to abilene, the
stargate center, their fill-up rate is 1 million gallons per
building. They are slated to have 10 buildings. That
doesn't account for evaporation rates. That doesn't account
for systematic blow-off, which means they actually take the water they put in the system
and they let it go. Where are they letting it go? Where does it go? What happens to it? You
also noted that we've obviously had great conservation efforts
around here. What for? If we're just going to hand it over to a
data center that's not going to produce anything or manufacture anything,
why am I conserving water? So please, when you see
statistics, start asking yourself why. And according to the environmental
and energy study institute, which is actually an independently owned third-party
environmental study institute, they're saying these data centers can consume up to 5
million gallons a day. 5 million gallons a day. That's
huge. You can actually supply water for a whole country at that rate. And at the rate
they are actually talking about scaling these data centers in the state of
texas. Texas has been in a drought ever since I have lived here. I've been born and
raised here in texas. And water's always been an issue.
so why are we even thinking about allowing things
in the state, in our county, in our city that are going to draw on one
of our most precious resources. Corey, thank you. Thank you.
if we could have paul scioli, kamal patel, and fabian mata
come up and take your seat. Thank you. Josh. My name is
josh chavez. Mr. Mayor, city council, I had a lot
of questions for y'all. A lot of them got addressed. Everything from pollution
to water usage to electricity, so on and so forth. Y'all know we do not
have electrical infrastructure for this. These data centers
consume anywhere between 20% and 100% of what a city the size of
lubbock would do. Where are you going to get the transformers? Transformers are anywhere
between 6 months and 4 years out from being able
to be manufactured. Not to mention water. Everybody's brought up the aquifer that's
already going to be depleted in 50 to 100 years. I appreciate the efforts
for water conservation. Like she said, what is the point if you're just going
to hand it to an out-of-state billionaire that is not from here, does not live here,
will not suffer the consequences? That leads me to believe that y'all are one
of 3 things. You are corrupt, you are incompetent,
or you are both. But you are certainly neither.
that's cause for a recall election. Y'all serve us. You
don't serve billionaires.
serve your citizens. It's a social contract. Contract.
abide by it. Thank you, josh.
paul? Paul scioli? Thank y'all
for hosting this. It's a wonderful idea. My name is
paul scioli. I'm a 66-year resident of lubbock and
lubbock county. I also own property in kent county, which
is just east of lubbock. And I've had the displeasure of dealing with, they
installed, unbeknownst, the largest solar farm of 1.5
million panels over thousands, thousands
of acres. And now I am competing right out my back door for a 1.6
million square foot data center. So
over the last few years, I have made it my business
to understand why and learn about this, and I have,
and I've learned a lot. And there's a lot of things that were on those
slides that were not accurate. I'm going to give you one example. Noise
mitigation. The real word is total noise because
of what was mentioned. Understand the word infrasonic. Understand the damage. You can
mitigate that. The truth is, after all my experience, and I
have all the questions and all the research, I have it stacked this high, I
will tell you that these projects could be done
responsibly. They won't. And if
you deal with these people, long enough like I have, you'll find it's not that pleasant.
but you must have, and I appreciate those slides because
you touched on a lot of those things, strong enforceable protections
to put in place before the construction begins, because if you don't, they,
you can't win the fight. They have the money. So all the concerns that were brought
forth, I understand, and they're all accurate. Thank you, paul. Okay. Fabian?
yeah, my name is fabian. I live in north lubbock. I happened
to be in attendance to that planning and zoning meeting where the california guy wanted
to get the zoning changed to put that 900-acre thing,
dump. And I was there for another reason. Ironically, I was there for ordinance 6323, 1972 city
ordinance that pretty much says the same thing that y'all are going to do to try to,
if you put the data center, noise mitigation, planting of trees, that ordinance says
the same thing. And we got triple c concrete polluting it. There's no trees. We got
permian basin materials, 401 north avenue k. We got dc caliche crushing recycling
concrete right above the canyon lakes, violating the ordinance. No
enforcement from city. All of you got my email, and city manager, you've yet
to respond. 3 weeks. What part of the ordinance allows
pollution in the yellow house canyon region? Ordinance 6323 is being violated,
and you're proposing we're going to have noise mitigation too? De jure and de facto, you can write it in the law,
enforcement is not there. I know walker. I know the stormwater people. I had
to file a complaint at texas commission on environmental quality fraud and men
in charge of dfw, amarillo, lubbock, and big spring for
fraud because the rock crusher, d.c. Caliche and nagabauer hard 8 material, are crushing
right above there. Concrete is even more polluting. Recycled concrete is even more polluting
than regular concrete because it's got paint and material. It's disgusting. Why haven't
you all responded? Why are these plants allowed to operate right there in the
canyon lakes policy zone? I still await your response. You did a half response,
martinez, but that didn't work out there. The city staff planning, that didn't work. I want the
specific, anyway, I want specifics. And yeah,
texas tech has a man at door thing. Don't bring up texas tech anymore, please.
they have the matador project. Thank you, fabian.
apparently we had a no-show, so if we could have jordan
chisholm, william murray, and cece lawrence come up, please. And jordan chisholm,
you'll be first. Thank you,
city council. Thank you, city manager's office
for having this event for everybody. I, I appreciate the proposed zoning changes
closed-loop cooling noise mitigation berms. I think those
are all good ideas. But I share the same concerns as a lot
of our other citizens in that
they have not very much faith that anything will be done to enforce those regulations if
they're in place. Texas is a very permissive political
climate for businesses and not for the environment.
for their citizens, the water
and hopefully we can enforce
those zoning requirements if we do in fact have a datacenter
built here. There are some issues with the slides
for example, I know we mentioned 100,000
gallons of water per day. The average hyperscaler data center
uses over a million gallons of water per day. Now that's not a closed-loop system,
adiabatic cooling versus forced air, just something to mention. Thank you. I'm not
opposed to data centers unlike a lot of
people here I understand they're important. You know,
they're important for national security, they're important for the u.s.
economy, but we have to make sure that we protect ourselves and we protect our families and
protect our city before we invite something
like that in. Thank you, jordan. William murray. I'll go
ahead and jump. I don't want to cover utility costs, resources, things like that, because I think there's been an
amazing job done with that so far. So I'm just going to try to jump in and cover some other things. So the accountability, I think,
is a big issue for me, because the issues that we see showing up wouldn't be an issue if
these companies were not running counter to the community that they're in. If
they wanted to be good stewards of the community, we wouldn't be running into these problems. It's not
like they just invented closed-loop cooling. This technology already existed.
they deliberately chose not to do it because it would save them money. How do we hold them to account when we know that
that's what they're going to be going after is the financial incentive? Another thing that I don't really see
coming up a lot right now is safety. So how will the safety of the public be considered?
there's reports that there are people who are coordinating this malicious activities,
excuse me, citing that irresponsible development
of ai data centers as one of their motivating factors. This included the group of
people that were arrested plotting to attack the president's ufc event. They had
this motivator among their others. So given the immense public backlash
that we're seeing not only here but all over, it seems like we have
to logically arrive at a conclusion where there will likely be harassment and
malfeasance, if not outright violence, against the structures, the people who build, maintain,
and staff them. We can act like it's a foregone conclusion that
we need to jump in bed with the devil so that we can make a deal, but what we're talking
about when we're talking about making a deal is the thread count on the sheet. Do better.
look at how we have communities across texas working. San
marcos and any other growing number of resources that we can do right by the people in the
communities who live there, not right by the people who are just trying to save money by picking us
to build their data centers. Thank you, william. Now, as cece comes up,
we can have the next 3 people come and take your seat. Calvin trossel, michael
homer, and stephen sanders, please. Thank you, cece.
hello, my name is cece lawrence. I live in district 01, and if you want to learn
about me, you should check my website, not a palantir database. The concerns
over our constitutional rights, water usage, environmental
hazard, privacy, and the general fear of an orwellian future are valid,
but I'm here to discuss the finances. There is no reason for the city of
lubbock to offer any incentive to any company wishing to buy
our land and use our resources. To the contrary, data centers
are so widely unpopular that I feel those companies should incentivize us. I've lived and
voted in lubbock for 20 years. Consistently, lubbockites have
wanted better schools with school lunches that don't resemble whatever aramark found
almost spoiled in the back of a hot truck. Lubbockites want clean parks
with safe trails, affordable community events, more sports, nice roads, paved
alleys, decorative streetlights. Lubbockites want joyland back.
all these wonderful things we can't afford, right? Well, they
can. I'd rather have lubbock as it is now than blindly trust
some tech bro jerk because he paid some senator to squawk about job creation and global
competition. Take care of your people here and now because the
moral mishandlings surrounding democratic accountability and corrupt loopholes for the obscenely wealthy perpetuate
our economic and social problems. Once you open a
dialogue with other cities who use the same water sources as
we do and unite to get the better end of the deal, we the people will prove we don't need them.
thank you for your time and your consideration. Thank you, cece. Calvin? Well, good
evening. Thank you for having the hearing. I appreciate it. I appreciate your comments. I've
learned a lot. And so I've lived in lubbock 27 years.
in my area of lubbock, I irrigate my yard from a well. And so some of the water issues
that the city faces don't affect me directly, but I work in the agricultural sector,
and so I think in terms of what I do in my job is I help farmers in west texas grow their crops
in the presence of frequent drought. And I was very interested
in the numbers that you showed about the water data use. I think I think the 100,000 gallons per day is probably a
low, a very low end. When I calculated some estimates, I used 300,000. There are some
very large data centers that use much more than that. But the concept of a closed loop is very,
I think is worth pursuing, making that a standard. But I think in terms
of what I've looked at the data and the number one concerns that we had in terms of what we
saw here is that water was the biggest issue at the top. It was around 90%. But
after listening to things, I think maybe water is not the main issue because the amount
of use at the 35 million gallons daily use is, is actually relatively small.
but this is what we live with here in lubbock, is the water restrictions,
the guidelines for conservation, so forth. And when I first started
to learn about this topic, I thought, why do we even consider a data center where it rains less than 25 or even 30
inches a year and we have renewable water, which we have neither here in
west texas. And so also, I think, as I looked at, I looked up the map,
I appreciate districts 1 and 2 raising your concerns. I think
that right now, without annexation, there's not room in the city
of lubbock to build a data center. It would be outside the city, which we may not have control
of. But I think the things we've talked about here tonight could be a guideline
for the region, as our rural communities don't have the resources like lubbock has to
evaluate the concept and the benefits. Thank you, calvin.
michael. Ladies and gentlemen,
I'll be brief, I'll be concise. I'll give you pros and cons. On
these data centers as I see it. Supposedly there's job
creation. Not really. There's a relative handful of job,
construction jobs that'll happen pretty much right away in the construction phase. Beaten bow brothers employ more
people long-term than any data center will. After that,
after construction, it's it maintenance. Period,
full stop. After that, ai proponents say they'll
invest in the power grid, roads, and fiber optic networks. I'll believe that
when I see it. On the opposite side, the cons
to this, energy consumption. Data centers can use as much electricity as a small city.
somebody, somebody with lp&l will come up with the numbers
for the kilowatts used in the city, I'd love to see them. I think lubbock
qualifies as a small city. Water consumption,
data centers consume millions of gallons, millions of gallons annually. Had a
conversation with people at the water department
about a year ago. They said we've got plenty of water I think the number he used was,
I can't remember, but I think between 50 and 100 years. That
data center, using your numbers, mr. Atkinson, 100,000
gallons a day, that adds up to 36 million gallons a year.
by the way, the conversation I had
with the people at the water department. That conversation happened before the concept
of data centers was even a topic of discussion. Thank you, michael. Thank you. Now
stephen sanders comes up. Could we have larry smith, susan pettis, and anson mcfall
come up, please? Thank you so much for having me. I just wanted
to thank the mayor for having this meeting. We talked about this when I protested
them at the texas tech meeting, so he did keep his word and have a meeting. I thank you for that. But the problem is,
is that I can't even believe we're here talking about a data center when you know that the
people don't want one. Like, why are we doing this? Why are
we doing this? Here's the other part. Here's the other part.
why are you putting it in east lubbock? They're not going to, your friends won't allow you to put it in southwest lubbock. Your friends. I know
them. They know me. And you
don't have a backbone to stand up to these people and tell them, hey, my people of lubbock don't
want that. It doesn't just affect those people in north and east lubbock. It affects everybody in this city. We want
our water. We've been saving our water. That, that's on us. My yard is yellow as
hell. Because I'm trying to do what you asked me to do. But you can't listen
to us and just say no. Just say no, man. Do it
for your people. Do it for us. I voted
for you. I voted for you and I endorsed you. And I'm expecting you to turn
around and stand up for me like I know you can. You're a
you're a baptist preacher, and you know that when we're not
taking care of our people, we are letting christ down.
you know that. You have the
power, mark, to lead us in the right direction,
and we're watching you. If you don't, I'm going to recall you in november. You know it. You
know it. Christy, thank you so much. Gordon, thank you. I'm watching you. I hope that
you'll do the right thing. You're new, so I'm going to give you a break. Thank you,
stephen. Larry, larry smith. I
want to thank the council for being here tonight and letting us do this. I've been on a school board before. I've been
on that side of it. It's kind of, it can be a little tough, so I appreciate your time
in doing this. That school district actually was right next to roberts county where
you're pulling about 30% of your water, so it it's a little close to my
heart as well. A gentleman said earlier that fermi has,
can pull up to 2.5 million gallons per day. I also read
that it can escalate even up to 10 million gallons per day.
that is concerning. That's concerning because they're part of cromwell. We're part of
cromwell. What defense mechanisms do we have in place to keep them from taking which
basically is our water, whether it's there or any other part
of the line coming down here.
do you have defense mechanisms to, to protect us in that?
that's one thing that, that concerned me. The other thing is, is if, if you do
bring a data center comes here, they're coming here for a reason. They're coming here for the water. They're coming for the tax base,
to not be taxed too much from somewhere else. Do not give a tax break. Do not give a
tax break. You provide all these services, they need
to pay them. Thank you. Thank you, larry. Susan pettis?
susan pettis not here? What
about anson mcfall? Anson mcfall? No? Okay. Let's have
melanie parks, jordan jennings, and john cadena come
up, please. And after these 03, we will take our short
break. Okay? That's good
because I need to go to the restroom. Hello, council. My name is melanie
parks, not affiliated with melanie park neighborhood or
melanie park church. I am my own entity, melanie with an a and plural with an
s. So when I say my name, people say, that name sounds familiar. Not
affiliated with that. Councilman harris, I'm so glad
you asked the question because I have an answer for you. The layman term
for a data center, and I'm going to put in a little biblical term with it as well. We need to
stop calling them data centers.
they are surveillance centers.
they are data collection hubs.
behavioral tracking warehouses. If you know, you know. If you
don't know, read the bible.
what we have setting up is just like china, a social credit
score system that we will all be imprisoned to. Some people
probably aren't agreeing. But like I said, if you read your bible, you know this is a
digital beast system being set up for the end times to come.
lord help us. Thank you, melanie. Jordan, I'm here
on behalf of my divine authority and all those who
looking into my eyes right now, you are under judgment
to your discernment to stand for we the people and not these corporations. And judgment will
be made to those who do not take heed
to this warning. You do as we need you to do
to be one as a nation and to work together. And if you
continue to let this tyranny to happen with big corporations
to consume us, you will be given a whirlwind
of things that will happen. So
take heed to this warning. If you don't stand by we the
people, we the people will stand up and you will have nothing to hold. That goes
with our food being poisoned, our water being overfilled
with chlorine. We've been targeted long enough,
and it's going to happen, and you all know it. So if you
don't get on the right side right now, you're going to be a part
of the future of what was and what the future will be by not standing by us, the
people, no matter what species you are.
because we can all do this together and make this world better. We have to let go of
our ego and pride and make this world better by not consuming it and taking
over mother earth and making it even hotter and drier to make
this nation prosperous and not just a slave system. Thank you,
jordan. We're about to, about
to take a break, but john cadena, you were up next. Are you okay? Sorry. Thank you. So
I came here today just because I personally was very ignorant
on this topic and I wanted to kind of get all the
information I could. I came in here with my concerns. I'm leaving with a few more concerns. But one question, I'm sorry,
one couple that I did have.
one was the district 1, district 2 issue. I mean, come on. I mean, it may be, it
may be because historically those lines were laid in certain parts of town. I
think everyone can probably gauge why those lines were laid in certain parts of town. And
now we're seeing the results of that. That's a major concern for me. I don't even live in
those districts and it's still concern for me. Another concern I had was we're given these
reassurances. One of them was this reassurance
by governor abbott, so on and so forth. You know, they're paying their own bills,
so on and so forth. But I think anybody who's lived in lubbock for a good amount of
time knows that the dollar goes
far. I think we saw that. Most recently with our local university,
how if you have enough money, you can make things happen. So
that's not really an assurance for me that they're going to pay their own bills when we
have many wealthy people who can just kind of throw some money around and
maybe those reassurances go away. Another my major concern
I have is, as many people have mentioned before this panel represents
the people, the constituents. Thankfully, my representative
is not on, it was not my concern, but it is concerning
to me that we are here listening to the people. Thank you, john. At this time,
we're going to take a break. I think we're going to have enough time to get through everyone who has signed
up to speak. There are bathrooms, restrooms to the
east and the south if you would like to take a break,
and we will get started here in 20 minutes. We're going
to call, let's call 5 up at a time now, because I think we may have
some people, the crowd has thinned out, so some people may not step forward. So let's go ahead and
call 5 up at a time, abner, if you would. Okay, we, the next
5 are scott white, joyce white, corey gressett, glenn
little, and kaylin lewis. If
you will come up and take a seat over here, we will get started again. It
may be pretty quick. I guess you go ahead and call 5 more.
okay. Oh, here we go. Sure,
we'll wait a couple minutes. I think they're coming in. Okay, sure, sure. I think matt
is going to go out there and scream and say, get in here now. Say open bar.
yeah, I guess go to the snack stand, help support your civic center. For alcohol,
I guess they don't. For those
of you who have remained for the second half, just,
I think y'all, everybody's handled themselves really, I think,
well tonight. Appreciate that very much. And I've watched a lot of these online,
and I always believe that lubbock is able to do these things right in a civil way,
and you've shown that tonight. So we really do appreciate it. I know there's a lot of strong opinions on this,
a lot have been shared tonight, but thank you all for how you've handled yourself. So,
all right. Okay, matt gave me the thumbs up that that he has
made the announcement out in the hall. So go ahead and
call 4 more, I guess. Let's see if we can get 3 up here because we need to get started. Let's
go with corina quattlebaum,
ann haggard, and nick marmolejo. Any of you here?
all right, and let's call a few more to
see if we can get our third up here. Ann haggard. Ann
haggard. Scott white. Joyce
white. Are you corey? Okay,
corey gressett. Glenn little. Keelan lewis. Karina
quattlebaum, and haggard.
okay. All right, let's go ahead and get started.
corey, come on up. Hi, my name
is corey ann. Mayor, I'm speaking to you christian to
christian. Mayor mcbreyer, I asked you once if you were a follower of jesus. And you responded with, yes, I am a
christian. Therefore, as a sister in christ and a citizen of this city that you have been
given responsibility over, I must remind you that you are commanded by god to lead,
protect, sustain, hear, and provide for your flock with dignity, godly intention,
care, and fear of the lord. What does your fear of god say about you? On judgment day, you will have to account for every
careless and empty word that you speak. When you have to look god almighty in the face in all
of his glory, are you going to be able to say that you did the best for your people? Are you going to have to admit that you
poisoned the well? When ai inevitably comes to take your job, the alleged money you took and stuffed in
your back pocket is only going to cushion the blow when you fall and get shoved
off the top and join the rest of us here at the bottom. So make sure to look around you,
see the faces of your flock, and remember your people, mayor. For those of you that are smelling what we are all
stepping in, you can join us for free at a community-led discussion
about the honest impacts of hyperscale data centers in our city and what can be
done to stop them at the ywca north event room tomorrow from 6 pm to 8 pm. We have
clayton tucker coming to speak, who is running for ag commissioner, and stephen
sanders, who is our committee's organizer for save lubbock. Come find us in a blue shirt to sign the petition and get these
points they made fact-checked. Bingo. Thank you, corey.
nick. Hi everyone, my name is
nick marmolejo. I was born and raised in the north side of
town. I'm also a citizen resident of district 4. First
of all, I just want to set the tone here by going back to one of the original speakers who said
something pretty prominent. He said, are we willing to compromise our identity?
this isn't even a statistical conversation. This is an identity conversation. So I
want to just first of all thank you great speakers for going ahead
of us. I also want to point out that no one here, no one that I've heard in the city has made a sound argument
for why we should even entertain an ai data center.
and I'll point to the very presentation that y'all presented here today. I mean,
there was something on the, maybe the 3rd slide that pointed out that there's not
even a common definition for a large-scale data center that we've agreed upon. So put aside
all the statistics, we don't even have a definition for what that actually is,
and that's foundational. So I want to point that out. The other thing I want to say is,
in a city, lubbock, known for moving a little bit slower, doing things differently. Why
are we rushing this? And we are rushing it by even having this conversation. I want
to also point to one more thing, which is there's this undertone I can
hear and see in the community about one of two things being true.
either a, either a, there are backroom conversations that are going
on that we're not privy to, and they this is a formality, really, or b, you don't feel
you can actually stop the train from coming. It's inevitable. Neither thing should be true.
and so I just implore and look out to all of you and just say, let's get
off of facebook. Let's all of us, 600 of us who were here,
go find the actual petition. Go ahead and sign up for that so that we can put a pause
on the moratorium. So thank you all. And god bless. Thank you. Thank you, nick. Deborah
hart, niecy pratt, brooke
barrett, patricia ramsey, and
zan ango. If any of you are here, if you would come up, please.
and we will start with, with you, and you introduce yourself.
thank you. I'm deborah hart. Firstly, the noise. This is the second time
I've heard trees mentioned to mitigate the noise. Now, I
didn't chatgpt this, but I think trees require water, and
I also think they lose their leaves every fall. Anyway,
governor abbott has spent several years courting texas
to get the data centers. His current backpedaling is a massive acknowledgment that the
current framework is broken. To avoid the distrust of local government,
all applications for specific use permits for large-scale data centers should
be put to a vote by the citizens of lubbock. Thank you. Good evening. I'm
niecy pratt. Thank you for this meeting today. Economic development should
never be about growth and tax impact alone. It should certainly not come
at the expense of the use and enjoyment of our land, of our quality of our life,
or public health and safety. Data centers infringe
on every one of these things, and I think what you heard here today overwhelmingly is
citizens are telling you there is not a price or tax impact
that can convince us to buy out our quality of life or
public health and safety. There is not a dollar amount. If you were to put a vote
to the public citizens, I venture to say overwhelmingly
that they would vote no against data centers completely. And we
implore you to not do what, what data centers want,
what developers want, but to listen to your constituents. And
in the alternative, if you are not going to ask public, take into
account what we want and vote against data centers, then in the alternative,
please put a moratorium in place. You have people petitioning for a moratorium.
stand up and take the initiative to put a moratorium in place immediately
to pump the brakes on this. That's not radical. It's happening everywhere. And we
want you, if you want us to trust you, put the moratorium in place.
don't make us petition you to do it. Once the moratorium's
in place, form a multidisciplinary committee, a technical
committee that has residents that are a part of it. You've done a year's worth of work
with out residents. Include residents to help develop these standards. Ban data centers,
put a moratorium in place, and put individual projects to the citizens to vote. Thank
you. Thank you, misty. Brooke.
hello, I'm brooke barrett. Thank you for hosting us this evening.
now, many things I was going to say have already been covered
very well tonight but just perhaps a bit
of anecdotal storytelling. It's been covered, the
infrasonic sound waves that travel through the ground and
affect things like livestock. I would also like to mention that lubbock
specifically has a stray animal problem. And it relates to increased violence
in those animals. It's upsetting to them. And as
somebody whose partner is a mail carrier and serves the
city every day, it is, it's already brutal what they experience in terms
of roaming dogs. So that's something that's important to keep in mind. And I
absolutely also support the concept of a moratorium until further environmental impact
studies can be done in these other areas across texas. And then as these
centers have been rising up across texas maybe it's small
potatoes compared to what large corporations can offer, but I
think this is a wonderful opportunity for lubbock to embody its character as the
friendliest city in texas and to protect not only its own
citizens but perhaps citizens, at least those who have the means and would like to leave communities
that have been poorly affected by these data centers to come be a part
of this economic community. And to I just think it's a good opportunity to be different,
to be leaders of another color, to try and welcome
in people who are trying to escape these problems in their own communities as well.
thank you. Thank you, brooke.
hi, I'm patricia ramsey. One of the first things we are taught when we begin to venture out
into the world is to pay close attention to high-pressure tactics, as they are almost always a sign
that something rarely in our best interest is going on. We continue hearing this warning
constantly at work through emails, for example,
saying if you receive an email using one of these high-pressure tactics, that's suspect. One of the most
common high-pressure techniques is an inflated sense of urgency. If you don't act
on this right now, you'll miss out completely. Data centers are being built
with a great sense of urgency, but why? It's not for the good
of the host community. What are they bringing us directly? They provide a remote service
which could be provided from any location. How many permanent jobs for local
citizens have been promised. What else do they purport to offer
to the average citizen? These centers are being built with extreme urgency in order
to beat the regulatory clock. I suspect that investors are
drastically overbuilding in order to overpower their competitors.
but if this amount of power is truly needed, the demand will continue and
companies will eventually have to accede to regulatory requirements.
and if we wait, learning even more from other communities,
we actually put the city in a much better position. One of our greatest abilities as
humans is that we can learn from each other and adapt. And
in the course of learning and adapting, I believe we will find ways
to do better and be better without selling out the local community
for a handful of assumptions, and suggestions, which is all we have
at this time. Thank you, patricia. Thank you
for allowing me a moment to speak. I, for the board's benefit,
I'm not going to be going over anything else that has previously been discussed, so I thank you for your patience as I try
to navigate around the many notes I've made throughout today's presentation. My name
is zan argo. I was born and raised here in the high plains, and I am currently
working as a policy analyst researcher at texas tech university, and I wanted to
present several concerns I had with this bill. Justly, it's
public health. The amount of energy that we need to produce in order to
facilitate these data centers, whoever will build it, will most likely be done from gas, and we all know that
gas generators pump a lot of nitrogen, nitrogen monoxide and nitrogen dioxide
into our atmosphere, which causes asthma. And we're
going to be trading our children's health for nothing. I also wanted
to speak to you to the members of the board who state we have to keep them here because if we
let them go elsewhere, then they'll be unregulated.
to you, I'd say we don't care. We are here to speak to them in the
city because we will fight them in the city. If they leave and go elsewhere, if they go
to the county, we will fight them in the county. If we have to go to the capitol, we will
fight them at the capitol. We will go wherever they are. We only need you
to represent us here in the city. We will take the fight to them. Also, I wanted
to say this isn't the first time that the high plains has been fighting with a billionaire
for our water. In 2011, a billionaire, an oil billionaire, tried to buy all
of ogallala, around 200,000 acres, and sell it to dallas. Today, I ask you, are we going
to have to do it again? Is the high plains residents again
going to have to spend over $100 million to buy our own water back? And
lastly, I wanted to touch on a quote that you had asked. You asked,
why should we care? Just in layman's terms, why should we allow this? And it's the demand.
but I ask you, who demanded this? Because it wasn't me. Thank you, zan. We
could have vanessa, vanessa hernandez, ruben vasquez,
gonzalo ramirez, jessica sanchez, and robert rogers.
hi, good evening. Sorry. Oh
yeah, that's fine. Thank you. I'd like to start with my favorite bible verse,
mark 8:36. For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain
the whole world and forfeit his soul? My question for you today, for what shall
it profit a tech giant if they shall gain the whole world's data and forfeit the
community's soul? The decisions we make today will determine whether future generations
inherit the same lubbock we all love, or are they going
to be left with the remnants of a past we should have preserved? While many data
centers attempt to address the water concern through air cooling systems instead, this simply replaces
one resource concern with another, as they also heavily rely
on massive amounts of electricity while continuously releasing waste heat and
operating industrial cooling equipment around the clock. In one of the world's largest
concentrations of data centers, northern virginia, concerns have been raised over the rising
electricity demand, transmission lines cutting through rural landscapes,
constant generator noise, and pressure on local infrastructure,
to name a few. Last month, san marcos became the first city in texas to prohibit data centers with
within its city limits because its leaders concluded that the benefits do not outweigh the
costs. And another texas, if another texas community is prohibiting such developments,
shouldn't lubbock take notice? Yes, building facilities creates hundreds
of temporary construction jobs. However, the key word is temporary. And once
construction is complete, many large data centers employ only a few dozen or at most a couple
hundred full-time employees, despite occupying hundreds of
acres and consuming enormous amounts of electricity, resources,
and infrastructure. We all have to ask ourselves, are we building a stronger
lubbock, or are we simply lining the pockets of corporate entities and investors while
our community foots the bill? Thank you, vanessa. Ruben?
robbin. Hello. Just
want to touch on some of the things that everybody's kind of already brought up. One of
the biggest things that I think that I would agree with the
most and that people should probably listen to is probably clayton tucker. You know, he has some very, very good information
about how things have gotten to where they're at right now. For example,
and how things have switched, right? Because how does ai
serve us? I believe that we've tried touching on that once and we don't have a definition yet
of what they even are. But let's see who benefits most.
it's not really regular people who are looking up recipes and making funny videos to put on
facebook or something. It's big
companies, big companies that are coming in. And I think that
we need to remember that we're a republic, right? So,
but there's a word for whenever maybe city officials or,
you know what I mean, and companies come together
to subvert the will of the people. What's that called? Fascism, right? And I
don't believe that this is something that is just
happening now, but I think like this lady had said earlier,
like there is a very, very like push through. I don't know why.
I just think it's kind of strange, but I, there's
something that I heard earlier where okay, so let's do all this
with energy and stuff, but we're in the middle
of a war right now. You're like, what are we going to do with that, right? Like, what if everything stops coming,
right? And we have these places that are, I think somebody said
about diesel, like they got these big diesel generators and things like that. It's like,
well we got to kind of make sure that we have what we need.
thank you, ruben. If we could have blaine shipman, j.r.
ferguson, and brandon elam come
up. Gonzalo ramirez. Good
evening. My name is gonzalo ramirez, and I want
to first thank you, mayor and councilpersons,
for having this forum. Forum where we can have that freedom of speech. I also want to thank
the people that don't live in district 1 or district 2 that
have actually come up here and advocated for district 1 and
2. I live north, I live north
of loop 289 within the city limits. I have a private well.
I spent 15 years away from
lubbock. I was born and raised, educated here, and job opportunities took me away
for 15 years. And when I came back, I decided I wanted to live back in my community.
so I built a house 20 years ago in north lubbock. I have the
same concerns as far as water. I have a private well. I have to go 140 feet to get water. I
have the same concerns about noise because there are older
homes in north and east lubbock. And so they don't have the soundproofing that newer
houses have. So that's my concern with those 2 things. But the thing that I want
to bring up today, or the last thing I want to bring up actually, is the
slide that said data centers will only be allowed in 2 zoning districts
through a specific use permit. Well, we know now that it looks like district 1 and district 2
will be those 2 districts. So really, I'm asking those of you that are that represent the
other districts. And I'm making eye contact with those of you that are not in
district 1 or district 2 because I really want you to support the idea
of not having these data centers in district 1 and
district 2. If you want to have that conversation with data centers, that's fine. My only question
that I would ask, that I would want you to ask as part
of the overall discussion with data centers is what technologies are you bringing
in? Thank you. Thank you, gonzalo. Jessica? Thank you for
taking this time and staying. I
don't want to repeat what everybody's already questioned. I have those questions written
down. But I just want to go back to I live right
on the line between the city and the county and where the data center was going
to be put previously. And my
question is, why lubbock? The developer was coming from san
francisco. My mother grew up there,
and my grandmother's house is made, was built
in the 1920s and it's worth $1 million. So it's a 4-bedroom, very simple house. Why
lubbock? Because we have cheap
land? Why? We already know we have problems with water. I have one other question. If there was one built and they
had to use solar panels, what about the light and the heat
on the airport? Has anything been looked
into as far as that? And that's all. Thank you. Thank you,
jessica. Robert rogers. Robert rogers, no. Blaine shipman.
thank you for letting me address y'all tonight. Many of the concerns have already been
addressed. I had prepared remarks, but I'm gonna kind of set those aside. Really, I
want to get down to the heart of the question that is being
asked. All of these concerns are valid, the environmental concerns, the water concerns,
the land use concerns. But the question is, what is going to give us the most control
at this point in time? Is it going to be passing the moratorium and waiting
on the state to give the county more power to regulate these? Or is it
going to at least have a mechanism for us to cope and at least to push back
on these power brokers? Individual citizens, we can come together, but without the backing
of y'all and without a system that y'all come up with and help us
to come up with, we can't push back on that. And my worry is if we just say
no wholesale, they will go out to the counties. They will take advantage of texas law. They
will express their right as landowners of texas to have unfettered access
to all of the water under that ground with no regulation, no
oversight, no care in the world for the actual community that we have called
home, some of us for decades, probably a few of us in this room for centuries. So
thank you for your time addressing me. Please take this into consideration. And to
everyone who's spoken tonight, thank you all as well. Thank you, blaine. Okay, if matthew
conklin, rebecca komarek, and mason patton, if you'd come up.
in the meantime, j.r. Ferguson or brandon elam. I'll
be brief because everybody pretty much covered my concerns. I will start off with
saying I think this meeting came about in the wrong order.
I think the citizens should come first, and then the council addresses the citizens.
if the citizens wanted a data center. It should have been presented. But going on,
lubbock, texas receives an average about 19 inches of rain a year. Your charts
confirm we don't get water from here, it comes from everywhere else. The worst
drought I experienced, I believe like 2011, we had
maybe 5 inches of rain. And a large facility drawing water will dry up wells. And it will
leave people without water who rely on wells. Even a mid-sized data
center can consume as much water as a small town, which, say roughly 50,000 people,
it'll consume roughly 5 million gallons of water in a day. There's different ways
of cooling data centers, of course. You have air. One of the bigger concerns is noise
pollution. I don't believe the decibel ratings that you had up
were entirely correct. Because around 200 feet outside the
perimeter of a mid-sized data center the ambient noise level
is 65. So imagine a hair dryer next to your ear
for infinity. And clayton tucker did cover
this. The ambient heat that these facilities give off can raise surface temperatures
around the communities 3.6 degrees at the lowest, and sometimes as much as 16.4
degrees. I don't know about y'all, but I don't want a
124-degree day in west texas.
now, I'll end by saying I just hope the council listens
to the people. It should be the people first, followed by who represents them. We give
the orders, right? Or we make the requests, and you represent us. Thank you
for your time. Thank you, brendan. Matthew. I'm matthew
conklin. Ah, first, y'know,
like he said, you represent us, and so, ah, I don't see what
the problem would be with having a referendum, just voting on it. I mean,
we the people, ah, seemingly don't want it. I don't see why
we couldn't just all vote on it. Secondly, I, I know I
can't remember who someone got upset about, someone saying bingo. There's a bingo card out there that has
all these lists of if this is brought up, it goes on the bingo card.
yeah, it's a funny joke, but in seriousness, like, people are predicting what the fake
platitudes and promises are that have been given to given to us by these people, and
they're predictable because they're over and over and over again. Well, there's data
centers out there now that have been out there, and people are being hurt by it,
and it's being documented. There's you know, lawsuits and
health costs and all these things that go along with it. The data is out there. A lot
of people have brought up a lot of that. I don't, I mean,
even just that being out there should be enough to just say, hey,
let's not do this. Like and that kind of goes back
to our priorities, which there was a gentleman, and I'm not trying
to knock him, but he said how is this going to affect us economically? That wasn't the number one
priority by like 90% of the people that came up here and spoke. It was health, it was
pollution, it was water consumption, electricity, all these different things.
economics is like down here. We don't want it here
for all these reasons. And so, yeah, that's all I got to say. Thank you. Thank you.
thank you, matthew. Rebecca?
yes, I'm speaking tonight from my niece. She couldn't be here. She just had a baby. I'm
just really tired
of my voice not being heard, and I don't understand why this
country is just allowing people that have money to just control
everything and act like the rest of us don't matter, like we're not important. This
is our country just as much as anybody that has money, and we have rocks. So I just
don't understand that, and I don't, let's see. I don't
understand why we can't vote on this, just like you said.
and I've seen the drinking water on tv, I believe it was
georgia, and it wasn't only brown, it was dark brown. And that's the drinking water that
the citizens had to drink and bathe in. We're already being they scaled back
all the regulations for the epa and we're exposed to so many chemicals and
contaminants, and now you want to add something else. And I've also heard that children living
within 10 miles of a data center have lower bone mineral density. I don't understand why
we would want to put our children at risk for something that a tech
billionaire wants, and I don't understand what the urgency is. You know, all of a sudden
they're just building all these data centers against the people's will,
and I know, and I, I feel it, and that it has to do with mass surveillance,
and they want to take away our rights and probably turned this
into a dictatorship. I don't know, but that's what it feels like. And I'm, I've called my
congresspeople and they ignore me. I call them every day. As a matter of fact,
they laugh. I'm tired of it. I have, I'm a citizen. This is a democracy. We have
rights and the people's voices need to be heard. Thank you, rebecca. Hello, my name is
mason grant patton. I'm actually a new farmer. I inherited 2,500 acres. My
mother passed away in january for it. Don't think it was a fair trade-off, but you know,
you take what you can get. So a lot of the stuff that was on this slide wasn't correct. I,
I figure water for a living. We use around 35 million, like,
gallons of water a year, which is a lot, but that's for a farm like mine, which configures with the
100,000 gallons a day, but that's
for a small-scale data center, not a 940-acre one. That adds up to around 1.5 to 5 million
gallons a day, or 365 million
gallons a year. That's way more than what they were saying right there. I feel like that was pretty false,
what they were claiming. But not only that, don't get me
wrong, I'm proud to be part of this, but I don't understand
how this benefits us. I know it's been said a lot, but how does this benefit me? I mean,
they're collecting data on us, building a profile on us. How does that help us?
and they're keeping this all in this data center. Well, who's to say some country like china or russia can't
access that, hack into that, and then breach our livelihoods? I don't think that's fair
for each and every one of us, especially as americans. I think we have a right to that. Thank you so much. I appreciate y'all letting me
speak. Thank you very, thank you very much, mason. If we could have rebecca
lindsay, michelle wilkinson, addison hightower, and kevin
allen come up. And michelle,
you will be first. Hi everyone,
thank you for your time and attention today. Michelle wilkinson, I'm just a gal
from lubbock, but I do want to reiterate something that has been said repeatedly tonight,
and that what is the hurry? What is the hurry if we are so
smart and technology is moving so fast. Can we just take a
moment to see how this affects other communities? Right there
in abilene, we can watch our neighbors going through the
same thing that we're signing up for. Also, I want
to point out, when we're doing the planning for this thing, we don't have
to act like there's an imaginary data center. We have real-life examples with real
data that show that there are negative impacts happening in
the communities that just put these things in. We're not even 5 years out. The last thing I
wanted to say is that I just implore you guys,
we're a little bitty town, a little speck up against the interests of
corporations that have more money than independent nations in the world, than some
of the nations in the world. We need people who have vision
and who have foresight to look and stand up and say,
I love what you're doing, this is great, we got to slow down. We got
to slow down. Let's wait. Let's at least let our state
legislature meet and talk about the safeguards that they need to put in place
for oversight, for well-being, for, what are they going to do when
the multibillion-dollar company doesn't play by the rules
like they said they would? How do we hold them accountable?
but I thank you all for your time, and I hope you take this all
into consideration. Thank you.
has rebecca lindsay spoken? Rebecca? No, I have not, but I've been looking forward
to it. My name is rebecca lindsay. I live in lubbock. I have since 2017. It is not
about data. It is about mass surveillance. We are
the data. They are collecting everything on us, on our kids. There is more
information in the, the data centers regarding my
granddaughter who is less than a year old than there are of, of most of us who have been
here forever. That is about control. There was a young lady who was tracked
from texas to arkansas, I believe, using 83,000 block cameras. Where are they keeping
that data? This is all about control and mass surveillance.
we are making digital prisons for all of us. And those with
money can buy their way out. And this is, when you look at the rich, who, elton john,
who thinks because he donates $1 million that he can fly an
airplane, a jet, wherever he wants, but we have
to set our thermostats at 72 or conserve our water. The rich
get no, no, no no negatives out of this, it keeps coming
on the back of the american taxpayer. We don't need data
centers. They are not good for anybody or anything that
regards natural god-given
rights. We are a constitutional republic, not a democracy. A
constitutional republic, read your declaration of independence. There were 21
grievances in that declaration. From 56 men, and there were a, b, c, d,
e parts of some of those declarations of those grievances. We had
to take care of business as our forefathers need to take,
needed to take care of business. Stop letting them buy us out. That's all we want,
to be natural and to be healthy and
to have our water available to thank you, rebecca.
addison hightower. Thank you.
hi, my name is addison hightower, but more importantly, I am a local lubbock educator
as well as the daughter, granddaughter, and relative of generation upon generation
of ranchers and farmers from childress, texas. I can't bring you a bunch of data
on data centers, and people have expressed my concerns today here, but I am going
to tell you about what's going on in childress because it's real, it's what they're living, and it's what lubbock might see
if we invite them into our community. Childress is in a stage 4 water shortage. That is less than 2,615 feet
of water and only 6.1% capacity in lake greenbelt. They didn't
know a thing about data centers coming into their community until it was and done. It's not
within the city limits, it's within the county. That is a huge problem. It took everyone
by shock, and it has brought in a lot of problems with it. Traffic has increased,
become increasingly dangerous. It was already dangerous considering there's highway 83
and interstate 287, but it's backed up through town. There's many
wrecks and fatality upon fatality, including the dps officer who was recently killed, who I graduated with.
crime and assault cases have significantly risen, and the
grocery store shelves are empty. My family cannot get all of the supplies that they need
in their hometown, and that's something that would not just happen in a small community
but could come to here too. Apartments are being sold and people are being locked out
of their rental properties. There have been, that's not only a problem, but
people also don't have a place to go after that is said and done. And as an educator, a concern that's been expressed
to me is there's a constant cycle of children in and out of schools, which increases stress not only
on an already stressful profession, but as well as on the poor children who don't
even ask for that. And we talk about jobs and this creating jobs, but for childress, those
people were brought in to construct them. It was not local people that constructed
them. It's given very few jobs within the community. And someone said earlier that they
promise that they'll throw money at it, but that doesn't buy back our livelihood, nor does it buy back our ranchland
or water. Thank you, addison.
as kevin allen comes up, we would like to have noel
zavala, elena white, and john macias come up. And kevin
allen is next. All right,
my name is kevin allen. I'm here today as the patient advocate. The state of texas
and the president of lubbock young republicans. And I think a lot of the questions that
should be asked are not getting asked. We need to be asking what would the data center do
for texas tech health science center, medical hub of west texas, and the healthcare
system here. My brother works in healthcare. It has significantly improved his part
of texas over by vernon, texas. There are multiple aspects that are not being
looked into. We have solutions for a lot of problems that have been brought up that we can
talk about and discuss at another time. They're real easy to fix. I'm not going to
get up here and grandstand and perverse the bible like james
talarico and his supporters would, but I think we really need to pay attention
to the work that's been going on and the development. I spent most of last month in dallas,
texas fighting for big pharma, healthcare companies, medical equipment suppliers
to come and develop here in lubbock, texas. And I can tell you that
at some point we're going to need one of these ai data centers for the healthcare system. I warned
in 2024 if we didn't update infrastructure at texas tech
university health science center, umc would suffer internal failure. And sure
enough, we did for several months. That type of data center can be used
for medical and healthcare, something we need to capitalize on in lubbock. There's a lot
of restrictions and regulations to look into, and thank god for the lubbock fire
department that gives us one of the best bargaining chips that we've got that allows us
to have these discussions. You know, I think as long as we're
mindful with the restrictions and policies and the oversight, good. You allow them to go
outside city limits and have free rein and do what they want, we lose our chance. We
don't have a say in it. We can't complain when everything goes wrong afterwards. Thank
you. Thank you, kevin. Noel.
hi, I'm dr. Noel zavala, born and raised in lubbock, texas. I spent my college years at
tech state ecology and the environment, and I want to thank the community
for addressing the concerns about the environment. Because they already did that, I wanted
to mention something else. At present, I'm an ob-gyn here in town, and I deliver 250 babies a year. I feel greatly
privileged and am incredibly honored to serve this city. So
how do davis centers serve us? That question has been asked repeatedly. My peers here,
agree they don't serve us. In fact,
they actively cause harm. So I wanted to share a new term I learned recently. It was
published in nature magazine: never scaling, a term that
addresses the phenomenon of relying on ai
during the learning process with the consequence of not actually learning,
failing to build basic critical thinking skills that are necessary
to tackle advanced problems. These are people problems.
additionally, learning and memory recall has been shown to be poor when using ai. Your
brain doesn't light up when using ai in the same way it does when you get creative and
problem solve. It atrophies. That's bad. Think
about what that means for your future teachers, lawyers, spiritual leaders,
politicians, and healthcare workers. So yes, I agree. Let's learn from the
mistakes that others have made. Let's invest in people, not
in data centers. Thank you. Thank you, dr. Zavala. Elena
white. Hi, everyone. My name is
elena. Myself and my family, including my 67-year-old
mother, live in district 2 here in lubbock. Her yard is also, to quote stephen sanders,
yellow as hell from conserving our water. The presentations provided this
evening mentioned that we have excess water and electricity. However, we're experiencing
forced rolling blackouts and being asked to conserve our resources. We
all seem to find that to be a pretty interesting contradiction. The
presentations tonight are also bringing in numbers on usage for theoretical data centers.
they're nowhere near accurate numbers for other centers around us, and I would ask that you all
take the time to look those numbers up yourselves. You can't tell me that these other
cities and other communities that are around us didn't have conversations about their excess resources or their
infrastructure themselves. Whether it was behind closed doors or
in front of their constituents, those that chose to allow these data centers to
be built are actively experiencing the negative effects. A data center in lubbock, texas is unnecessary.
we're having a discussion tonight about what sort of precautions we can take and
specific use permits that we can use to protect our communities.
several people here this evening have asked for all of you to protect and care
for what we have now and protecting our communities and resources would mean preventing
the building of an unnecessary essential resource vacuum. I thank you all
for hearing us all out. Good night. Thank you, elena. Now,
as john macias comes up, I would like to ask cole daniel and adrian lowen
to come up, please. Hello, my name is john macias. I was born
and reared here in lubbock, texas. I grew up on the east
side. I grew up on north ash and east stanford about,
I walked to estacado. I spent my whole life here. And I can't help but to think that this
whole idea is just the definition of systemic racism. It will be
a political choice that will disproportionately affect minorities. And that being my
community and that being my neighborhood and that being where my dad lives now,
it's already hard enough. It's already hard enough over there, and it's just wild
to me we're even considering this whenever there's so many people against it. And this is
not a new phenomenon. We've seen, we've seen enough to know that there's no reason
to rush this decision, and there's absolutely really no reason to consider it until, as many people have said,
there's state legislation against or to protect its citizens. So I
really urge y'all to do your job and protect your people, your constituents. And please
keep in mind that that the amount
of infamy and the amount of shame that will happen if this doesn't you will historically
let down your community more than any other politician. And we're really looking for y'all,
and we're really looking for y'all to come through for us, because right now with the unaffordability crisis, it seems to to me that lubbock
can't even protect its citizens from predatory business practices of the electric companies. So I
am a little bit, I'm a little bit nervous that it's going to go the people's way,
but this is how it should be. We're tired of the welfare system
for the elite class, for the billionaires, for the epstein class. We're tired.
we're tired of, of how our government never seems to work for the working class during
covid we were essential workers. And now what are we? Our communities are going
to be taken over. The noise pollution, the water pollution, the environmental factors. And
there is no type of economic possibility that could possibly
outweigh that. Thank you, john. Cole daniel. Good
afternoon. I'm a lubbock native. I'm a 4th-gen texas tech student
in computer science, and I'm a technician at a local technology company here in town. I am going
to discuss ai as it pertains to data centers and shoot down the pie
in the sky that a lot of businesses will lobby you with for building data centers. The
tech itself is not evil, but the current adoption is not viable long-term,
and I encourage you to research it beyond lobbyist speeches including mine. I have
a few points. A handful of companies accruing vast majority of the revenue,
while anthropic and open ai, the companies developing this technology, are hemorrhaging money. And the
rest of those companies subsidize the service to make it viable
for consumers. That can't last very long, and we shouldn't be left with the debris when it ends. Second, ask what value it
brings. Like we've been saying, software engineering, my field,
is one of the best cases for it, but benefits are not measurable relative to cost
in my field. More lines of code does not directly mean more value, and so we can't say that
it's making it better. You can abstract into the niche cases where someone does the hard
thing and makes a good thing with ai, but that does not outweigh the irresponsible
rollout and the worsening of general software and security that harms everybody. Third,
data centers host few jobs while the tech is being sold in the media for the sake
of eliminating them. The reality is that they cannot replace us, but it can give companies probable cause
for layoffs. Personally, I think the whole thing is just
for the sake of centralizing compute away from consumers so companies don't have to deal
with our demand for the right to repair and true ownership, ownership of digital assets.
but all in all, because it's not profitable for the owners, not the low-hanging efficiency boost
that was promised, and it's an incentive to eliminate jobs, it would not be responsible
to host it here or elsewhere. Thank you. Thank you, cole. Crystal? Crystal? I think, yes,
that's great. Thank you. Hello. Thank you all for being here. I mean, it's late. Thanks everybody for
voicing your opinions and sharing your experience and concerns. I am a lubbockan,
been a lubbockan for many, many years. I do some things
behind the scenes that I don't really address quite a bit of. I'd like to touch on me
personally and my experience in the community, hearing some
of our community's concerns.
over the infrastructure of it all. It is concerning,
but just doing my best to stay educated, doing my best to ask questions
and attending these events. They're very helpful. I am a
mommy of 4 beautiful kiddos and married to my husband
for some time now. My questions for y'all and I really hope
that y'all can really take these in. I do live in the heart of texas, sorry,
the heart of lubbock. My questions to y'all are,
how does this project align with the goals of making lubbock a place where young
people can stay, build their careers, and raise their families?
another is, what guarantees are there that this development
respects private property rights and concerns
of surrounding communities? Also, what lessons have we
learned from other cities that
have welcomed larger-scale developments like this, data
centers, both private and both positive and negatively. What
does that look like? And if y'all could possibly provide
more strategic line items, I, I stress that, and give more
and more information for us. Thank you. As adrian comes up,
we'd like to have tristan pettis, kyle abernathy, and
only have initials tb, come up please. Hi, my name is
adrian. I appreciate y'all giving us the floor tonight.
I'm against building a data center here in lubbock, and I just wanted to voice some questions that I think we would
all kind of have before we ever consider putting something like that here. So I was going
to list them off. Some of them have already been said, but I'm going to repeat them.
so who would these data centers, so who would keep these data centers accountable
if they overuse their water, if they overuse their power? I know there's regulations in place, but who's going to
actually hold them accountable and keep them to those limits? How can we be sure the city won't prioritize
them over us in these water power disputes?
if there's a strain on the grid and there has to be rolling outages or something, who's going
to get the outages? Is it going to be the people or is it going to be the data centers? It's my understanding that the data
center in abilene, they got an 85% tax abatement. Is lubbock willing to give up all that tax
revenue as well to a data center? What is
lubbock's plan for the depletion of the, like, ogallala aquifer in 20, 30, 40
years or whatever it will be? What happens when 60% of that water that we have right now
that he talked about goes away or 42%? Once lake 7 is in place. What do we
do then? Also, I believe he mentioned that none
of this water actually comes from lubbock county right now. I don't know that, like,
boasting about getting our water from these rural communities is really something
to brag about. And I just want
to know how lubbock can be a leader in west texas and set a standard for not allowing these large corporations to come in
and bully and do whatever they want. They're building data centers in small towns
like people have mentioned, and they don't have the resources or the voice that lubbock has.
so how can we set a standard for our surrounding small communities? And if anyone
signs, wants to sign the petition, just find someone in blue and you can sign.
thanks. Thank you, adrian. Tristan. Thank you. Hi, my name
is tristan perez, and I moved to lubbock at the beginning
of this year. I'm originally from new mexico, a small town
in new mexico just like lubbock, and I've grown to love lubbock a lot. And me
and my husband are planning on having a family here, raising our family. My mom just
came to visit me. I want to bring my family here and all that kinds of stuff. And I
wanted to touch on a subject that I've heard clayton tucker touch on
before as well. And I just want to say that I have a concern
about these farms
near data centers, the cattle, the just everything, pigs,
chickens, all of that. They're having stillbirths and mutations in their babies. And
so what happens if you build one next to lubbock? What happens to the pregnant women and the little children? What
happens to all of that? Are we going to have mutations,
just genetic disorders, all of that crazy stuff? And that's like something that's really,
really, really concerning me because there was another family, I believe, in
minnesota or wisconsin, I believe, and her little boy had
terrible migraines and constant ear infections, and they had to move away because of it.
and then another one in morgan county, georgia. Meta built a massive data center.
they have clear-cutted forests and began heavy construction in may, and families in the
area have seen their water pressure and water quality decrease. Their appliances have stopped working due
to water quality. They now rely on bottled water to drink, cook, clean, etc. Their water
bills are expected to increase by 33%. Their water is the color of the red clay that
in the mountains of new mexico. That's how red it is. Red, dark brown,
everything full of sediment, rock, all of that stuff. And
most of these ai data centers come with zero regulations or guardrails. Thank you,
tristan. Thank you, tv. Kyle
abernathy. Kyle, if you hold
on a second. We could have cassie green, stephen glenn,
irving quant, and sequoia ertner. Y'all are the last ones
on the list. If you'll come up and take a seat. And I think
we're ready for you. Thank you. Thank you, council, for hosting
this forum. I've heard a lot of people speak about the very valid concerns
about natural resources, public health. I've seen charts
about the offset of tax revenue. My concerns are
more far-reaching. These, these
other concerns, local, more immediate. But as a few
people have spoken about. I see more concern
with the surveillance aspect of it and the global,
far-reaching endgame of what the data centers are actually
doing. What is the data used for? Information is power.
information is economic advantage. And information can
definitely be a tool of societal control. I see this
all in the big picture, as huge as these data centers are, and as much of the natural
resources could be used harmed,
and I, I see big brother is what I see. I see the
infrastructure that ultimately can lead to things that people don't
like to talk about, like social data scores.
ultimately, as we lose jobs to ai, the specter of universal
basic income and how that can,
the digital currency connected with that can be cut off,
our access to our own money, loss of personal freedoms and
controls. Anyway, big brother is looming. Thank you. Thank
you, kyle. Tb,
did tb ever know. Good evening,
everybody. Hey, thank you for taking my time, I mean,
allowing me to speak. And I just want to say I have similar
concerns as to where this is all going and what's being planned in advance,
that it's outside of, like, more from a federal level, and how that is going
to be then converted into each person having a certain value to them, and more than just,
like, this is tax revenue for an average citizen and how
by making things more digital and allowing that infrastructure to take place,
they can lead to exposure for us as a county and less sovereignty. And I'm really
concerned about the implications as future generations who are accustomed
to this type of service and how
that can then change how we review certain things
in our own governance, so federally. So, and also, as many have previously
mentioned, just as far as like taxes and whatnot and where that leads to. So, but also,
I think that a lot of the farmers are worth listening to.
so thank you. Cassie green. Thank you guys for having this
meeting. I actually drove all the way from amarillo to give
you my personal testimony. I listened to the, the podcast all
of the way here, and I cried the whole way because I, we,
my husband and I have a business out of amarillo,
but we do more than half of our work here in lubbock, and we were planning
on moving here. And I implore you not to do this because
y'all are going to be my safe haven to run from fermi america. So I again
want to thank you for this. I'm a texan from randall county and amarillo.
currently we're plagued, we're plagued with a monstrosity
of an ai data center claiming to be the biggest ai data center in the world. Yes, I'm
talking about fermi america, the matador project. Why on
earth did our city council decide to sell our fresh water
straight from our ogallala aquifer is beyond me. They
started off selling them 2.5 million gallons a day
of our precious fresh water. The contract says that they can
go up to 10 million gallons of water a day. You know what,
to me, data centers are just like the devil. You give them a little bit and they take a
mile. They're already using wells, not just the contract
water agreement. They have set up the wells in the acquired
land that they have gotten, and they're doing the right to capture. They're using that
law for their benefit, as all ai data centers are doing
currently and will do. How foolish of us in amarillo to
think that we were just going to, that they were just going to stick with the plan.
lubbock, I implore you, please learn from our mistakes. Don't make a
deal with the devil. Thank you, cassie. Don't do it. Stephen.
hi I just want to say I'm impressed with everybody's speaking ability and you know, passion for, for
speaking up and paying attention. And thank you to the community
for that. I wanted to kind of flip the question on its head. How much money would we pay if we had a data
center here to kick it out? I feel like it would be bigger than the $3.8
million a year, like if you were to ask amarillo or these other children's, these other
places, like, how much would they pay to kick it out and return it back to how it was? I think they'd pay
quite a lot more than that. So I think that's just not,
that's okay. The second thing was about the decibels rating. So that's a measure
of how loud things are. So there's dba, which is a measure of sound
loudness as it is perceived by the human ear. Then there's actually something called dbc,
which incorporates more of the low-end frequencies. The human ear only hears down to about 20 hz. So if you were
to make a regulation, you probably should include the lower frequencies below human
hearing that also affect or have physiological effects on animals and humans.
but I mean, that's kind of in the weeds. If you think about it let's say the
regulations are perfect. Perfect. Let's say the enforcement is perfect, which I think we all are pretty
skeptical of that with the amount of time and effort and money it would take
to monitor them and create reports and go back and forth.
but let's say the enforcement is perfect. At, at that point you have to ask yourself,
are these people regulatable? Like, ask yourself, can you regulate a multi-billion dollar
international corporation you can't do it. Like, they,
they can get out of it. They have the power and the means to do it. So I think just that
alone, it's like inviting a tiger into your house and saying, oh, don't worry, he's going to pay rent, he's going to keep the rat population
in check. It doesn't matter. You can't control it. So don't invite it in in the first place. Thank you.
thank you, stephen. Sequoia.
hi, I'm sequoia, and I think reality is pretty real. And I
stand for what's real. That is why I don't really
like data centers, and I do really like statistics. And I would
like real statistics to be used
in this decision and spread
to everyone that needs to hear them. Not that are
cherry-picked to make one group look bad or good,
but that show the best, the worst, and the middle of the road. And I want
numbers, I want exacting standards and uncompromising oversight to maintain those
standards. I want accountability standards in place if that oversight fails, but one thing at a time. I'm a
third-generation lubbockite, and lubbock throughout my life
and my parents' and my grandparents' lives, I'm third
generation, has been very slow to jump on any new bandwagon. If there was ever a time when
that is a standard to live up to, it is now. If you want tourism,
if you want a thriving economy, stand against data centers and for people. It will make you
guys, yeah, I'm talking to all of you guys, it will make you guys my heroes. Thank you.
thank you, sequoia. Irving?
irving. You guys took a beating tonight, didn't you? I am
somewhat asking the same question, but before we move on, I want to thank all of you. You guys
are normal people like all of us, and you volunteered to be where you're at. It's
just, it's hard. Mr. Atkinson, it's hard to run the city, so thank you,
sir. And you guys, you read a lot, I know. The, I'm not
in favor or against data centers, and the reason why I'm not
against it is because I don't have enough data to be able to say what are the good things
about data centers. Lida published a 9-page commentary,
per se, we need to see the data. We need to see what are the benefits
of this, but specifically to the citizens of lubbock. You want to go one step further
and really make an economics nerd happy, make it by the district. What are the
benefits in each one of the districts for all of us? We know the risks. We
know what are the consequences of taking on these massive projects.
what's in it for the city? What are we getting in return for that? So if we can voice
that and publish that and make it more transparent, I think that the conversation would be
a lot more pleasant, a lot more open, and we would all be able to
make that decision a lot easier. So once again, council, thank you very much
for all that you do. Thank you guys. You guys go get some rest. Thank you very much,
irving. That concludes our citizen comments
for tonight. I want to personally say thank you. I
asked you to follow the rules and be respect, respectful, and y'all were great. Thank you
very much. Good night. Thank you. This meeting is adjourned.