[0:04] All right, good evening, everybody. I'm mayor mark mcgrayer, and because this is a
[0:08] scheduled city council meeting, I need first
[0:14] to call this meeting to order and gavel it in. So this meeting of the lubbock
[0:21] 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
[0:25] 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
[0:30] work session is usually where our staff come and make presentations on some subject that we need some more
[0:34] information on, and then we will always have that followed by a time of citizen comments. If you've
[0:40] come to any of our city council meetings, you know
[0:45] that's how we operate them. So we've moved this meeting here from city hall so we could accommodate the crowd we
[0:49] anticipated, and it's a good crowd tonight. We're glad that we're able to fit everyone
[0:53] in here that wanted to be present tonight. We are also live casting this. As well. And we're going to
[1:00] discuss some very important issues regarding data centers. I want
[1:04] to keep my comments short here to begin this meeting because the purpose of the meeting tonight is
[1:09] to hear from you. We want to know what your biggest concerns
[1:14] are and to hear different perspectives and maybe even hear some things tonight that
[1:18] 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
[1:23] with it. First, let me thank you for taking the time to come, and I want
[1:28] to thank you for taking the time to fill out the survey that we had online for a while. We compiled the
[1:33] results from those, from that survey, and when we discuss them further in a moment, I think
[1:38] you'll see that what the survey
[1:42] showed were your concerns are also our concerns as a council. Water use, electricity demand, utility costs, noise,
[1:47] environmental impacts. Those are our concerns as well. Now, we've seen how many other
[1:52] cities around this country have handled this issue and have
[1:56] voted oftentimes
[2:01] on data centers before actually having the public have an opportunity to speak on it.
[2:07] and this has led to a lot of frustration and distrust on the part of citizens. So we
[2:11] want to avoid that. That's why we're having this meeting before we have ever taken any
[2:16] action on any data center at all. We're in a much better
[2:20] position now than many other cities because we've been able to watch and learn from them
[2:26] and see what they have done well and what they've done wrong and what concerns perhaps
[2:31] they have failed to address along the way. So let me be clear. First of all, this
[2:35] city council has not approved any data centers at all.
[2:40] in fact, our planning and zoning commission has already voted one data center proposal down,
[2:45] and the proponent withdrew it before it ever came to the council for a vote. So
[2:49] no large-scale data centers have been voted on by this council. We're not
[2:54] currently, we don't currently have a proposal in front of us to vote on. We've not entered
[2:58] into any contracts with any developers or data center groups, and none of us have
[3:02] signed any nondisclosure agreements with anybody. What we have done, though, is
[3:07] instruct our city staff months ago to begin studying the impact that large-scale data centers will have on our water
[3:14] and our utilities and on nearby residents from noise, light, and emissions. Importantly, all these impacts would exist
[3:19] whether or not the city council ever actually approved a data center or not to be located inside the city. The only
[3:23] difference is that if a data
[3:42] center exists outside the city limits in the county, it's not subject
[3:46] to very many restrictions at all on what they can do, where the city has much more
[3:50] control through its zoning powers and our provision for utilities. So we've already
[3:56] asked our staff to look at ways available to us as a city to address
[4:01] those concerns that large-scale data centers raise. And we needed to do this because the
[4:06] reality is that large-scale data centers are already built, being built near us in
[4:11] abilene, in abernathy, in childress, and in dickens
[4:15] county. Before long, they'll come knocking on our front door wanting zoning
[4:20] approval so they can build inside our city limits.
[4:24] lubbock's in a great spot right now to be able to address your concerns,
[4:28] which are again our concerns too, before we consider any proposals for development
[4:33] within our city. Tonight's public meeting is not intended to convince anybody that a
[4:38] large-scale data center is either a net positive or a net negative for the city.
[4:46] instead, it's, our goal here tonight is aimed at helping you understand
[4:50] better how we, as your elected officials, are trying our best to address the issues and concerns that data centers
[4:55] raise for our city. We want to make sure we're not missing
[5:01] anything in our discussions, and we want to make sure we're not getting tunnel vision on this. We're not going
[5:08] to have all the answers for you tonight, but I think we will be able to provide some answers to the
[5:13] questions that have been raised. But the big part of tonight and the main goal
[5:18] of tonight is to listen to you and hear from you, which means you will be
[5:22] speaking to us after the presentation, but we will not be answering questions
[5:27] as a council. We will be noting your questions. Our staff here are writing them down, and we will follow up if there's
[5:32] something that we have not covered tonight and needs
[5:36] to be covered in additional meetings. So the goal tonight is to hear from as many of you as
[5:41] possible. I think I understand that 140 people have signed up to speak tonight. This meeting
[5:48] we intend to last for 3 hours. I don't know that we will get through all 140 people. So if
[5:52] we don't get to you tonight, hopefully you will write your question down or submit it.
[5:58] but I also would ask you, as we call you forward here
[6:03] in a little bit, that if someone has already asked your question, then you step aside
[6:09] and let somebody else come forward to see if they would raise their question. And that will allow more people to get
[6:14] their questions asked or their concerns presented tonight than if everybody presents the same
[6:18] issue over and over again. But you can ask questions, you can present information. That's all fine. Hopefully some
[6:27] of those questions will be addressed by our staff as we go through this so you see what we've
[6:32] already done. But if not, there will be opportunities to answer those questions at a later time.
[6:37] but we're not going to be responding to you tonight because that will eat into the time that people have
[6:41] to come forward and ask their questions. All right. This is how the meeting will go
[6:46] tonight. Our city manager, jared atkins, and our assistant city manager, eric rahino, are
[6:52] each going to give us a short presentation presenting the research that they have done up to this point, as well as
[6:57] discussing the surveys that many of you filled out. Then we're going to turn
[7:02] on the mic up front to hear from those of you who signed up to make comments, and we'll be
[7:06] up here taking notes along with our city secretary and other people here tonight. We're
[7:12] fortunate tonight to have abner, abner uresti as our moderator for the comments portion
[7:17] 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
[7:22] in groups of 3 so that there's always someone on deck and someone then behind them waiting to come to
[7:27] the mic so we can do this as expeditiously as possible without wasting time. He's
[7:36] going to also, after calling up speakers, he will help us keep track of time and facilitate any
[7:41] discussions we might have to have. We scheduled 3 hours tonight to hear from you,
[7:45] and we're going to have a short break in the middle of it. And my request is that you remain
[7:50] on topic with your questions, the topic being large-scale
[7:54] data centers, and everybody respects the clock so we can hear from as many of you as possible tonight.
[8:01] abner will be watching the clock, and we've got 2 minutes. Some people have said, well,
[8:05] you normally have 3 minutes for people to speak. It's 2 minutes tonight so we can get
[8:12] as many people up to the mic as possible. So that's why we have limited that
[8:17] time. I will tell you that we,
[8:24] I expect this group of people to be respectful of the speakers. Citizens
[8:29] comment time always in our council is for the people at the mic
[8:34] to speak. It's not for just general comments from the crowd. So please be respectful of the person at the
[8:38] mic because any interruptions will eat into their time and it will also reduce the amount of time available for people
[8:43] to come and talk to us. So I hope that we don't have to deal with interruptions, but if interruptions occur,
[8:48] 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
[8:53] right. I hope everybody understands that and will be respectful. And I expect this crowd, lubbock is a respectful
[8:58] place. So I'm hoping that everything goes well tonight. So thank you all very much.
[9:03] right now, I'm going to turn it over to our city manager, mr. Jared atkinson. Thank you.
[9:08] thank you, mayor, city council. And mayor, let me
[9:13] start off with an apology. I gave you the wrong number. We're a little over 60 signed up right now, so as that
[9:19] changes, we'll let the council know. But thank you for that,
[9:24] council. Thank you for being here. And okay, how's that? Whoa, how about halfway
[9:40] in between all those two? Okay, mayor, council, thank you
[9:45] for being here tonight, and certainly to all of those in the audience. Myself and
[9:49] mr. Eric regino, we're going to go through a couple of quick presentations here. I'm going
[9:54] to start by seeing if I'm smart enough to use the device. And apparently I am not. Lacey, how
[10:01] about this? We practiced twice.
[10:14] for my next trick, I'll ask miss lacey to hit the button for me. I promise I am not
[10:24] trying out for american idol tonight. There we go. Okay,
[10:30] matt, did you do that or did lacey? Okay, council, I'm not
[10:35] going to read my way through all of these, but I
[10:39] think it's important we mention large-scale data center. So
[10:44] 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,
[10:49] we've done numerous site visits, other cities. We've done everything we can do. And we have learned there's not a
[10:55] common definition. So the first definition up there actually comes from ibm, and it just
[10:59] says, what is a data center? The next one,
[11:03] we hear hyperscale. And for a while, I thought hyperscale was somewhat
[11:07] of a unit of measurement, and it is not. It refers to the ability of one
[11:12] of these systems to scale and to grow and to meet demands. And that's not our definition.
[11:17] it comes from industry. So without there being a definition,
[11:21] we offer one tonight. And this is similar to what we've been working on when we talk
[11:26] about development standards. For today, we'll talk about it as a large-scale data center
[11:30] uses 100 megawatts or more of electricity per day and/or,
[11:37] either one will get you there, 100,000 gallons of water per day and primarily supplies
[11:43] information or does processing for offsite users. We're not
[11:48] talking about those data centers that are in a school or a hospital or a business.
[11:53] large-scale data centers. With that, let's go straight to this thing that still doesn't
[11:58] work and click to the next one,
[12:05] which will be the results of the survey if they'll come up. You really don't want me
[12:20] to sing. This is what a mayor's nightmares are made of. There
[12:26] we go. Thank you. Okay. We had nearly 1,550 people take the
[12:35] survey. So. To those that did that, thank you for doing so. 90% of those respondents indicated they
[12:39] 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
[12:45] and asked those respondents to rank. As the mayor said,
[12:51] water number 1, electric items number 2, environment number 03, noise, light number 4,
[12:56] transparency of the government, and scaling
[13:01] on down. So we're going to hit a few of those points here, and eric
[13:06] will hit more as we go. Click. Click. If you could see
[13:26] the next slide. It would be about water. Lacey, can you
[13:53] just advance it on the computer? Need
[13:58] to go back one more. Try the
[14:42] clicker now. I switched to this one. Try this one.
[14:51] okay, jumping back on topic. What we've got in front of us right here,
[14:56] this is a description of what the daily capacity of the city of lubbock's water
[15:01] system looks like. We have 3 separate sources of water that supply the water system here
[15:07] in lubbock. As you see, none of those sources are from lubbock or lubbock county. We
[15:14] have our canadian river municipal water authority allocation of a little over 33
[15:19] million gallons a day. We have lake allen henry at 20 million
[15:23] a day and the bailey county well field at 18 million a day. Your point-in-time capacity
[15:28] of lubbock's water system today as we speak is 71.35 million gallons. In addition to the daily supply, you have
[15:33] about 565 million gallons
[15:42] of water that is held in 2 reservoirs. We call them terminal storage reservoirs. That is raw water that has
[15:47] already been delivered. It has been brought to lubbock and it is sitting at one of the 2
[15:52] treatment plants waiting to be used if needed. So point-in-time capacity, 71.35.
[15:56] here's what the usage looks like. And these are all 2025
[16:01] numbers. So last year, last year, the average day, the average day was 36.5
[16:10] million gallons compared to your capacity, nearly 35 million remaining
[16:16] on the peak day. So the day we hit the most usage ever in 2025, it was really relatively
[16:21] low, about 50.2 million gallons on that day. That left 21.6 6
[16:30] remaining. I think total usage is relevant and important because it highlights a lot of
[16:35] work that this council and this community have done. In '23, your total system use was right
[16:40] at 13.0 billion, with a b, gallons. 13.1 in 2024 and 13.3
[16:55] in 2025. Compare that to 2011. In 2011, your system had to produce 15.3 billion gallons. The difference
[17:03] in those numbers is largely, are largely the conservation measures that this community
[17:07] has adopted and put into place. We have dropped what we call gallons per capita
[17:12] per day, which is just a measure
[17:16] of what we use per person. We have dropped gallons per capita per day by nearly 50 gallons
[17:21] per person per day. To put that
[17:25] into another example, there are 40,000 more people in lubbock today than there
[17:30] were in 2011, and you're using 2 billion fewer gallons
[17:35] of water. So the question,
[17:40] what comes next? I mean, obviously the community will continue to grow. That is
[17:44] everyone's goal. And you will need supplies as the community grows. Lubbock does have a 100-year water plan. I like
[17:49] to say it is fully funded. Funded means you have those sources available to you. They
[17:55] have not been developed. You don't develop until you need them and you bring them
[17:59] to town. That's what those 3 on the screen are. The first is lake 7. That is a 12 million
[18:04] gallon a day, what we call firm yield, which means it'll, it'll run
[18:09] that number all the time. And somebody is going to ask me, well, what about weather? And
[18:13] that's a great question for lakes. That is the most weather agnostic lake that you
[18:19] will see because it's a reuse lake. It has a guaranteed inflow which is greater than
[18:25] what you will take out. On a short-term basis, that lake would be able
[18:29] to produce 25 million gallons a day. You wouldn't do that for long,
[18:33] 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
[18:39] it's online and us and our 10 partners in crmwa move forward in time, move forward
[18:43] in demand. The next project is crenshaw 2, very large project that originates in roberts
[18:47] county and makes its way down to all 11 member cities. 32 million gallons additional
[18:54] supply. The third is actually a lake allen henry project. It's what we call phase 2. A lot
[19:00] of the infrastructure for lake allen henry is meant
[19:05] to produce 30 if needed. We can produce it at 20 today. So with relatively simple improvements,
[19:11] simple in the world of water, you have another 10 million
[19:16] there. That is the farthest out project unless something changes and you need it sooner.
[19:20] that's the quickest one to bring online if it becomes necessary to do that.
[19:29] collectively, that's 50 years of your water future here in lubbock. So where's the water
[19:34] coming from? Today, a little over 61% of that 71.3 million
[19:39] gallons is groundwater, 2 different sources, roberts county and bailey county.
[19:43] about 39% is surface water. Largest surface water supply is lake allen henry, then lake
[19:48] meredith. After lake 7 comes online, those percentages almost reverse. So when lake 7
[20:05] is up and running, your surface water portion will be 58% rather than 39%, and your groundwater will fall
[20:10] to 42% from 61%. Relatively
[20:14] unique in west texas that you're making moves more towards the renewable sources
[20:18] than what we've done historically with the groundwater. So
[20:24] questions on water, mayor and council, before I move into the next? Trying
[20:28] to speed up and get us back. Any questions? So by groundwater,
[20:33] you're referring to water we pump up out of the ogallala aquifer, right?
[20:37] yes, sir. Okay. All right. Okay. Let's kind of move
[20:42] into what we're going to call perspectives for the next couple
[20:47] of slides. So any community needs growth, and it needs growth
[20:52] in all sectors. And that is the only way to have a healthy, thriving, and community. One part of your community does not
[21:00] grow if the others do not. So I'm talking residential, commercial, industrial, health,
[21:04] all of it. You need to see everything rise together. Thus, your city's goal,
[21:11] we want economic benefit for the entire community as a result of growth. Simple and
[21:19] obvious ways that occurs are through jobs, revenue for city services that comes
[21:23] from new growth rather than from those that are already here. And then it's economic
[21:28] opportunity for our residents and for our businesses and for all of the legs
[21:33] of the stool. A note to keep in mind, and you'll see this in a moment: $100 million
[21:38] of taxable value generates about $472,000 to provide
[21:42] for city services. Does not
[21:47] matter what sector that $100 million comes from. Just that
[21:52] amount of growth produces that amount of revenue for you to provide service
[21:58] to the community. So to try to illustrate water growth and a few other items,
[22:04] I've got a sequence of these charts here. So we've taken 3 pretty well-known
[22:08] neighborhoods in lubbock. Each of those are roughly 640 acres
[22:14] or 1 square mile. The lubbock business park is also roughly 1 square mile. I have doubled
[22:19] all of their numbers because it is not fully built out. We have created an imaginary data
[22:24] center, and it means what it says, I made it up. And then a 640-acre cotton farm. So let me
[22:32] go through my notes real quick, and then we'll look at the
[22:36] numbers. A 640-acre cotton farm under pivot is not 640 wet or
[22:42] 640 irrigated acres. It's more like 520. We've used again industry standard sources
[22:46] to figure out the applied irrigation.
[22:51] we've converted it back to an annual number. You don't irrigate year-round, you irrigate
[22:55] during the growing season. But we've brought it back to a common denominator, and again we've doubled the
[23:01] business part. But here's what you see: 2025 numbers for the first 4, the
[23:06] imaginary data center, and then industry numbers for that cotton farm. If you
[23:11] took a neighborhood such as bell farms, compared
[23:16] to your top 20 individual users, that one neighborhood would fall between the number 4 and
[23:22] the number 5 user today. Regal park would fall between the 3rd and the 4th largest.
[23:26] tech terrace, 6 to 7. The business park doesn't come
[23:31] anywhere close. If the data center was 110,000, note that that is bigger than the
[23:36] definition, trying to make this obvious, it'd be
[23:40] between number 13 and number 14. The cotton farm with 520 irrigated acres would be up
[23:45] between the 4th and the 5th in terms of water use. So the
[23:51] illustration, while 100,000 or 110,000, that's a big number, in the scale of a 13 billion
[23:57] gallon water system, it's really not. So you can see
[24:03] those comparatives. Let's talk about infrastructure. So neighborhoods, residential,
[24:07] commercial, everything requires public infrastructure. The
[24:12] takeaway from this, those 3 neighborhoods, as they finish up full development, they're all going
[24:17] to have somewhere between 78 and 80 miles
[24:22] of city infrastructure inside of them. Why? Because we build streets and alleys and those things you need
[24:27] to be successful. The business park, large lots, larger users, not as many of them, about 33
[24:33] miles. If we stay on a 640-acre imaginary data center, it won't have public infrastructure
[24:38] on the inside of it. Another
[24:44] way to look at that. How about public services? So calls
[24:49] for service are what we used for this. So these are our dispatchable service. You call
[24:54] for the police. For fire, for animal control, for code enforcement. We pulled those and we put them
[24:59] on here. So again, this represents calendar year 2025. You can see the peak
[25:04] of just under 2,500 dispatchable calls for service down to a low of 300. I don't
[25:11] know what an imaginary data center would be, so we have question marks. All
[25:19] of these things wrap into that economic growth. What we want to see that is good
[25:24] for our community to be healthy and thriving and affordable. So we've only assigned a cost
[25:29] to those dispatched calls for service. And you see what
[25:34] we didn't put in there: street maintenance, alley maintenance, parks and
[25:38] recreation, libraries, senior centers. Only dispatchable services. You take those values, again,
[25:45] $100,472,000, produces the revenue, less the calls
[25:50] for service, and you see the net. There are
[25:54] numbers filled in for the imaginary data center. They're likely wrong, but what we've done is taken exactly
[26:00] what's going on in the business park and assigned it to that data center. They may
[26:04] well change, but you can see how those peaks and valleys trickle down
[26:10] through that chart. Moving on, nearly done with my part of this. Who in texas has the
[26:18] authority to do what if we talk about development standards?
[26:23] we're here tonight to talk about large-scale data centers. I think it's important to understand this would apply
[26:28] to any type of development. But in that vein, we talk
[26:32] about water use. That lies within the authority of cities
[26:38] in texas. It really does not with counties. And it really does not with the state. Yes,
[26:43] the state regulates public water systems, but the state does not provide water. Same
[26:50] thing is true with wastewater. Zoning authority, zoning authority resides
[26:54] with cities. It does not with counties. It does not with the state. That may change
[27:00] in the future, but that's where it stands today. The ability
[27:04] to regulate noise, you have a check mark for the city. That means yes. You see the kind of sort
[27:08] of lines on the county and on the state. That's because there is a state law that has a
[27:15] noise number, a decibel number in it, but it's a large, large
[27:19] number, and cities have the authority to have it lower. The others
[27:24] don't unless state law changes. Light. Regulating light
[27:28] on a development. That's a city authority. It's not a county or a state. It goes the other
[27:34] direction, though, when we talk about air. So cities and counties do not
[27:39] regulate air, air quality, air permits, those things you hear. The
[27:44] state does, and that is primarily regulated through the texas commission
[27:48] on environmental quality, the tceq. Economic incentives, and this is again for anything
[27:53] that you might choose to do, any of the cities can do that.
[27:57] electric turns around the other direction,
[28:02] though. We put the maybe lines on the city, and that's only unique to the city of lubbock.
[28:08] but it's important to note that that's only there because lubbock owns the distribution
[28:12] utility. We don't control or mandate how much electricity could come
[28:16] in or could get used. We can just deliver it. Counties do
[28:21] not. State does. So when we talk about electric, electric
[28:25] use, the grid, the cost of the grid, that is entirely the state, and it's
[28:30] through the public utility commission, puc, and ercot, the electric reliability
[28:36] council of texas. That leads me right into my next slide,
[28:40] though. This is a june 10th, 2026 letter from governor
[28:46] abbott to the chairs of both the puc and to ercot.
[28:51] obviously, it's a small piece of that, but I've highlighted 2 that I think are very relevant
[28:56] for tonight's discussion. The governor has instructed both of the leads of those agencies to take action
[29:02] to require data centers to pay all of their electric
[29:07] infrastructure costs so that the residential ratepayer is not. Traditional ways that you
[29:15] expanded the grid in ercot, some portion of that cost did get passed
[29:19] down to all ratepayers. Not all of it, but a portion. The governor has said no. Data
[29:24] centers pay all their costs so that the residential ratepayer
[29:29] does not. The final one, he's asked the puc or instructed
[29:34] both the puc and ercot to look at those existing authorities they have today,
[29:39] not authority they may get in the next legislative session, but what they have today, to
[29:44] review their existing authority and to identify those actions that can be taken
[29:48] to safeguard texans, our property, and our resources. It's a pretty bold statement,
[29:52] and it is directed right at the 2 state agencies that do have the ability to do what,
[29:57] in this case, a city or a county really does not. So,
[30:02] council, this is my last one.
[30:08] I'll take any questions before I hand it over, and if not, we'll bring up mr. Regino. Any questions
[30:13] from the council? If you don't mind going back to the one that showed who regulates what. So a
[30:20] hypothetical data center located in the city would be subject to our water, wastewater,
[30:25] zoning, noise, light, and any incentives, be subject to our regulations on that. If
[30:31] it was located in the county, it would not be subject to any of those limitations in the county except
[30:36] for a very high noise level. Is that correct? Yes, sir. All
[30:41] right. And again, the state overrides county and city, so the state does mainly
[30:46] control air incentives and electricity. Okay. Yes. All right. All right. Thank you.
[30:50] any other questions? Mr. Atkinson, can you hear me?
[30:56] yes, sir. Something I've been very interested in is potential noise and light pollution
[31:01] from data centers. In a lot of ways, data centers are like warehouses
[31:06] from what I've seen, having driven across the state, state,
[31:10] looking at several. I know we've got existing policies
[31:14] whereby we regulate noise and light right now. Can you go into some detail
[31:19] on what we've done to date to regulate these issues at similar projects? Yes, and I
[31:24] think possibly you and I have seen some of those same currently operating data centers. So I'm going
[31:29] to steal a little bit of eric's thunder. I'm going to leave some of the detail
[31:33] for him, but today, we do regulate what type of use can go
[31:37] in what particular zone. It's land use regulation. We already have noise standards, light standards. All
[31:43] of that already exists today. The counterpoint to that, the way the zoning code stands
[31:48] today,
[31:53] a data center can be built in lubbock, and it can be built in a wider range of zones than
[31:59] what staff is going to recommend to you here in the next presentation.
[32:04] we're going to recommend things like on the zoning, limit the districts even
[32:09] tighter, expand setbacks, require certain screening and/or berms. I mean, things
[32:13] that will all directly affect that, as well as establishing a noise limit that is less than
[32:21] what we currently have today. And the light, the lighting, what we call the spillover
[32:25] today we do regulate that. We think there's a way to make that even more particular to these unique types
[32:30] of uses. Thank you. I have a quick question. First of all,
[32:35] thank you for that information. I do want to thank the public
[32:39] for being here, for making the time to come and let us hear your perspective.
[32:45] it's very important. Mr. Atkinson, underwater use, you selected different
[32:49] neighborhoods and whatnot. I noticed that, and maybe I'm overlooking this,
[32:54] but you didn't have any of the neighborhoods from
[32:59] district 1 or 2, like actual neighborhoods. Can, do you have any of those
[33:04] numbers that you can share with me on water usage? I do not tonight. I,
[33:10] I can run those on any. I didn't want that chart to have one per district.
[33:14] I would have had 6 neighborhoods. I mean, I know you put the lubbock business park. It is in
[33:19] district 1. But I want to see my neighborhoods, at least 1 or 2, just so I can
[33:24] compare water usage. And I know that the public's done a really
[33:30] great job of conserving, but I want to know the use of neighborhoods in district 1 and 2. Yeah, I'd be glad to
[33:34] give me the ones that you want. Now that we've got the formats filled out,
[33:39] I can plug any neighborhood into them. Just takes a few days to pull the data. Okay.
[33:48] and is it, am I correct that the greatest use of water in homes, residences, is
[33:52] for watering lawns? Is that correct? Generally speaking,
[33:56] yes, it is. Generally speaking, during the summer, more than half
[34:00] of all the water that comes into our potable water system ends up as outdoor use. It's
[34:06] going onto lawns, it's going onto gardens. Washing cars, those types
[34:11] of things. And that's usually what it becomes, our peak use time
[34:18] of the year, right? That'll generally hit in august. And in winter, it's usually a
[34:23] lower, in winter, we can have days down in the mid-20s. So
[34:28] significantly less than average. All right. Any other questions? All right. Thank
[34:33] you. Okay. Thank you. With that, we're going
[34:37] to turn it over to mr. Eric regino, he is going to present a set of draft
[34:42] standards. I think they speak to councilman bruegel's questions pretty directly
[34:47] on a few of those. Again, it's not what you have today. It's staff suggestions for what you
[34:52] could do if you really want to kind of tighten some of this up. All subject
[34:56] to change. None of it has been done. It's presented for discussion. So, eric. Thank you, mr. Atkinson.
[35:05] mayor, council, I'm going to take the next few minutes to go over some draft standards,
[35:10] proposed standards for large-scale data centers that my staff and I have been
[35:14] working on. We've looked at several cities, have been studying data centers, and initially we have
[35:20] a draft concept for you that we wanted to really get some feedback from, from you all as well as the
[35:25] general public. Just to touch on this, the concept we've come up
[35:30] with is that of establishing a specific use permit within your zoning code. Mr. Atkins touched
[35:34] on it. I'm going to expand on it just a little bit more. So currently, large-scale data
[35:39] centers are allowed by right in several districts. There's 4 districts. And what we're proposing in this is to
[35:45] establish a specific use permit, require public input, require public hearings,
[35:49] and limit it to just a couple of districts, which I'll touch on here in a little bit. All this is
[35:54] within your authority. And again, going over the water usage, wastewater,
[35:59] zoning and land use. And within that, you've got setback requirements that are existing that we're going
[36:04] to propose that if you choose to move forward, to add to those, as well as
[36:08] landscaping, screening, noise mitigation, and lighting. Those are things that you deal
[36:13] with within your current code. And again, we would propose a specific use permit which would require additional public
[36:18] hearings, public input, and limit it to a couple of your districts versus having
[36:22] the broader districts that you have now for large-scale data centers. So let's, let's touch
[36:29] on this. So what is a large-scale data center for purposes of today? Mr. Atkins, one quick question,
[36:33] eric. The specific use is different from a by-right. Yes, yes. Explain the difference between them. So a
[36:37] specific use is basically an additional criteria within a zoning district. So you have your base district
[36:41] requirements and a specific use, which is a whole other set of criteria that's on top
[36:46] of that. And again, that also triggers a public hearing in addition to a zoning,
[36:51] a traditional zoning case. So good question. Thank you. So what is a large-scale data
[36:57] center? Again, for purposes
[37:01] of today, as we've touched on, it's a large-scale data center that either is 100 megawatts
[37:07] per day of power usage and/or 100,000 gallons of water, as well as primarily supplying information or processing to
[37:11] one or more offsite end users. They're primarily used to, again, house real and personal property consisting
[37:16] of buildings, network computer servers,
[37:20] data and transaction processing equipment, as well as the
[37:28] related infrastructure to support the operation. They're there for the purpose
[37:33] of storing, remote storage, providing data and transaction processing services, outsourcing information
[37:38] technology, as well as distributing large amounts of data. As far as city of
[37:46] 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
[37:51] control. First of all, again, you have access and you have control over annexation,
[37:55] zoning, noise mitigation, lighting infrastructure
[38:01] requirements, utility service agreements, as well as any other enforceable contracts that the council chooses
[38:06] to enter into. That's within your authority as it sits today. The city does not
[38:10] control ercot, state electric policy, state tax incentives, as well as broader property rights. So really what I'm
[38:14] 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
[38:20] authority to do. Would you explain for everyone what ercot is if they don't know? The
[38:25] electric reliability council of texas. And what does ercot
[38:36] 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
[38:48] at ercot. So ercot, or the electric reliability council of texas, is the body that manages and controls the
[38:52] entirety of the state electric grid. Does not include the grid that's the panhandle
[38:57] in the very far side of west texas, or really even what is south plains electric co-op,
[39:02] but almost all the rest of texas is in ercot. The giant
[39:06] power lines that you see, the big power plants, the nuclear plants that texas has, wind farms, solar farms,
[39:12] all of that puts stuff into the grid. Ercot manages what is
[39:17] coming in, thus what is available to go out. They don't own or
[39:22] sell it, but I've heard it described as they are air traffic control
[39:27] for electricity for about 90% of the state. They are
[39:31] state-chartered, state-mandated. The regulator is the public utility council. They work hand
[39:37] in hand. Public utility council does the projects, approves them,
[39:41] vets them. Ercot is the one that says, yes, this is okay on the grid because we have
[39:46] transmission from a to b, thus you have supply available for a new load. Thank you. So
[39:59] going into water, one of the proposals in the specific use permit we're recommending as a proposed
[40:03] standard would be to only allow large-scale data centers that are using a closed-loop cooling
[40:07] system or an air dry cooling system, which significantly reduces water usage on a daily basis. In addition
[40:14] to that, as part of that as part of the specific use application, we would propose that council require
[40:19] not only what your initial water consumption is going to be, but what your total bill
[40:23] that's going to be. So what do you use on day 1 and what's the buildout look like. And it
[40:27] allows us as a city to plan for that accordingly. And as well as, I think it's an appropriate
[40:33] item for the planning and zoning commission to consider, as well as city council to consider
[40:38] in making decisions on any particular project, large-scale data center. And
[40:43] staying along those lines of water, the other item we've discussed is let's just use a hypothetical 100,000 gallons a
[40:47] day. You have a large-scale data center, or in fact just any other business that's going to use 100,000 gallons
[40:53] of water. We reserve that 100,000 gallons of water as the project's being developed.
[40:57] that water can then not be used for any other economic benefits. So we're having
[41:02] to set it aside for if and when that project comes into fruition. And what we're proposing
[41:06] in this water reservation fee, very similar to an option contract where you pay for the option
[41:11] to basically buy land at a later time, we would collect a fee based on
[41:15] estimated water consumption collected on a monthly basis. And when that project comes
[41:20] into fruition, that fee that would then be credited back to that particular development
[41:24] for water usage. If that project does not come into fruition, then the city
[41:28] council, the city benefits from it and keeps that and is able to invest that in additional water-related infrastructure
[41:36] in the future. So it's a, it's a fee, it's a benefit for lubbock. If the project
[41:40] doesn't come, again, there's a cost for it, and the citizens ultimately end up benefiting from that,
[41:45] that fee. We would assess it at the time of the execution of a development agreement. And again, only
[41:50] for your really large users. And again, that 100,000 gallons is one we've discussed. That's, that's still really up
[41:55] in the air and we would like some feedback on that as well. 100,000 gallons is right,
[42:00] would be right at our 14th largest water user in lubbock today based on the 2025 numbers. So let's talk
[42:10] more about specific districts. You know, we're proposing a specific use permit. That is an
[42:14] additional set of regulations, requirements, standards that fall within any district that you set. We're
[42:21] recommending that you scale back what you have now and limit it to your light
[42:26] industrial and your general
[42:30] industrial district. So if there's a proposed data center, large-scale data center, that is appropriately zoned
[42:35] for light industrial, general industrial, they would still have to get that specific use permit. It
[42:40] would still trigger public hearings. It would still take the city council taking those
[42:45] 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,
[42:50] in front of the planning and zoning commission. They would then make a recommendation to the council. That
[42:54] recommendation goes to the council during a regularly scheduled meeting. There's a second public
[42:59] hearing. And again, any particular specific use or zone change must be approved by council with 2 reads
[43:04] of an ordinance. So you're looking at 2 public hearings and 3 public meetings for that in order to do that. And doing
[43:09] it with a specific use, that's the benefit of using specific use, is it
[43:14] requires that additional public input and additional consideration
[43:18] by the pnz and the council. Another item built
[43:24] in that we're proposing within the specific use permit would be to require a power usage study
[43:29] to provided by a licensed engineer including the type
[43:33] of generation. So we want to know how much power, and number 2, what type
[43:38] of generation. You're going to purchase it off the grid, or you're going to have generation on-site? Is
[43:42] that gas turbines, wind turbines, solar? So we want to know that up front as you all consider every specific use
[43:48] on a case-by-case basis. Such
[43:52] on setbacks your current general industrial and light industrial districts currently
[43:56] have existing setbacks. So I'm going to touch on these and what you have existing today in
[44:00] the code and then what we're proposing. So for starters,
[44:04] your minimum front, side, and rear setback, if it's not adjacent to residential,
[44:09] in your general industrial it's 50 feet, in your light industrial it's 40 feet. If it's adjacent
[44:14] to residential, your minimum front, front, side, and rear setback for general industrial is 150
[44:18] feet and 100 in light industrial. What we're
[44:23] proposing in again, the specific use permit would be to increase that if it's not adjacent, if, I'm sorry,
[44:27] if it's adjacent to anything but light industrial and general industrial, we would
[44:33] propose that you increase that
[44:37] to 300 feet. If there's generation on site, so you've got gas turbines, wind turbines, solar,
[44:42] an additional 500 feet or combined 500 feet. So going up from your 150 and 100 to, in essence, 300 and 500 feet
[44:47] depending on whether they have self-generation on site. So an additional setback, which helps
[44:52] with the concerns related to noise lighting, in addition to some of the other items and concerns. Not all data centers
[44:57] produce their power on-site, is that correct? That's
[45:05] correct. So if they didn't
[45:09] produce it on-site, they'd be at 300, right? That's correct, yes, sir. But if they did produce it on-site,
[45:13] they would be at 500? They'd be at 500. Okay. Yeah. All right.
[45:18] and if they're adjacent to another light industrial or general industrial district,
[45:22] then it would just be the traditional, the traditional numbers, setbacks as they're
[45:27] written today. Okay. Mr. Rienow, a question I've gotten from a number of people and a
[45:32] question I've often found myself what do we see these data centers used for? We've seen them in fort worth.
[45:37] there's one going up by dickens and abernathy. What's the purpose of these, the industrial purpose? The
[45:41] industrial purpose, I mean, process data. Um they're used as ai hubs crypto mining you
[45:48] know, they're used for a combination of things. You know, one thing staying along the lines
[45:54] of existing setbacks, the other thing we've seen is related
[45:58] to setbacks is that of additional screening requirements. You know,
[46:03] minimum of a 6-foot berm is what we're proposing. I've seen berms work quite well based on some
[46:08] of the pictures I've seen from some of the site visits that our team has taken there. In addition
[46:12] to having a minimum of a 7-foot solid screening fence around the actual infrastructure around the
[46:18] buildings if there's onsite generation, any of the other, any of the other items.
[46:22] staying along the lines of
[46:29] screening and buffering the current code in your gi and li, and I'm thinking a general industrial
[46:34] district you have to have a minimum of 10% landscaping on the property. We would
[46:40] propose that you have additional buffering, additional landscaping. And
[46:45] what we're proposing here is to have additional trees, 4 canopy trees per 100 feet, in addition
[46:50] to what you already have in your general industrial and light industrial districts, to continue to help with that
[46:54] buffering when adjacent to other non-light industrial and general industrial districts. Let's touch on noise. So what
[47:04] we regulate today is at the 80 decibels. The 80 decibels, it's between a truck and a hair
[47:09] dryer, between that 80 and 90 there. What we're proposing in the specific use permit would
[47:13] be to go to 57. A 57-decibel read would be just shy of a, of
[47:19] a conversation and a little
[47:25] louder than a refrigerator running. So that, that would be
[47:29] at all property lines. We would require a sound study, sound absorption barriers,
[47:33] as well as let us know what type of acoustic materials and construction you're going
[47:38] to be using to build and as well as if you have generators for just routine exercising of your generators on site
[47:43] for backup power, we would require that they only be run monday through friday, 8 to 5.
[47:48] again, that's just your
[47:53] generator routine exercises for maintenance that those of us that have generators
[47:57] for those purposes do. So, mr.
[48:02] reno, would you say the loudest part of a data center typically would be the power generation
[48:07] similar to the plant we've got on the slayton highway? Yes, sir. Thank you. And that's, this really ties back also to
[48:12] that additional setback requirement. Again, if it doesn't have on-site
[48:17] generation, 300 feet. If it has on-site generation, the 500 feet. So that, I think that
[48:22] would help also address the noise concern. So that's why we're proposing the additional footage on generation for on-site generation. And
[48:29] these decibel levels are measured
[48:34] at the property line? That is correct. Yes, sir. So air quality, again,
[48:38] is not something that is within the city's authority, the city council's authority. But one thing we could do that
[48:43] you could consider in that specific use permit is to require that those permits
[48:47] be provided, the compliance documents be provided to the city. And if you find that there's an issue, that
[48:53] they're not compliant or that they don't have the permit, then you, we could then work with the texas commission on
[48:58] environmental quality at that point. And hand it over and work
[49:02] with our state partners. Even though it's not within your authority, it is within your authority to ask
[49:06] for those documents if you set that as a criteria for your specific use permit.
[49:10] and again, air quality regulated by federal and state. At the state level, it's the
[49:15] texas commission on environmental quality. That's
[49:20] who, who regulates that and issues those permits. So the next couple slides related
[49:25] to lighting these are already within your existing code. We already have this in the unified development code. So
[49:30] all luminaries with initial lamp output of over 1,500 lumens shall be face
[49:35] down, as the pictures show. Again, this also ties back to the setback requirements.
[49:40] in addition to this, you would have your additional setbacks that will help with lighting.
[49:44] so 1,500 lumens is the threshold to require that lighting
[49:49] to be shielded. In addition to that, we also have vertical illuminance. This is specific by district and it varies
[49:55] by district. But in your light industrial and general industrial district, it's 2
[49:59] foot candles. And you can see the visual there of about how far a foot candle would go out.
[50:03] and this would be in addition to facing the light down as well as your setback
[50:07] requirements. But these are in your current code today as they sit today,
[50:12] and they're specific to your light industrial and general industrial districts. There's
[50:20] been a lot of discussion about what if a data center comes and at some point in time they cease to exist?
[50:26] the concern I think here is really more related to the on-site generation,
[50:31] the gas turbines, wind turbines, solar. So what we're proposing is that you have the
[50:35] applicant of the specific use permit provide a decommissioning plan as well as
[50:42] a letter of credit. So if and when the facility, the operation ceases
[50:47] to exist and council wants to address the decommissioning of the you know, of the, say,
[50:52] call it the on-site generation, if the applicant does not do that, you have a letter
[50:56] of credit that you can go claim on and then address that yourself and decommission as
[51:00] appropriate depending on the type of generation that it is. So
[51:05] right now we're recommending that you consider that really for only on-site generation as you know, obviously buildings
[51:10] can always be repurposed, but this is we obviously have letters of credit throughout the development code
[51:15] in other areas. So this is not a, not a new theme, but it would be again,
[51:19] this would be specific for on-site generation decommissioning. Councilman
[51:24] erica, can you hear me? I don't know if it's on. Can you hear
[51:30] me? Yes, sir. Okay. In layman's terms, I know there's a lot of people here that want
[51:34] to know what is the benefit of this data center? I know
[51:38] it's for cell phones. I know that it's for the internet.
[51:43] but in layman's terms, what real purpose does the data center serve as far as getting
[51:48] a plant? Because we already have those services now. So what is the purpose? You know,
[51:53] data processing is becoming more and more, and I think there's a lot
[51:59] of folks here that probably, including myself,
[52:03] that use some form of ai related
[52:08] to just processing data, finding information. That is becoming more and more of a demand that I think is
[52:13] requiring the additional storage of these data centers. That, I
[52:18] think, is an everyday use that I think a lot of folks are using now. So we
[52:22] need more now, or is this just getting things ready for the future? I think both. I think there's obviously a higher need
[52:27] now you know, there's a for it as well as future demand for it that they're trying
[52:34] to plan for. So, thank you. So
[52:39] let's touch on power generation, transmission, and distribution. Again, when a data center has onsite power
[52:44] generation, all the standards we've talked about will apply. There's some additional setback requirements
[52:49] we would recommend. It's really important to note though, set the data center aside just
[52:53] for minute. The current code requires that on-site power generation, transmission,
[52:59] and distribution today in your current code have a specific use permit. We saw one of those that pnc voted
[53:04] down that got pulled out, but that's in your code today. So that's a requirement today. There's
[53:08] nothing you need to do to require a specific use permit for on-site generation. This,
[53:13] this is in your code today as it relates to wind turbines, solar panels, simple cycle
[53:18] turbines, and on-site generation.
[53:23] parrish, I mean, mr. Regineo. Yes, ma'am. Going back
[53:28] to that particular, just for clarification, a data
[53:32] center could potentially also have wind turbines and then the simple cycle, I mean,
[53:37] the solar panels, and then it could have a combination of all of, of all
[53:42] of the above, right? Yes, ma'am. Okay, that really wraps
[53:53] up the presentation that I have. Going back through these are all standards
[53:58] within your authority, council. And going back to water usage, wastewater,
[54:04] zoning and land use, setback requirements, landscaping, noise mitigation, and lighting,
[54:09] those are all items. Some of it's already in your code now,
[54:13] but you do have the ability to be cut to add to those. Again, the concept we presented
[54:17] to you today is really tied to a specific use permit, which is a set of regulations within a current zoning code.
[54:22] and again, we're proposing that you consider the lead
[54:27] industrial and general industrial. And again, today it's, it's allowed
[54:31] in a broader, broader spectrum of districts. So we would recommend that you consider
[54:35] scaling that down to your districts. And then number 2, adding a specific use
[54:40] on top of that to require that public input, that additional consideration
[54:44] by the pnz, the council, and the general public. So with that, mayor, I'm going to turn it back over
[54:49] to you. I'll be happy to take any questions or comments. I'd like to take you back to,
[54:56] I think it's number 4. Let's look
[55:00] at that particular slide. 4 slide. What we can and can't do? No, it's not about what we
[55:04] can and cannot control. This is
[55:12] what my question is. So basically,
[55:16] when we're discussing ercot, where do the ercot lines, where do they lie right now
[55:22] in the city of lubbock? Are they all over the city? Are they in district 1 and 2? 3,
[55:26] 04, 5, 6, where are they located right now? How does that work?
[55:33] we'll let mr. Atkinson take this one. Yeah so the, the
[55:42] very, very large lines, there's a set that comes in kind of from north to the,
[55:48] to the center part of the north central part of lubbock. There's a large set
[55:53] that kind of runs from south to north, kind
[55:58] of south-central of it. They don't actually come
[56:03] into town. Well, the north one does a little bit, but they generally don't. And
[56:08] then the one that ties the grid from south to north, north to south, is over
[56:13] on the east, to the east side of town. It's actually outside the east loop. So what I'm
[56:20] understanding then is that these, since what you're saying,
[56:25] the location then would be in areas like district 1 and district 2, what other district
[56:30] would that also lie in? It depends on where,
[56:34] how far they want to pull that power. It's, I don't see it coming
[56:39] into the center part of town because you would have to have some pretty good-sized
[56:44] lines. So it wouldn't go into district 3, 4, 5 or 6 because we don't have the lines
[56:49] to support it. The southern end of district 3, I'm sorry, of 04, is not very far removed.
[56:53] but would it be impacted? Are
[56:58] those electrical lines in any other district other than district 1 and 2? Where they
[57:02] touch the city limits,
[57:06] they're largely in district 1 and 2. They're not all in the city. So
[57:12] in other words, if we were going to place or approve data centers and they
[57:16] would be located in districts 1 and district 2. Is that what I'm understanding? Generally,
[57:22] the large ones want to be close to a big power line. How big,
[57:27] I don't know. But with the specific use process that's being proposed, the location
[57:32] criteria is general industrial or light industrial. And the
[57:37] specific use permit. All right, I'm not gonna say this again.
[57:44] any comments like that, you will be asked
[57:50] to leave the room. We've got a time schedule we're working on. We've already gone over a little bit because
[57:55] of our problems, so let's stick to what we're doing. If you want to make a comment,
[58:00] 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
[58:07] imposing yourself on other people who signed up and followed the rules. So we're going
[58:12] to follow the rules tonight in this meeting. This is the last time I'll say that. Thank you, mr. Can I finish though?
[58:19] because so what we've clarified is that data centers, because of where the ercot electrical
[58:24] lines to support the data centers would then be located in districts 1 and district 2.
[58:35] that is confirmed, right? That's where a lot of the larger lines are. Now,
[58:40] one thing to keep in mind, and this goes back to the governor's letter and demand,
[58:44] some of that generation that's going to be required by these data
[58:49] centers has not been built yet. So there will have to be an expansion
[58:54] at some point of some of that additional infrastructure that hasn't been into account. I think the other part of,
[58:59] it's not really a question,
[59:04] 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
[59:12] we could potentially have all of the industrial,
[59:19] and now we're going to add all of the data centers. Somehow that just is a little bit
[59:25] concerning to me. And but this is about the public input, so I
[59:30] think that I'm gonna just step back and let the public give their input. All right. All
[59:36] right, eric, are you finished?
[59:41] are you done? Yeah, I don't have anything else unless y'all have any more questions.
[59:46] okay, any other questions for eric from the council? All right, thank you, eric. Thank
[59:51] you. All right, now we're going to move on to our next part of the meeting. And let me
[59:56] remind you, it's going to be moderated by abner uresti tonight. He's going to
[1:00:00] announce and call the speakers up. He's going to call 3 at a time. And so when he calls
[1:00:04] your name, if you're one of those first 3 he calls, please come up and take your
[1:00:09] seat here to my right, to your left, those 3 seats. You'll step to this mic here. Here. You have 2 minutes
[1:00:14] to make your comment. There's a timer over here which you can see. And then be prepared,
[1:00:19] when number 1 is done, number 2 will step forward to the mic. Make your comments or ask your question. Then
[1:00:24] between number 2 and 3, mr. Uresti will call an additional 3 people forward. All right?
[1:00:28] so you will take your seat here and you'll be ready. That way
[1:00:32] we can keep moving through and not waste a lot of time in between people wishing
[1:00:37] to speak. We want to get, if we have 60 people, we might be able to get
[1:00:41] through all of them tonight. That's about what I estimated for 3 hours. We will be here for 3 hours
[1:00:46] from when we begin, including a break right in the middle.
[1:00:51] but I think we can get through the 60 who have signed up tonight, and that's going
[1:00:56] to be our goal. But the only way we can meet that goal is if you are respectful
[1:01:03] 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
[1:01:08] to everybody. So mr. Uresti, would you please come forward? And we will take a 20-minute break. You're free
[1:01:12] to come and go during the meeting if you want to through the back doors. And we're happy to have mr. Uresti
[1:01:16] here, and he will take over from this point. Thank you, mayor, and thank you all
[1:01:21] for being here today. I want
[1:01:27] to introduce lacey rose. She is
[1:01:33] the director of communications and public engagement
[1:01:40] for the city, so she is helping me out. Everyone has
[1:01:44] to have an assistant in case things go wrong, and you can blame the assistant. Now, I do want
[1:01:55] to say this out loud. By the way, the time, the 3-hour time, doesn't start
[1:02:01] until I'm finished, so don't worry,
[1:02:07] I'm not taking up your time. In the interest of allowing as many people as possible the opportunity to speak within the
[1:02:11] time we have available, we respectfully ask everyone to refrain from applause, cheering, booing,
[1:02:16] or other audible reactions to speakers' comments. We appreciate your cooperation in
[1:02:20] helping us maintain a respectful and efficient hearing. We have a 2-minute timer here on the right side,
[1:02:26] the 2-minute timer. We also
[1:02:37] have, is this working? Is this going to work? We have the red
[1:02:43] light that will come on once it is 2 minutes. Folks, I'm going
[1:02:48] 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
[1:02:53] because it's going to go by fast, and I am going to make sure that we stay at 2
[1:03:00] minutes per person. So please understand that going
[1:03:05] 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
[1:03:10] moderated one time, and I quickly regained control when I
[1:03:16] said, let us pray. And I said a really long prayer,
[1:03:27] so be forewarned. But I don't think that's going to come to that. I have full confidence that we are all
[1:03:32] going to have a very civil discussion tonight. So we were going to start with randy
[1:03:39] christian, riley rodriguez, and kylie ravel. Kyle, kyle
[1:03:45] ravel. You're our first 3 speakers. If you'll come and
[1:03:49] take these 3 chairs up here. And again, as the mayor said, when we have the second speaker
[1:03:59] who finishes talking, I will call up the next 3 so
[1:04:03] you can take your position so we won't, they can be on deck and we won't have a lot
[1:04:07] of lag time there. Okay, chris is not here. We will add
[1:04:13] joshua shankles. Y'all ready
[1:04:26] for this? All right. My name is riley rodriguez. I'm actually
[1:04:31] from abilene, so I'm kind of the ghost of data center past here. I've been traveling around the area kind of letting
[1:04:36] cities know that are considering this or thinking about this what they can look forward to
[1:04:41] on the ground level, that what we're seeing in abilene today. I heard a lot
[1:04:45] of discussion about energy and resources, zoning. Those are all really
[1:04:49] important. But we've had a data center, it's got 51 towers in it,
[1:04:55] and what we're seeing on the ground are impacts that need
[1:04:59] to be handled immediately. These aren't impacts that you can take some time and study.
[1:05:03] some
[1:05:07] of the social workers back home at big country family services are seeing recovering families,
[1:05:12] young families, low-income families shoved into
[1:05:16] tiny dwellings because their rent has shot up. They don't live on the south side
[1:05:20] of town where the mall is. They live on the north side of town where the data center is.
[1:05:26] disabled folks like the one I met saturday who's bound to a wheelchair has seen her water go up $200.
[1:05:31] nobody's got anything to say about it. We have hardworking texans in abilene,
[1:05:37] manufacturing jobs, like a man I met named adam who was stuck in his apartment
[1:05:41] because he can't afford to give up the rent because he doesn't have to pay his utilities
[1:05:46] with that rent, but he wants to move into another house and he's stuck. And he's going to be stuck regardless
[1:05:51] of what happens. There are effects that happen immediately on the ground, and I want
[1:05:56] to urge you as a city to take that
[1:06:01] into consideration. Take those people that are going to suffer today into consideration because they
[1:06:06] don't get 3 months. I don't know about you, but if I had to live on the street for 3
[1:06:10] months, I'd have a little bit of trauma. You might have a little trouble getting over that.
[1:06:16] but that's what we're seeing. You can speak to people at beyond trafficking. We have increases
[1:06:20] in human trafficking. We have increases in homelessness. These are impacts on people, breathing, living people.
[1:06:24] for what? Some cat videos that can morph into a dog? What are
[1:06:29] we doing? Riley, thank you. Consider it. That's your time.
[1:06:34] thank you. Kyle rabel. Howdy,
[1:06:42] y'all. Mayor, city council, thank you. My name is kyle rabel, and like riley, I've
[1:06:47] traveled across all of west texas, and I can tell you I completely agree
[1:06:51] with everything he just said. In abilene, the costs have skyrocketed
[1:06:56] to the point people are out of their homes. That is not something we can handle in west texas, and especially in
[1:07:01] lubbock, because we already have a homeless population that we are incapable of doing enough for here. Here. I also take issue with
[1:07:05] the fact that we're comparing cotton fields and homes to data centers. Cotton produces for us here in west
[1:07:10] texas, and we live in our homes. Nothing is given to us from these data centers. We
[1:07:14] cannot prove that these data centers bring jobs, which has been what we've been told is the economic driver
[1:07:19] for choosing to bring these here to lubbock in west texas. Unless we decide
[1:07:24] to have a community agreement with these data centers and force them to hire west texans
[1:07:33] to build, maintain, and staff these places, which we have not been able to, these serve no purpose in our community. We gain
[1:07:38] nothing from having data centers. They do nothing besides noise pollution, light pollution,
[1:07:43] and take our water. Unless we are willing to compromise our entire identity of west texas
[1:07:47] and stop growing cotton, probably stop raising cattle, then we need to stop having
[1:07:52] this conversation push it away. This does not help west texas, and especially we should
[1:07:56] not be building it in city limits where our folks, our poorest folks, tend
[1:08:01] to live, which is exactly what our plans have been before, and we keep skirting
[1:08:05] around that issue. We should not be building it in district 1 or 2. It should not be in the city,
[1:08:10] and it should not be built in lubbock or lubbock county at all. Thank you all for your time. Thank you guys
[1:08:15] for having me speak. Thank you, mr. Rabel. Let me,
[1:08:21] let me call the next 3 people up. Malik williams, corey alexander, and jennifer
[1:08:25] alexander. Jennifer alexander, if you would come
[1:08:30] up, please, and take the seat right here. Thank you. Joshua shankles.
[1:08:36] thank you. Thank you, mayor and council. Joshua shankles, lubbock compact foundation,
[1:08:41] lubbock county democratic party. That was a very nice
[1:08:45] presentation. I'm a little bit irritated that we gave mr. Atkinson a full 25 minutes to pre-but everything that folks
[1:08:51] wanted to say, and folks, the public gets 2 minutes to address those things. Let's
[1:08:55] jump right into some of those problems. Those are all nice and fine regulations.
[1:09:01] the problem is your governing record has shown you cannot be trusted to actually deliver
[1:09:06] those regulations for us. And you cannot be trusted to make a deal on our behalf,
[1:09:18] and I will describe why. The number 1, 2, and 3 concerns of citizens on that list were all environmental. Well, you
[1:09:23] and I both know that it's going to be on those people to police the environment,
[1:09:30] because the city does not police environmental concerns in any way, shape, or form. Nor does the state, who has a
[1:09:35] toothless regulation entity that doesn't do hardly any regulation
[1:09:40] of environmental concerns. We had to go secure a federal grant to check air quality
[1:09:45] in the city, which the city could have done at any time. Nothing is
[1:09:49] stopping you from monitoring, but you wouldn't. So we had
[1:09:54] to go do it. All of these environmental regulations will
[1:09:58] be on you to police, people.
[1:10:06] number 1, 2, and 3 were environmental concerns. The dead last, revenue and jobs. People don't want the money,
[1:10:10] 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
[1:10:14] want our peace and quiet, and we want our water. The water that we saved, the tax and ratepayers, the people who use water,
[1:10:19] we saved that water, and we paid for it. So we want it. It would be morally and ethically wrong to put this
[1:10:25] on the north or east side of lubbock because they have asked us repeatedly to stay stop doing that
[1:10:29] in no uncertain terms. Mr. Mayor, you said that was the worst moral offense that this city had ever done, racially
[1:10:34] segregated housing and zoning policy. That's your time, mr. Frankels. Keep your word. Thank you. Malik williams.
[1:10:39] hello, everyone. My name is
[1:10:48] malik williams. I am the democratic candidate that's running for texas house district 83. I'm speaking today
[1:10:52] because I believe politics is all about what the people need.
[1:11:00] and I'm sorry, but who the hell asked for an ai data center
[1:11:05] to be here in lubbock? No one. People asked y'all to lower the cost of housing.
[1:11:11] instead, y'all decided to give billionaires tax breaks to put these corporations
[1:11:15] into our city. People asked for cheaper grocery prices. This. And we are living
[1:11:20] in a food desert right now, people. Everyone needs help. And y'all decided instead
[1:11:24] of giving people lower cost for groceries, let's give them more ai data centers. That's going to reduce our water,
[1:11:29] put stress on people for electricity. And yet people are in need right now. People
[1:11:34] are asking for lower cost when it comes
[1:11:38] to child care services. You
[1:11:44] have parents working 1, 2, even 3 jobs just
[1:11:49] to survive. I myself have had to work paycheck to paycheck. How dare y'all? People need help. People need better
[1:11:56] from y'all, our representatives, but you would
[1:12:03] rather give tax breaks to billionaires and corporations.
[1:12:07] nobody asked for ai data centers to be put here in lubbock. I've walked the streets talking to people. Kyle rabel has
[1:12:13] walked the streets talking to people. Riley rodriguez and so many other candidates have talked to the people of
[1:12:18] lubbock. Nobody wants these ai data centers. Everybody needs
[1:12:22] more help. They want things to be more affordable. And I see you looking at the time,
[1:12:28] but it's not going to stop me. People want more. Give them cheaper housing.
[1:12:32] give them affordable groceries. Give them healthcare. People are sick right now. They are
[1:12:37] having to scrounge up their, their savings to ensure that they have enough money
[1:12:42] for their medication. They have to choose between paying rent or being healthy. That is not a
[1:12:47] choice that they should have to make in the most, thank you, mr. Williams, for your time.
[1:12:58] corey alexander. Good evening. I'm a grandson of a local farmer. And a
[1:13:03] technical professional with 25 years in technology design, development, support. And I'm
[1:13:09] adamantly against large-scale data centers built near developed communities. From my research,
[1:13:13] data centers seem to be little more than shiny, trendy corporate drains on
[1:13:18] communities where jobs and revenue generated are not kept
[1:13:23] local. Okay, we are not fooled about job creation brought by these projects. They are largely temporary,
[1:13:27] and large-scale projects tend to lead to increased prices for hotel rooms and other related amenities,
[1:13:33] thus competing directly with sporting events, graduations, concerts,
[1:13:37] and so on. City leadership has already committed to make lubbock a magnet for tourism and visitation, but
[1:13:42] large-scale data construction projects would leave little room for affordable tourism or visitation to our city.
[1:13:47] further, I've learned that practically all data center projects are offered tax breaks
[1:13:52] or discounted utility rates, not the infrastructure, the rate. Everyone in this room already knows who makes up the
[1:13:57] difference in those situations. We do, in the form of higher taxes and
[1:14:02] utility bills. Any benefit offered to them will not help us locally, not in long-term jobs, not tax
[1:14:07] revenue, not culture, art, or any meaningful way. Data centers consume vast amounts
[1:14:12] of water, often pushing aquifers beyond natural replenishment rates, causing wells
[1:14:17] to run dry or drop. Electricity is also consumed at drastically increased levels. Lubbock already has published
[1:14:22] restrictions on water usage, and we've experienced events regionally where utility providers have struggled
[1:14:27] to keep the power on during high demand or weather events, sometimes
[1:14:32] with tragic results. Has city leadership prepared a commitment or implemented a firm, documented,
[1:14:36] and legally binding plan to limit consumption by data centers first?
[1:14:41] prioritizing might bring us some degree of comfort. If no such plan or commitment exists, then that says a lot
[1:14:46] about the priorities. We cannot water crops, raise livestock, or sustain our bodies
[1:14:50] on ones and zeros. People and wildlife before data centers. Thank you. Thank you, mr.
[1:14:55] alexander. If we could have brooklyn duvall, jaden scott,
[1:15:00] and isidro gutierrez come up.
[1:15:08] you'll be the next 3. Thank you. Hi, my name is jennifer alexander, and that was my big
[1:15:12] brother who knows all about technology. I, however, do not. I am just a regular girl. I am, like many
[1:15:18] in this room, have deep roots here in west texas. My beloved late
[1:15:22] grandfather left the farm, went to world war ii to fight, and came back
[1:15:27] to this place he loved to raise his family and be a steward of the land. My father has been
[1:15:34] in water-related industry and manufacturing here in lubbock for over 60 years, so I
[1:15:38] understand full well a steadfast respect for our natural resources.
[1:15:42] 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
[1:15:47] from the farm life, but the lessons my grandmother and granddaddy taught me,
[1:15:52] my parents passed down, and my teachers taught me here in lisd are with me every time
[1:15:57] I brush my teeth, wash a dish,
[1:16:02] or think about doing something drastic because of the bugs in my backyard. I think about my personal impact
[1:16:08] on our ecosystem. Like my neighbors, I pray for rain, feel guilty when I
[1:16:13] take a long bath because I want to read just one more chapter. And I can easily pay my water
[1:16:17] bill, but years of drought weigh heavy on us, and we are tasked
[1:16:23] with being mindful of our consumption as regular citizens. And it boggles the
[1:16:28] mind to think that we have, and that we would invite a resource-hungry data center
[1:16:32] into our community, our lives, especially when we can only estimate the cost
[1:16:36] of this imaginary data center? What happens when they exceed the demands presented in studies? Obviously, I use
[1:16:41] 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
[1:16:48] gigabytes and the water usage, right? All I can tell you is
[1:16:52] this, that our state our nation, our planet. Wars have been fought over resources, and
[1:17:04] scarcity breeds fear. I don't want us to be scared. Put reason over want, human need over corporate greed. Thank
[1:17:09] you, miss alexander. Brooklyn
[1:17:17] duvall. Okay, good evening. My name is brooklyn duvall. I am
[1:17:21] 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.
[1:17:26] my dad works in lubbock, and all of my cousins go to school here in lubbock. So
[1:17:30] today I'm here to speak on behalf of my loved ones, most of them which live in
[1:17:35] districts 1 and 2. So I am here
[1:17:42] today to tell you that any data center proposal before you will represent an unfair trade-off that will hurt local families
[1:17:47] far more than they will ever help them. Despite governor abbott's order blocking data
[1:17:53] centers from charging families for new power lines, local
[1:17:58] utility bills are still likely to highly go up. A single massive ai facility consumes an
[1:18:03] astronomical amount of electricity, drastically shrinking the region's overall
[1:18:07] energy supply. Because of basic supply and demand, this sudden grid strain forces
[1:18:12] wholesale power prices to skyrocket. Since lubbock residents choose retail
[1:18:17] electric plans tied directly to these market rates, local families will ultimately face
[1:18:22] higher monthly bills just to keep their lights on. We
[1:18:27] live in a structurally drought-prone region where water is our lifeblood and our
[1:18:31] most precious resource. In our dry climate, we must ask
[1:18:37] if keeping computer services cool is the best use to use, is the best use
[1:18:42] of our most precious resource.
[1:18:47] if we allow our water supply to be funneled into cooling computer microchips, we are directly endangering our local
[1:18:51] agricultural economy, stunting our future housing development, and threatening the long-term drinking water
[1:18:56] supply of my generation and the children that come after me. An industry that depletes our water, strains our electricity,
[1:19:01] and generates near-zero long-term careers is mathematically incapable
[1:19:06] of providing a net benefit to lubbock. Therefore, I strongly urge this council here
[1:19:13] to stand up for citizens, protect my family's future,
[1:19:17] protect the future of kids to come after me, and to vote no on any data center proposals.
[1:19:22] thank you, brooklyn. Jaden
[1:19:29] scott. Hello, my name is
[1:19:34] jaden scott. I am a student at texas tech university, and I've lived in lubbock for 5 years and the south plains
[1:19:39] for my entire life. We are in this room today because the larger state government of
[1:19:45] texas has not stepped up and protected the cities within its borders
[1:19:49] from outside organizations. We saw the chart showing who has
[1:19:53] development authority. Our state has a loophole allowing large-scale data centers
[1:19:57] to be built in a different county without their development being
[1:20:03] governed. These guys up here are right. If we don't allow a
[1:20:07] data center to take root in lubbock, they will just move it outside the city limits. This
[1:20:12] 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
[1:20:16] in this city or near any of our neighbors. We should not lower our standards and say, well, we already use a ton
[1:20:24] of water, so who cares if we use even more? We'll just plant some more trees around it. We
[1:20:29] should be raising our conservation standards and decreasing our water usage to
[1:20:34] 10 billion or 9 billion gallons per year. Elections are coming
[1:20:39] up, and I encourage everyone in this room to find who has been the most against ai data centers. Some
[1:20:44] of those politicians, like kyle rabel and clayton tucker, are here right now
[1:20:49] because they care about this issue, and they can tell you who they think can not
[1:20:54] only represent lubbock but all of texas as it gets hotter and drier each year. I appreciate
[1:20:58] the city holding this meeting. I implore the city officials
[1:21:02] to do what is best for the people in this city, not for the profits, not
[1:21:09] for growth, not, but only just do these things for your neighbors, because
[1:21:14] your neighbors want won't care about more jobs if they have to move because the ogallala
[1:21:18] has been depleted. Thank you. Thank you. If we could have the
[1:21:26] next 3 come up, take your seat. William
[1:21:32] griffith, naida marie
[1:21:36] gonzalez, and susan stewart, isidro stewart. Has it started
[1:22:00] yet? Mr. Mayor, my comments today are about public health.
[1:22:07] I believe that the primary responsibility of government is public health,
[1:22:12] and there is a problem with all data centers everywhere, and
[1:22:17] that is that they emanate low-frequency noise. Now, this
[1:22:21] noise that comes from the data center travels through the air and through the ground,
[1:22:27] and it reaches long distances. Any data center that is located
[1:22:32] inside the city limits of lubbock will invariably reach
[1:22:36] large areas of neighborhoods and businesses. And the
[1:22:49] low-frequency noise is known to cause pressure on the chest of people and also on the ears of individuals. It also affects
[1:22:54] livestock and pets and wildlife. And so that low-frequency noise is
[1:23:00] hazardous to health. And since the responsibility of government is
[1:23:09] to protect public health, then I recommend that you abandon the idea
[1:23:16] of building a data center within the city limits. There is no way that you can avoid
[1:23:21] that noise from reaching homes and businesses and people. And the only way,
[1:23:29] there's only one way to mitigate low-frequency noise, and that is
[1:23:33] to build a data center far away from any
[1:23:37] of the developed communities, away from the city limits. I recommend that you coordinate
[1:23:42] in cooperation with the city, the city with the county and state government, and develop ordinances that will keep data
[1:23:47] centers a safe distance away
[1:23:55] from people. Thank you, cedro. William griffith.
[1:24:00] right, got to make this quick. Hello,
[1:24:05] mayor and council. My name is william griffith, born and raised in lubbock, texas. I
[1:24:10] currently work in the it department of a local financial institution. Many
[1:24:14] people in here probably bank with us. And working in it you know,
[1:24:20] obviously the issue of ai gets brought up a lot.
[1:24:24] it's a very ubiquitous thing. It's just part of daily life. So obviously,
[1:24:28] as you can probably guess, I'm on the side against the data centers. Okay, this is bad stuff,
[1:24:33] folks. Um and I'm not here to make all the arguments that have been made before. Um why
[1:24:39] water, other types of pollution, noise, light.
[1:24:43] those concerns have already been brought up by my fellow
[1:24:47] citizens much more articulately than me. I'd like to make a little bit more of
[1:24:52] like a, dare I say, like philosophical point about like the rise of emerging
[1:24:56] technologies and why you should kind of be wary of it. You know, what we always see with
[1:25:01] new technologies is that they always lead to kind of immediate improvements. In
[1:25:06] like a material sense, but they almost always have detrimental effects long-term as far as the
[1:25:12] mental, physical, and spiritual well-being
[1:25:17] of mankind, right? Take the car for example, right? It's
[1:25:22] certainly the most impactful technological innovation of the 20th century. And what
[1:25:27] did that represent? It allowed us to go more and do more as humanity. But fast forward 100
[1:25:34] years and what do you have now? Entire cities built around the car, and you can't
[1:25:39] really be a functioning member of society if you don't have a car. So it went from having the freedom
[1:25:44] to now you're not free to not have a car, okay? But anyways, this particular piece
[1:25:48] of technology is growing at such a rapid pace and it would, given the universal opposition
[1:25:53] it would not be unreasonable to assume that there may be
[1:25:57] some financial incentive for the people in power. I just ask in conclusion, please do not
[1:26:03] hoist our descendants into a dystopian nightmare just because some people can't write
[1:26:07] their own emails. Thank you. Thank you, william. Naida
[1:26:17] marie gonzalez. Good evening
[1:26:24] to all of you. And all of you, thank you
[1:26:29] for being here. Thank you. Right off the bat,
[1:26:33] let me ask you to imagine your life without clean water. Water is
[1:26:38] life. Ever since the governor came out
[1:26:43] with his big push to give tax breaks to data centers,
[1:26:47] some rural people in texas, I was rural once, have been left with nothing but dirty water.
[1:26:51] they don't tell you about the heavy metals that are put into the aquifer and the water
[1:26:57] systems. They don't tell you that the usage goes up
[1:27:03] exponentially over time, and that's a massive amount of water. Do you think that's
[1:27:07] sustainable? I don't think so. These companies, and
[1:27:13] in my neighborhood, I live in east I have water pollution.
[1:27:17] my well, my well is poisoned. The air is toxic. I have noise pollution. I have light
[1:27:23] pollution. I have it all. Nevertheless, I wouldn't live
[1:27:28] anywhere else. These companies
[1:27:34] are used to intruding and invading our neighborhoods. Our opposition is
[1:27:38] of no importance to elected officials. You do not listen to us when we say, not in my backyard. We have no
[1:27:44] political clout. Well, I'm here to let you know that where I'm from, the city,
[1:27:49] the tiny town that I was born, we have a saying, and that is,
[1:27:55] that dog don't hunt anymore. I'd prefer to be optimistic, not pessimistic,
[1:28:00] but we're fed up, and we have come here to burst your bubble.
[1:28:04] prisoners are an existential threat to our neighborhoods and
[1:28:09] to humanity. They will replace your jobs with ai and use them to invade our privacy. Look up
[1:28:15] palantir. No, no, no longer will you,
[1:28:20] the decision makers, not be held liable for the premature death and injury to our neighbors, friends,
[1:28:26] and relatives. Thank you, naida. That is your time.
[1:28:32] thank you. Now, as susan comes up, we'd like to ask I'd ask stefania garcia, clayton
[1:28:37] tucker, and camille webb to come up and take your chairs, please. Susan. My understanding
[1:28:44] was that I would have more time, and people have donated their time, but I'm told that that's
[1:28:49] not going to be possible. We're told these facilities will either build their own
[1:28:56] natural gas generation or pay to upgrade the electrical grid. Neither claim eliminates the impact on our community if they
[1:29:00] are connected to ercot grid. They will still rely on transmission infrastructure, new substations, transmission
[1:29:05] lines, and interconnections, which became part of our landscape. And if they build private gas generation,
[1:29:10] that introduces additional industrial facilities, emissions, fuel supply,
[1:29:14] infrastructure, and noise. The question isn't whether they'll provide power. It is what new
[1:29:18] infrastructure our communities will be expected to live with for decades. Grid upgrades
[1:29:23] aren't free. We need to know who exactly pays, not just for construction, but for future maintenance,
[1:29:28] expansion, and replacement. Citizens should never have to have the cost shifted
[1:29:34] to us. Can the city guarantee in writing that no future transmission upgrades, substations, expansions,
[1:29:39] or reliability costs associated with these centers will ever be passed on to lubbock residents
[1:29:44] and businesses? I'd like to point out that infrastructure built
[1:29:49] for one large industrial user changes what comes next. One high-capacity, once
[1:29:54] high-capacity power infrastructure is in place, it becomes easier to attract
[1:29:58] additional energy-intensive developments. Tonight's decisions aren't just
[1:30:02] about one data center. It's about the industrial footprint we're choosing for our future. We have the
[1:30:08] right to know how much municipal water will each facility consume over its lifetime and who will
[1:30:13] independently verify these numbers. We are asked to conserve water because supplies
[1:30:17] are under pressure. If conservation is important for households, it should be equally important
[1:30:22] to evaluate a 24-hour facility that we will have for decades. Closed-loop systems either use water or
[1:30:28] electricity to cool. We have the right to know the expected annual water demand and the peak day demand. If the water
[1:30:33] demand is truly insignificant in the, as these developers will have you believe, then will they publicly commit
[1:30:38] to reporting its annual water consumption this evening? As far as the diesel generators, we're told not to worry about
[1:30:44] backup generators because they are for emergencies, but large-scale data centers don't just leave general, thank you,
[1:30:49] susan. That's your time.
[1:30:56] stefania garcia? Stefania, yes.
[1:31:01] so to continue on with her point, with the side generators,
[1:31:05] all the ones you've shown in your examples were just the one ones that were a net positive,
[1:31:09] such as renewable energy. But as we've seen with past data centers that have had site
[1:31:15] generators, like the one up in alabama that was used for
[1:31:19] gronk, it can cause health problems with breathing and such as more. We have seen
[1:31:27] people get things such as asthma become severe and develop chronic cases
[1:31:32] of copd. Is there any way y'all can guarantee to people that this would not happen here, that none
[1:31:36] of our health would be at risk from an ai data center entering our city and harming our
[1:31:40] people. There have been multiple towns that have been
[1:31:45] abandoned and barely fighting to stay alive based off data centers being in them. Can you prove
[1:31:50] to us that that wouldn't happen to our districts 1 and 2, districts 1 and 2 which already
[1:31:55] have enough problems going in as it is? There are enough
[1:32:01] happening here without the idea needed to light a fire that's going
[1:32:05] to destroy more of our city starting from the northeast. We're already
[1:32:09] letting so many problems happen there and develop. We're not working on them. We're not addressing them. The people
[1:32:14] of the community would love to be a place that could just have better resources, better
[1:32:19] requirements, not just a place of part of our city we're going
[1:32:23] to let be destroyed by an ai data center because it's going to bring apart too many
[1:32:27] pollutants and too many health issues to people. Thank you.
[1:32:37] thank you. Clayton tucker. Mayor, can I ask
[1:32:42] for whoever does speak to get close to the mic because it's hard
[1:32:47] to hear? Well, I raise goats, so I talk very loud. So howdy, my name is clayton tucker. I am
[1:32:52] the secretary of the texas farmers union, and we are calling for a full moratorium on these data centers. Now
[1:32:57] look, y'all, I know these data developers will promise you the sun, the moon, and the stars. Thankfully, this is where us
[1:33:03] ranchers come in. Having been raised around cattle, we know what bull smells like.
[1:33:07] so let me tell you 3 stories, and that'll be my time. Let's talk about memphis,
[1:33:12] tennessee. They've promised memphis, tennessee again the sun, the moon, and the stars.
[1:33:17] they said they will build their own power, they'll have their own cooling
[1:33:21] system, water. Everything I'm certain they're telling y'all. They built that data center
[1:33:26] in 120 days. It doesn't take that long to build a data center. You're not building a power plant in
[1:33:31] 120 days. So they put 23 massive diesel generators, actually methane ones, and now the naacp is suing them because
[1:33:36] they're creating a new cancer alley in memphis, tennessee.
[1:33:41] is northeast lubbock going to be the new cancer alley?
[1:33:48] and another gentleman mentioned that the noise these things create, and I talked to a lot
[1:33:52] 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
[1:33:57] talked to folks whose chickens stopped laying eggs, and they create heat domes where temperatures can be as high as
[1:34:02] 20 extra degrees within 5 miles. Last I checked,
[1:34:07] it gets a little hot in texas, so maybe we should really put the brakes
[1:34:13] on this, and let me end with this. Look, there are
[1:34:17] 05,000 data centers already in the united states. We have more data centers than
[1:34:22] basically the entire world combined, more or less. So when
[1:34:26] they say we need these things, we need these things, do we? Because I don't know about y'all,
[1:34:30] but the moment I started talking about data centers, they put a damn flock camera right outside my ranch. Is this
[1:34:35] about data? Is this about ai? Or is this mass surveillance? We need
[1:34:39] to know what they're being used for before we approve any of it. Thank you, clayton.
[1:34:45] okay, thank you. Would the following people come up, please? Steve rogers, mike
[1:34:54] haggard, and pam stinnett. Camille, it's your time. Good
[1:34:59] evening. My name is camille webb. Thank you for having us today. The impacts of large-scale ai data
[1:35:05] centers are not being fully considered due to rush and demand, and rural,
[1:35:09] lower-income communities are being targeted as a result. I was born and raised in
[1:35:14] lubbock. My partner is from, excuse me, morton, texas, a
[1:35:18] town of 1,200 people about an hour west. There are developers looking to build centers
[1:35:23] out there as well. I love west texas, and I know y'all do too,
[1:35:29] but these developers do not. They have money, and they think that means they can build whatever and wherever they
[1:35:34] want. Data center and crypto miner operators were asked to participate in an optional survey by the
[1:35:39] public utility commission of texas about water consumption, and less than a third of them responded. The numbers
[1:35:44] we have on these centers do not tell the whole story. Developers need to be transparent about the energy and water demands and
[1:35:49] consider the repercussions of multiple large-scale projects on the same depleting aquifer.
[1:35:54] residents of morgan county, georgia are experiencing brown, undrinkable tap water after a meta data center was built
[1:35:59] in their town, families have to ship clean water to their rural homes to use
[1:36:04] for absolutely everything. Meta denies these claims, and the epa has not launched an
[1:36:08] official investigation, as most of these residents rely on private wells that are not
[1:36:13] regulated under government water quality standards. One resident in hamby, texas noted
[1:36:18] a major influx of snakes on the road now that their habitat is being destroyed to build yet another data center. One
[1:36:24] example of the many environmental impacts being glossed over as these projects
[1:36:28] are frivolously carried out. There's not enough evidence to prove that this will not have a
[1:36:33] negative impact on our community. The 2027 texas water plan completely ignores the data center surge.
[1:36:37] there are currently 335 data centers already in texas with at least 248 more
[1:36:42] in the works. We should be doing everything we can
[1:36:47] to preserve our land, wildlife, and resources. Resources. I urge our officials and
[1:36:51] representatives to freeze and reconsider any data center construction until impacts can
[1:36:56] be more thoroughly considered. There has to be a better way. Thank you. Thank you,
[1:37:01] camille. Steve? Hi, my name is
[1:37:08] steve rogers. It's interesting, and I really appreciate all the comments that have been made.
[1:37:13] I'm going to be brief. I, I think ai is a good thing. I think it can really help. It's
[1:37:18] interesting, all the comments were probably done from a lot of research from chatgpt.
[1:37:23] but my bottom line, I would like to ask the council, is what economic benefit is there
[1:37:29] to the average citizenry of lubbock, texas to have this? Shouldn't that be the bottom
[1:37:36] line? What is the economic benefit to me, to others? Are our taxes going to go down,
[1:37:40] or are they going to go up?
[1:37:49] are water rates going to go down or go up? Are we going to get anything out of it?
[1:37:54] would anybody like
[1:37:58] to answer that? Just one thing you've considered,
[1:38:02] maybe talked about. We're just getting citizen input. Yeah, we've said we're not going to
[1:38:07] respond tonight so everybody can have a chance to ask their questions. But yes,
[1:38:12] that is definitely something we will, we didn't want this to look like we were out there promoting economic advantages
[1:38:19] tonight. We're talking about concerns. Has that been discussed? How is that going to benefit the citizens?
[1:38:23] you're asking the fundamental question right there. That is the fundamental question. Are we going to find that out? You
[1:38:28] have to go meet with your council representative. A lot of that comes once you have a
[1:38:34] specific data center coming, and then what do they want to build? What would be the tax
[1:38:39] impact? We don't have one that we're dealing with, so we can't really lay that
[1:38:43] out to you until we get an actual one. So that's why we can't answer your
[1:38:47] question tonight. All we can tell you is how we are approaching this issue. But you
[1:38:52] raised the right question. So has the data center courted the city, or has the city courted
[1:38:57] the data center? Well, the city is not courting them. They are
[1:39:02] courting the lubbock economic development association. That's where they go. They
[1:39:06] don't come to us. They go to lubbock economic development. None have come to us for any approvals
[1:39:12] at this point but the one that did come to pnz and was voted down. All
[1:39:16] right. So, okay. Thank you, steve. Thank you, mike.
[1:39:23] hello, my name is mike haggard. I wasn't going to speak here today,
[1:39:28] but I have to. First of all, I want to thank you guys
[1:39:33] for hosting all of your voters
[1:39:38] 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
[1:39:43] like this to get water right now. There's, to the north and
[1:39:48] to the south, there are homes that have no water. People are drilling wells, and some of,
[1:39:52] a lot of them are out in the country. But you're talking about growth. We've had 40,000
[1:39:58] people since whatever date was. We're
[1:40:02] going to keep growing and there's no water out there right now. So it's
[1:40:07] already an issue with the water. And mr. Atkins showed the slide that had the
[1:40:12] mega houses, which I do not have. I don't live in her district. And thank you for bringing up your concerns
[1:40:17] for your district. I'm concerned about your district and I live on the other side of town. The
[1:40:22] small houses like I have, we don't irrigate
[1:40:26] 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
[1:40:32] million-dollar houses. I don't have one of those houses. If you put my water on there,
[1:40:36] what I use, it's going to be like this. It's going to be a little bitty. The
[1:40:43] savings you were talking about, we're the ones saving all that
[1:40:47] water. Y'all get onto us for runoff and all that stuff, which we appreciate. It's keeping us
[1:40:53] from wasting all that stuff. But then we're talking
[1:40:58] about bringing in something that uses the amount of water they do now and trying to compare it
[1:41:03] to million-dollar homes with acreage that are irrigating. It's, it's not, compare it
[1:41:08] to her district. I'm with her. Compare it to what her people are using.
[1:41:13] they're either not irrigating their lawns or they're small lawns. They're not wasting all
[1:41:18] that water. So it's a waste of water. I'm all about saving the water. So that's my biggest concern is
[1:41:23] the water waste. There's other, I mean, you could, you could live with that and all that,
[1:41:27] but water, thank you. Thank you. Could have caleb fryer,
[1:41:33] anne marie monaco, and eric haley come up and take your
[1:41:37] place. Pam. Good evening, mayor and council members. And I, my name is pam stinnett, and
[1:41:42] I'm, step a little closer to the mic, would you? Yeah, thanks. My name is pam
[1:41:46] stinnett, and I'm a lifelong resident of this region. Growing up
[1:41:52] with grandparents who farmed, I was taught early that human survival relies on 3
[1:41:57] fundamental pillars: food, water, and shelter. Right now,
[1:42:01] proposed data centers threaten all 3. Just 10 days ago,
[1:42:06] I drove from lubbock to plains. The stark contrast between our stunted dryland
[1:42:11] cotton and irrigated fields is
[1:42:16] a flashing red light.
[1:42:20] according to the u.s. Drought monitor, 100% of lubbock county is in active drought.
[1:42:25] we just survived our 14th driest start to a year
[1:42:31] in recorded history. Right now, the city legally forces every
[1:42:36] citizen to restrict lawn watering
[1:42:41] to protect our grid. How can we justify rationing water for local families yet handing
[1:42:45] millions of gallons a day to an industrial data center?
[1:42:49] it will decimate our agriculture. And drain our
[1:42:54] shared aquifer. Furthermore, placing heavy industry on the
[1:43:01] northeast side perpetuates a dark history
[1:43:06] of discriminatory zoning. The
[1:43:13] residents of northeast lubbock matter. Yet they are being
[1:43:20] asked to let this facility degrade their shelter and health through 3 invisible forces. Number 1, infrasound,
[1:43:25] low decibel hums that cause neurological stress. Light pollution, a constant glow
[1:43:31] disrupting sleep cycle. 3,
[1:43:37] particulate matter, toxic diesel emissions. Pam,
[1:43:41] that's your time. Thank you.
[1:43:48] caleb? Good afternoon, councilman. My primary concern
[1:43:54] is water. Without it, I live out in the country, our way of life will cease to exist.
[1:43:59] our farmlands will die, our cows will die. That is the first thing that goes. None
[1:44:05] of our stuff is piped into city. It is all groundwater. We all run off of the ogallala aquifer. If it
[1:44:09] goes, we go. There is no way around that. It's a deep well drill. None
[1:44:13] of us can afford that. That's 01,200 feet and then extra infrastructure
[1:44:18] to process the water, and we can't do that. Second is electricity. It is constantly
[1:44:22] rising, even with every precaution that we have taken with led lights,
[1:44:27] anything that costs saves. But the primary thing that we're worried
[1:44:31] about is freezer space. People that are in the country, they have food saved. They buy
[1:44:35] in bulk. They save. They budget. If our electricity goes down,
[1:44:39] whether it's rollovers or blackouts, you will kill years' worth of food overnight. There's no
[1:44:45] way to come back from that. Third is I'm on spc, I'm not
[1:44:50] on ercot, but we do back up the main grid when it goes down, and that has happened before.
[1:44:55] and I have lost food and even plants when I ran hydroponics for like culinary herbs and,
[1:45:04] and small, like berries. Lost my entire crop, so I can't run that anymore
[1:45:08] with rolling blackouts. A third, ai data centers were
[1:45:13] said that they're going to do crypto and ai. That's track tracing and cbdcs.
[1:45:19] that is against our republic. It should not be allowed to stand. We should not participate in that. And
[1:45:24] lastly, who gets held to account when they come and
[1:45:28] destroy our way of life. Thank you. Thank you, caleb. Hi, I
[1:45:39] just want to say thank you for allowing me to speak today. I am an expat. I am from
[1:45:43] florida, and I brought my family here to live the texas way. I also am a little
[1:45:48] concerned that you guys really don't know what's happening in the data centers,
[1:45:52] knowing that in michigan they're making humanoids to train and sell. That is
[1:45:57] another thing about trump's executive order that makes them militarized, not just chatgpt
[1:46:02] making fun garage sales. But on that matter,
[1:46:08] I'm here as a parent. I have 2 kids that I do not want
[1:46:12] to be affected by what's going to happen when ai comes. I don't want them to get diseases
[1:46:17] or learn things that we don't know is going to come back.
[1:46:22] basically, my children are going to be ai's test subjects. I
[1:46:26] want to highlight the issue of transparency. They don't have any,
[1:46:31] and neither does this council. Most of the time, what we learned in the, when they did the big one for
[1:46:36] texas was that most people did sign ndas. As you stated,
[1:46:40] you did not, but I do not trust that anybody on this board would not. I
[1:46:44] think we need to realize as a public that we can dismantle you and vote it on november.
[1:46:50] no ais in lubbock, texas. Thank you. That was anne
[1:46:55] marie monaco. If we could have the next 3 come up. Denise
[1:47:00] colley, corey austin, and
[1:47:05] josh chavez. I'm not so worried about water as I am character.
[1:47:11] so you're supposed to represent us as the people. We just passed 4th of july. We
[1:47:15] had a country that was built because people didn't want to listen. The grievances were
[1:47:20] brought. You can go to youtube, you can listen to all these people, you can
[1:47:24] see all the bad stuff that's happening with these data centers. So it's crazy to me that you would
[1:47:29] consider pushing it forward. The fact that you're going to put it on the east side of town, okay, everybody knows
[1:47:36] why, which is not right. It's not right. The amarillo project
[1:47:45] that's just been done, lubbock matador stuff, tex aligned with that. They're on contract for 2.5 million
[1:47:50] gallons per day. Whether they use it or not,
[1:47:54] they have the contract to take it. Hopefully they don't. It's a closed-loop
[1:47:58] system. Closed-loop systems still require water. You're going to say it doesn't use as
[1:48:03] much water. They don't need that much water there. It's everything outside. It's the
[1:48:08] energy that's being made. It's the other pieces that are being made for it. The only guy
[1:48:14] at the may meeting that was honest about anything was the google guy. And all he said
[1:48:19] was, we'll throw money at it. If there's a problem,
[1:48:23] we'll throw money at it. If we run out of water, they don't care. They won't be
[1:48:28] here. We'll be here. Most of us would say that we're
[1:48:33] christians. This nation was founded on christian principles. Whether you want
[1:48:39] to follow that god or not, that's the right that you were given based off
[1:48:44] of those principles. You get to choose what you want to do, but you have to do it
[1:48:48] within the boundaries of what the bible says, and the bible says
[1:48:53] to take care of people. You've been put on the board to take care of people, not
[1:48:57] for you, but for the common good. And there is no common good
[1:49:02] for ai data centers. Drive around lubbock, look at all the flock systems.
[1:49:06] every time you get online, you're trapped. Why do they need data centers? They're going
[1:49:10] to collect more and more data. Thank you, eric. Denise, I just
[1:49:20] want to say that there's been a lot of legitimate concerns that have been raised
[1:49:24] by everybody that's been up to this podium. And you, as our council members and our
[1:49:29] governmental representatives, I hope that you would absolutely
[1:49:33] take everything into consideration and be that body that is for the people. Listen
[1:49:40] to the people. They're talking to you today, and they've brought up some amazing facts, things that I learned today,
[1:49:45] and I know many of us here have. So please consider, prayerfully consider,
[1:49:49] what the people are telling you. It doesn't sound like it's a good idea for
[1:49:54] lubbock, texas. Thank you, denise. Corey? Corey? Hi, I'm
[1:50:04] corey austin, and I did have a statement planned, but y'all did that lovely slideshow,
[1:50:11] so I'm going to respond to some things on that slideshow that I hope you'll take into consideration and you
[1:50:16] ask yourself these questions when you're looking at this particular problem. I noted
[1:50:21] that you said 100,000 gallons per day was the water usage
[1:50:26] for a data center. Where are you getting that number? According to abilene, the
[1:50:32] stargate center, their fill-up rate is 1 million gallons per
[1:50:37] building. They are slated to have 10 buildings. That
[1:50:41] doesn't account for evaporation rates. That doesn't account
[1:50:45] for systematic blow-off, which means they actually take the water they put in the system
[1:50:50] and they let it go. Where are they letting it go? Where does it go? What happens to it? You
[1:50:56] also noted that we've obviously had great conservation efforts
[1:51:01] around here. What for? If we're just going to hand it over to a
[1:51:05] data center that's not going to produce anything or manufacture anything,
[1:51:11] why am I conserving water? So please, when you see
[1:51:17] statistics, start asking yourself why. And according to the environmental
[1:51:21] and energy study institute, which is actually an independently owned third-party
[1:51:26] environmental study institute, they're saying these data centers can consume up to 5
[1:51:30] million gallons a day. 5 million gallons a day. That's
[1:51:35] huge. You can actually supply water for a whole country at that rate. And at the rate
[1:51:40] they are actually talking about scaling these data centers in the state of
[1:51:44] texas. Texas has been in a drought ever since I have lived here. I've been born and
[1:51:49] raised here in texas. And water's always been an issue.
[1:51:53] so why are we even thinking about allowing things
[1:51:58] in the state, in our county, in our city that are going to draw on one
[1:52:04] of our most precious resources. Corey, thank you. Thank you.
[1:52:09] if we could have paul scioli, kamal patel, and fabian mata
[1:52:15] come up and take your seat. Thank you. Josh. My name is
[1:52:20] josh chavez. Mr. Mayor, city council, I had a lot
[1:52:25] of questions for y'all. A lot of them got addressed. Everything from pollution
[1:52:30] to water usage to electricity, so on and so forth. Y'all know we do not
[1:52:35] have electrical infrastructure for this. These data centers
[1:52:40] consume anywhere between 20% and 100% of what a city the size of
[1:52:44] lubbock would do. Where are you going to get the transformers? Transformers are anywhere
[1:52:48] between 6 months and 4 years out from being able
[1:52:53] to be manufactured. Not to mention water. Everybody's brought up the aquifer that's
[1:52:58] already going to be depleted in 50 to 100 years. I appreciate the efforts
[1:53:02] for water conservation. Like she said, what is the point if you're just going
[1:53:06] to hand it to an out-of-state billionaire that is not from here, does not live here,
[1:53:10] will not suffer the consequences? That leads me to believe that y'all are one
[1:53:16] of 3 things. You are corrupt, you are incompetent,
[1:53:21] or you are both. But you are certainly neither.
[1:53:26] that's cause for a recall election. Y'all serve us. You
[1:53:31] don't serve billionaires.
[1:53:35] serve your citizens. It's a social contract. Contract.
[1:53:40] abide by it. Thank you, josh.
[1:53:46] paul? Paul scioli? Thank y'all
[1:53:51] for hosting this. It's a wonderful idea. My name is
[1:53:55] paul scioli. I'm a 66-year resident of lubbock and
[1:54:00] lubbock county. I also own property in kent county, which
[1:54:04] is just east of lubbock. And I've had the displeasure of dealing with, they
[1:54:10] installed, unbeknownst, the largest solar farm of 1.5
[1:54:14] million panels over thousands, thousands
[1:54:19] of acres. And now I am competing right out my back door for a 1.6
[1:54:23] million square foot data center. So
[1:54:30] over the last few years, I have made it my business
[1:54:36] to understand why and learn about this, and I have,
[1:54:40] and I've learned a lot. And there's a lot of things that were on those
[1:54:45] slides that were not accurate. I'm going to give you one example. Noise
[1:54:50] mitigation. The real word is total noise because
[1:54:54] of what was mentioned. Understand the word infrasonic. Understand the damage. You can
[1:55:02] mitigate that. The truth is, after all my experience, and I
[1:55:06] have all the questions and all the research, I have it stacked this high, I
[1:55:12] will tell you that these projects could be done
[1:55:17] responsibly. They won't. And if
[1:55:23] you deal with these people, long enough like I have, you'll find it's not that pleasant.
[1:55:30] but you must have, and I appreciate those slides because
[1:55:34] you touched on a lot of those things, strong enforceable protections
[1:55:38] to put in place before the construction begins, because if you don't, they,
[1:55:45] you can't win the fight. They have the money. So all the concerns that were brought
[1:55:51] forth, I understand, and they're all accurate. Thank you, paul. Okay. Fabian?
[1:56:03] yeah, my name is fabian. I live in north lubbock. I happened
[1:56:07] to be in attendance to that planning and zoning meeting where the california guy wanted
[1:56:11] to get the zoning changed to put that 900-acre thing,
[1:56:15] dump. And I was there for another reason. Ironically, I was there for ordinance 6323, 1972 city
[1:56:23] ordinance that pretty much says the same thing that y'all are going to do to try to,
[1:56:27] if you put the data center, noise mitigation, planting of trees, that ordinance says
[1:56:32] the same thing. And we got triple c concrete polluting it. There's no trees. We got
[1:56:37] permian basin materials, 401 north avenue k. We got dc caliche crushing recycling
[1:56:43] concrete right above the canyon lakes, violating the ordinance. No
[1:56:48] enforcement from city. All of you got my email, and city manager, you've yet
[1:56:52] to respond. 3 weeks. What part of the ordinance allows
[1:56:56] pollution in the yellow house canyon region? Ordinance 6323 is being violated,
[1:57:02] and you're proposing we're going to have noise mitigation too? De jure and de facto, you can write it in the law,
[1:57:08] enforcement is not there. I know walker. I know the stormwater people. I had
[1:57:12] to file a complaint at texas commission on environmental quality fraud and men
[1:57:16] in charge of dfw, amarillo, lubbock, and big spring for
[1:57:21] fraud because the rock crusher, d.c. Caliche and nagabauer hard 8 material, are crushing
[1:57:28] right above there. Concrete is even more polluting. Recycled concrete is even more polluting
[1:57:32] than regular concrete because it's got paint and material. It's disgusting. Why haven't
[1:57:37] you all responded? Why are these plants allowed to operate right there in the
[1:57:41] canyon lakes policy zone? I still await your response. You did a half response,
[1:57:48] martinez, but that didn't work out there. The city staff planning, that didn't work. I want the
[1:57:53] specific, anyway, I want specifics. And yeah,
[1:57:58] texas tech has a man at door thing. Don't bring up texas tech anymore, please.
[1:58:02] they have the matador project. Thank you, fabian.
[1:58:07] apparently we had a no-show, so if we could have jordan
[1:58:12] chisholm, william murray, and cece lawrence come up, please. And jordan chisholm,
[1:58:26] you'll be first. Thank you,
[1:58:33] city council. Thank you, city manager's office
[1:58:38] for having this event for everybody. I, I appreciate the proposed zoning changes
[1:58:45] closed-loop cooling noise mitigation berms. I think those
[1:58:50] are all good ideas. But I share the same concerns as a lot
[1:58:54] of our other citizens in that
[1:59:00] they have not very much faith that anything will be done to enforce those regulations if
[1:59:07] they're in place. Texas is a very permissive political
[1:59:14] climate for businesses and not for the environment.
[1:59:19] for their citizens, the water
[1:59:24] and hopefully we can enforce
[1:59:32] those zoning requirements if we do in fact have a datacenter
[1:59:37] built here. There are some issues with the slides
[1:59:43] for example, I know we mentioned 100,000
[1:59:47] gallons of water per day. The average hyperscaler data center
[1:59:53] uses over a million gallons of water per day. Now that's not a closed-loop system,
[1:59:59] adiabatic cooling versus forced air, just something to mention. Thank you. I'm not
[2:00:10] opposed to data centers unlike a lot of
[2:00:14] people here I understand they're important. You know,
[2:00:18] they're important for national security, they're important for the u.s.
[2:00:22] economy, but we have to make sure that we protect ourselves and we protect our families and
[2:00:28] protect our city before we invite something
[2:00:32] like that in. Thank you, jordan. William murray. I'll go
[2:00:42] ahead and jump. I don't want to cover utility costs, resources, things like that, because I think there's been an
[2:00:47] 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,
[2:00:52] is a big issue for me, because the issues that we see showing up wouldn't be an issue if
[2:00:57] these companies were not running counter to the community that they're in. If
[2:01:02] they wanted to be good stewards of the community, we wouldn't be running into these problems. It's not
[2:01:06] like they just invented closed-loop cooling. This technology already existed.
[2:01:12] they deliberately chose not to do it because it would save them money. How do we hold them to account when we know that
[2:01:16] that's what they're going to be going after is the financial incentive? Another thing that I don't really see
[2:01:21] coming up a lot right now is safety. So how will the safety of the public be considered?
[2:01:26] there's reports that there are people who are coordinating this malicious activities,
[2:01:31] excuse me, citing that irresponsible development
[2:01:37] of ai data centers as one of their motivating factors. This included the group of
[2:01:43] people that were arrested plotting to attack the president's ufc event. They had
[2:01:47] this motivator among their others. So given the immense public backlash
[2:01:53] that we're seeing not only here but all over, it seems like we have
[2:01:57] to logically arrive at a conclusion where there will likely be harassment and
[2:02:01] malfeasance, if not outright violence, against the structures, the people who build, maintain,
[2:02:07] and staff them. We can act like it's a foregone conclusion that
[2:02:11] we need to jump in bed with the devil so that we can make a deal, but what we're talking
[2:02:16] about when we're talking about making a deal is the thread count on the sheet. Do better.
[2:02:21] look at how we have communities across texas working. San
[2:02:26] marcos and any other growing number of resources that we can do right by the people in the
[2:02:30] communities who live there, not right by the people who are just trying to save money by picking us
[2:02:35] to build their data centers. Thank you, william. Now, as cece comes up,
[2:02:40] we can have the next 3 people come and take your seat. Calvin trossel, michael
[2:02:45] homer, and stephen sanders, please. Thank you, cece.
[2:02:49] hello, my name is cece lawrence. I live in district 01, and if you want to learn
[2:02:54] about me, you should check my website, not a palantir database. The concerns
[2:02:58] over our constitutional rights, water usage, environmental
[2:03:03] hazard, privacy, and the general fear of an orwellian future are valid,
[2:03:07] but I'm here to discuss the finances. There is no reason for the city of
[2:03:11] lubbock to offer any incentive to any company wishing to buy
[2:03:16] our land and use our resources. To the contrary, data centers
[2:03:20] are so widely unpopular that I feel those companies should incentivize us. I've lived and
[2:03:27] voted in lubbock for 20 years. Consistently, lubbockites have
[2:03:31] wanted better schools with school lunches that don't resemble whatever aramark found
[2:03:37] almost spoiled in the back of a hot truck. Lubbockites want clean parks
[2:03:42] with safe trails, affordable community events, more sports, nice roads, paved
[2:03:48] alleys, decorative streetlights. Lubbockites want joyland back.
[2:03:58] all these wonderful things we can't afford, right? Well, they
[2:04:02] can. I'd rather have lubbock as it is now than blindly trust
[2:04:07] some tech bro jerk because he paid some senator to squawk about job creation and global
[2:04:11] competition. Take care of your people here and now because the
[2:04:18] moral mishandlings surrounding democratic accountability and corrupt loopholes for the obscenely wealthy perpetuate
[2:04:24] our economic and social problems. Once you open a
[2:04:31] dialogue with other cities who use the same water sources as
[2:04:36] we do and unite to get the better end of the deal, we the people will prove we don't need them.
[2:04:40] thank you for your time and your consideration. Thank you, cece. Calvin? Well, good
[2:04:51] evening. Thank you for having the hearing. I appreciate it. I appreciate your comments. I've
[2:04:56] learned a lot. And so I've lived in lubbock 27 years.
[2:05:01] in my area of lubbock, I irrigate my yard from a well. And so some of the water issues
[2:05:06] that the city faces don't affect me directly, but I work in the agricultural sector,
[2:05:11] and so I think in terms of what I do in my job is I help farmers in west texas grow their crops
[2:05:16] in the presence of frequent drought. And I was very interested
[2:05:20] in the numbers that you showed about the water data use. I think I think the 100,000 gallons per day is probably a
[2:05:27] low, a very low end. When I calculated some estimates, I used 300,000. There are some
[2:05:34] very large data centers that use much more than that. But the concept of a closed loop is very,
[2:05:39] I think is worth pursuing, making that a standard. But I think in terms
[2:05:44] of what I've looked at the data and the number one concerns that we had in terms of what we
[2:05:48] saw here is that water was the biggest issue at the top. It was around 90%. But
[2:05:53] after listening to things, I think maybe water is not the main issue because the amount
[2:05:57] of use at the 35 million gallons daily use is, is actually relatively small.
[2:06:04] but this is what we live with here in lubbock, is the water restrictions,
[2:06:09] the guidelines for conservation, so forth. And when I first started
[2:06:13] to learn about this topic, I thought, why do we even consider a data center where it rains less than 25 or even 30
[2:06:18] inches a year and we have renewable water, which we have neither here in
[2:06:23] west texas. And so also, I think, as I looked at, I looked up the map,
[2:06:28] I appreciate districts 1 and 2 raising your concerns. I think
[2:06:32] that right now, without annexation, there's not room in the city
[2:06:36] of lubbock to build a data center. It would be outside the city, which we may not have control
[2:06:42] of. But I think the things we've talked about here tonight could be a guideline
[2:06:46] for the region, as our rural communities don't have the resources like lubbock has to
[2:06:50] evaluate the concept and the benefits. Thank you, calvin.
[2:06:56] michael. Ladies and gentlemen,
[2:07:01] I'll be brief, I'll be concise. I'll give you pros and cons. On
[2:07:07] these data centers as I see it. Supposedly there's job
[2:07:13] creation. Not really. There's a relative handful of job,
[2:07:17] construction jobs that'll happen pretty much right away in the construction phase. Beaten bow brothers employ more
[2:07:24] people long-term than any data center will. After that,
[2:07:28] after construction, it's it maintenance. Period,
[2:07:34] full stop. After that, ai proponents say they'll
[2:07:39] invest in the power grid, roads, and fiber optic networks. I'll believe that
[2:07:44] when I see it. On the opposite side, the cons
[2:07:48] to this, energy consumption. Data centers can use as much electricity as a small city.
[2:07:57] somebody, somebody with lp&l will come up with the numbers
[2:08:02] for the kilowatts used in the city, I'd love to see them. I think lubbock
[2:08:07] qualifies as a small city. Water consumption,
[2:08:11] data centers consume millions of gallons, millions of gallons annually. Had a
[2:08:16] conversation with people at the water department
[2:08:21] about a year ago. They said we've got plenty of water I think the number he used was,
[2:08:26] I can't remember, but I think between 50 and 100 years. That
[2:08:35] data center, using your numbers, mr. Atkinson, 100,000
[2:08:40] gallons a day, that adds up to 36 million gallons a year.
[2:08:48] by the way, the conversation I had
[2:08:52] with the people at the water department. That conversation happened before the concept
[2:08:58] of data centers was even a topic of discussion. Thank you, michael. Thank you. Now
[2:09:05] stephen sanders comes up. Could we have larry smith, susan pettis, and anson mcfall
[2:09:11] come up, please? Thank you so much for having me. I just wanted
[2:09:16] to thank the mayor for having this meeting. We talked about this when I protested
[2:09:20] 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,
[2:09:25] is that I can't even believe we're here talking about a data center when you know that the
[2:09:30] people don't want one. Like, why are we doing this? Why are
[2:09:35] we doing this? Here's the other part. Here's the other part.
[2:09:39] 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
[2:09:47] them. They know me. And you
[2:09:51] don't have a backbone to stand up to these people and tell them, hey, my people of lubbock don't
[2:09:57] want that. It doesn't just affect those people in north and east lubbock. It affects everybody in this city. We want
[2:10:03] our water. We've been saving our water. That, that's on us. My yard is yellow as
[2:10:11] hell. Because I'm trying to do what you asked me to do. But you can't listen
[2:10:16] to us and just say no. Just say no, man. Do it
[2:10:20] for your people. Do it for us. I voted
[2:10:25] for you. I voted for you and I endorsed you. And I'm expecting you to turn
[2:10:31] around and stand up for me like I know you can. You're a
[2:10:36] you're a baptist preacher, and you know that when we're not
[2:10:42] taking care of our people, we are letting christ down.
[2:10:46] you know that. You have the
[2:10:53] power, mark, to lead us in the right direction,
[2:10:58] and we're watching you. If you don't, I'm going to recall you in november. You know it. You
[2:11:07] know it. Christy, thank you so much. Gordon, thank you. I'm watching you. I hope that
[2:11:12] you'll do the right thing. You're new, so I'm going to give you a break. Thank you,
[2:11:19] stephen. Larry, larry smith. I
[2:11:30] 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
[2:11:35] on that side of it. It's kind of, it can be a little tough, so I appreciate your time
[2:11:39] in doing this. That school district actually was right next to roberts county where
[2:11:45] you're pulling about 30% of your water, so it it's a little close to my
[2:11:50] heart as well. A gentleman said earlier that fermi has,
[2:11:54] can pull up to 2.5 million gallons per day. I also read
[2:12:00] that it can escalate even up to 10 million gallons per day.
[2:12:07] that is concerning. That's concerning because they're part of cromwell. We're part of
[2:12:13] cromwell. What defense mechanisms do we have in place to keep them from taking which
[2:12:20] basically is our water, whether it's there or any other part
[2:12:25] of the line coming down here.
[2:12:30] do you have defense mechanisms to, to protect us in that?
[2:12:34] that's one thing that, that concerned me. The other thing is, is if, if you do
[2:12:41] 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,
[2:12:47] to not be taxed too much from somewhere else. Do not give a tax break. Do not give a
[2:12:52] tax break. You provide all these services, they need
[2:12:57] to pay them. Thank you. Thank you, larry. Susan pettis?
[2:13:05] susan pettis not here? What
[2:13:10] about anson mcfall? Anson mcfall? No? Okay. Let's have
[2:13:14] melanie parks, jordan jennings, and john cadena come
[2:13:19] up, please. And after these 03, we will take our short
[2:13:24] break. Okay? That's good
[2:13:28] because I need to go to the restroom. Hello, council. My name is melanie
[2:13:33] parks, not affiliated with melanie park neighborhood or
[2:13:37] melanie park church. I am my own entity, melanie with an a and plural with an
[2:13:43] s. So when I say my name, people say, that name sounds familiar. Not
[2:13:47] affiliated with that. Councilman harris, I'm so glad
[2:13:52] you asked the question because I have an answer for you. The layman term
[2:13:57] for a data center, and I'm going to put in a little biblical term with it as well. We need to
[2:14:05] stop calling them data centers.
[2:14:09] they are surveillance centers.
[2:14:17] they are data collection hubs.
[2:14:22] behavioral tracking warehouses. If you know, you know. If you
[2:14:32] don't know, read the bible.
[2:14:40] what we have setting up is just like china, a social credit
[2:14:45] score system that we will all be imprisoned to. Some people
[2:14:53] probably aren't agreeing. But like I said, if you read your bible, you know this is a
[2:14:59] digital beast system being set up for the end times to come.
[2:15:06] lord help us. Thank you, melanie. Jordan, I'm here
[2:15:16] on behalf of my divine authority and all those who
[2:15:20] looking into my eyes right now, you are under judgment
[2:15:25] to your discernment to stand for we the people and not these corporations. And judgment will
[2:15:31] be made to those who do not take heed
[2:15:35] to this warning. You do as we need you to do
[2:15:41] to be one as a nation and to work together. And if you
[2:15:46] continue to let this tyranny to happen with big corporations
[2:15:51] to consume us, you will be given a whirlwind
[2:15:58] of things that will happen. So
[2:16:02] take heed to this warning. If you don't stand by we the
[2:16:08] people, we the people will stand up and you will have nothing to hold. That goes
[2:16:16] with our food being poisoned, our water being overfilled
[2:16:21] with chlorine. We've been targeted long enough,
[2:16:27] and it's going to happen, and you all know it. So if you
[2:16:32] don't get on the right side right now, you're going to be a part
[2:16:38] of the future of what was and what the future will be by not standing by us, the
[2:16:43] people, no matter what species you are.
[2:16:49] because we can all do this together and make this world better. We have to let go of
[2:16:58] our ego and pride and make this world better by not consuming it and taking
[2:17:04] over mother earth and making it even hotter and drier to make
[2:17:10] this nation prosperous and not just a slave system. Thank you,
[2:17:17] jordan. We're about to, about
[2:17:22] to take a break, but john cadena, you were up next. Are you okay? Sorry. Thank you. So
[2:17:34] I came here today just because I personally was very ignorant
[2:17:41] on this topic and I wanted to kind of get all the
[2:17:46] information I could. I came in here with my concerns. I'm leaving with a few more concerns. But one question, I'm sorry,
[2:17:52] one couple that I did have.
[2:17:57] one was the district 1, district 2 issue. I mean, come on. I mean, it may be, it
[2:18:04] may be because historically those lines were laid in certain parts of town. I
[2:18:08] think everyone can probably gauge why those lines were laid in certain parts of town. And
[2:18:14] now we're seeing the results of that. That's a major concern for me. I don't even live in
[2:18:20] those districts and it's still concern for me. Another concern I had was we're given these
[2:18:26] reassurances. One of them was this reassurance
[2:18:31] by governor abbott, so on and so forth. You know, they're paying their own bills,
[2:18:35] so on and so forth. But I think anybody who's lived in lubbock for a good amount of
[2:18:40] time knows that the dollar goes
[2:18:45] far. I think we saw that. Most recently with our local university,
[2:18:51] how if you have enough money, you can make things happen. So
[2:18:56] that's not really an assurance for me that they're going to pay their own bills when we
[2:19:02] have many wealthy people who can just kind of throw some money around and
[2:19:06] maybe those reassurances go away. Another my major concern
[2:19:14] I have is, as many people have mentioned before this panel represents
[2:19:21] the people, the constituents. Thankfully, my representative
[2:19:27] is not on, it was not my concern, but it is concerning
[2:19:31] to me that we are here listening to the people. Thank you, john. At this time,
[2:19:39] we're going to take a break. I think we're going to have enough time to get through everyone who has signed
[2:19:45] up to speak. There are bathrooms, restrooms to the
[2:19:49] east and the south if you would like to take a break,
[2:19:53] and we will get started here in 20 minutes. We're going
[2:20:01] to call, let's call 5 up at a time now, because I think we may have
[2:20:07] some people, the crowd has thinned out, so some people may not step forward. So let's go ahead and
[2:20:12] call 5 up at a time, abner, if you would. Okay, we, the next
[2:20:21] 5 are scott white, joyce white, corey gressett, glenn
[2:20:27] little, and kaylin lewis. If
[2:20:32] you will come up and take a seat over here, we will get started again. It
[2:20:49] may be pretty quick. I guess you go ahead and call 5 more.
[2:20:56] okay. Oh, here we go. Sure,
[2:21:04] we'll wait a couple minutes. I think they're coming in. Okay, sure, sure. I think matt
[2:21:11] is going to go out there and scream and say, get in here now. Say open bar.
[2:21:30] yeah, I guess go to the snack stand, help support your civic center. For alcohol,
[2:21:35] I guess they don't. For those
[2:21:39] of you who have remained for the second half, just,
[2:21:44] I think y'all, everybody's handled themselves really, I think,
[2:21:49] well tonight. Appreciate that very much. And I've watched a lot of these online,
[2:21:53] and I always believe that lubbock is able to do these things right in a civil way,
[2:21:58] and you've shown that tonight. So we really do appreciate it. I know there's a lot of strong opinions on this,
[2:22:04] a lot have been shared tonight, but thank you all for how you've handled yourself. So,
[2:22:10] all right. Okay, matt gave me the thumbs up that that he has
[2:22:15] made the announcement out in the hall. So go ahead and
[2:22:20] call 4 more, I guess. Let's see if we can get 3 up here because we need to get started. Let's
[2:22:27] go with corina quattlebaum,
[2:22:32] ann haggard, and nick marmolejo. Any of you here?
[2:22:42] all right, and let's call a few more to
[2:22:46] see if we can get our third up here. Ann haggard. Ann
[2:22:50] haggard. Scott white. Joyce
[2:22:57] white. Are you corey? Okay,
[2:23:02] corey gressett. Glenn little. Keelan lewis. Karina
[2:23:07] quattlebaum, and haggard.
[2:23:12] okay. All right, let's go ahead and get started.
[2:23:22] corey, come on up. Hi, my name
[2:23:26] is corey ann. Mayor, I'm speaking to you christian to
[2:23:30] christian. Mayor mcbreyer, I asked you once if you were a follower of jesus. And you responded with, yes, I am a
[2:23:35] christian. Therefore, as a sister in christ and a citizen of this city that you have been
[2:23:39] given responsibility over, I must remind you that you are commanded by god to lead,
[2:23:44] protect, sustain, hear, and provide for your flock with dignity, godly intention,
[2:23:50] 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
[2:23:56] careless and empty word that you speak. When you have to look god almighty in the face in all
[2:24:01] 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
[2:24:06] poisoned the well? When ai inevitably comes to take your job, the alleged money you took and stuffed in
[2:24:12] your back pocket is only going to cushion the blow when you fall and get shoved
[2:24:17] off the top and join the rest of us here at the bottom. So make sure to look around you,
[2:24:21] see the faces of your flock, and remember your people, mayor. For those of you that are smelling what we are all
[2:24:27] stepping in, you can join us for free at a community-led discussion
[2:24:31] about the honest impacts of hyperscale data centers in our city and what can be
[2:24:35] done to stop them at the ywca north event room tomorrow from 6 pm to 8 pm. We have
[2:24:41] clayton tucker coming to speak, who is running for ag commissioner, and stephen
[2:24:47] sanders, who is our committee's organizer for save lubbock. Come find us in a blue shirt to sign the petition and get these
[2:24:52] points they made fact-checked. Bingo. Thank you, corey.
[2:24:57] nick. Hi everyone, my name is
[2:25:05] nick marmolejo. I was born and raised in the north side of
[2:25:10] town. I'm also a citizen resident of district 4. First
[2:25:14] of all, I just want to set the tone here by going back to one of the original speakers who said
[2:25:19] something pretty prominent. He said, are we willing to compromise our identity?
[2:25:24] this isn't even a statistical conversation. This is an identity conversation. So I
[2:25:29] want to just first of all thank you great speakers for going ahead
[2:25:34] 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
[2:25:39] for why we should even entertain an ai data center.
[2:25:44] and I'll point to the very presentation that y'all presented here today. I mean,
[2:25:48] there was something on the, maybe the 3rd slide that pointed out that there's not
[2:25:53] even a common definition for a large-scale data center that we've agreed upon. So put aside
[2:25:58] all the statistics, we don't even have a definition for what that actually is,
[2:26:04] and that's foundational. So I want to point that out. The other thing I want to say is,
[2:26:09] in a city, lubbock, known for moving a little bit slower, doing things differently. Why
[2:26:13] are we rushing this? And we are rushing it by even having this conversation. I want
[2:26:18] to also point to one more thing, which is there's this undertone I can
[2:26:23] hear and see in the community about one of two things being true.
[2:26:27] either a, either a, there are backroom conversations that are going
[2:26:32] on that we're not privy to, and they this is a formality, really, or b, you don't feel
[2:26:38] you can actually stop the train from coming. It's inevitable. Neither thing should be true.
[2:26:43] and so I just implore and look out to all of you and just say, let's get
[2:26:47] off of facebook. Let's all of us, 600 of us who were here,
[2:26:52] go find the actual petition. Go ahead and sign up for that so that we can put a pause
[2:26:58] on the moratorium. So thank you all. And god bless. Thank you. Thank you, nick. Deborah
[2:27:08] hart, niecy pratt, brooke
[2:27:15] barrett, patricia ramsey, and
[2:27:19] zan ango. If any of you are here, if you would come up, please.
[2:27:26] and we will start with, with you, and you introduce yourself.
[2:27:39] thank you. I'm deborah hart. Firstly, the noise. This is the second time
[2:27:44] I've heard trees mentioned to mitigate the noise. Now, I
[2:27:48] didn't chatgpt this, but I think trees require water, and
[2:27:54] I also think they lose their leaves every fall. Anyway,
[2:27:59] governor abbott has spent several years courting texas
[2:28:03] to get the data centers. His current backpedaling is a massive acknowledgment that the
[2:28:09] current framework is broken. To avoid the distrust of local government,
[2:28:15] all applications for specific use permits for large-scale data centers should
[2:28:20] be put to a vote by the citizens of lubbock. Thank you. Good evening. I'm
[2:28:36] niecy pratt. Thank you for this meeting today. Economic development should
[2:28:41] never be about growth and tax impact alone. It should certainly not come
[2:28:49] at the expense of the use and enjoyment of our land, of our quality of our life,
[2:28:53] or public health and safety. Data centers infringe
[2:28:58] on every one of these things, and I think what you heard here today overwhelmingly is
[2:29:03] citizens are telling you there is not a price or tax impact
[2:29:08] that can convince us to buy out our quality of life or
[2:29:13] public health and safety. There is not a dollar amount. If you were to put a vote
[2:29:18] to the public citizens, I venture to say overwhelmingly
[2:29:22] that they would vote no against data centers completely. And we
[2:29:28] implore you to not do what, what data centers want,
[2:29:33] what developers want, but to listen to your constituents. And
[2:29:38] in the alternative, if you are not going to ask public, take into
[2:29:42] account what we want and vote against data centers, then in the alternative,
[2:29:46] please put a moratorium in place. You have people petitioning for a moratorium.
[2:29:52] stand up and take the initiative to put a moratorium in place immediately
[2:29:56] to pump the brakes on this. That's not radical. It's happening everywhere. And we
[2:30:02] want you, if you want us to trust you, put the moratorium in place.
[2:30:07] don't make us petition you to do it. Once the moratorium's
[2:30:15] in place, form a multidisciplinary committee, a technical
[2:30:21] committee that has residents that are a part of it. You've done a year's worth of work
[2:30:25] with out residents. Include residents to help develop these standards. Ban data centers,
[2:30:32] put a moratorium in place, and put individual projects to the citizens to vote. Thank
[2:30:37] you. Thank you, misty. Brooke.
[2:30:46] hello, I'm brooke barrett. Thank you for hosting us this evening.
[2:30:52] now, many things I was going to say have already been covered
[2:30:56] very well tonight but just perhaps a bit
[2:31:01] of anecdotal storytelling. It's been covered, the
[2:31:06] infrasonic sound waves that travel through the ground and
[2:31:10] affect things like livestock. I would also like to mention that lubbock
[2:31:14] specifically has a stray animal problem. And it relates to increased violence
[2:31:20] in those animals. It's upsetting to them. And as
[2:31:24] somebody whose partner is a mail carrier and serves the
[2:31:28] city every day, it is, it's already brutal what they experience in terms
[2:31:33] of roaming dogs. So that's something that's important to keep in mind. And I
[2:31:40] absolutely also support the concept of a moratorium until further environmental impact
[2:31:45] studies can be done in these other areas across texas. And then as these
[2:31:50] centers have been rising up across texas maybe it's small
[2:31:54] potatoes compared to what large corporations can offer, but I
[2:32:00] think this is a wonderful opportunity for lubbock to embody its character as the
[2:32:05] friendliest city in texas and to protect not only its own
[2:32:09] citizens but perhaps citizens, at least those who have the means and would like to leave communities
[2:32:14] that have been poorly affected by these data centers to come be a part
[2:32:19] of this economic community. And to I just think it's a good opportunity to be different,
[2:32:25] to be leaders of another color, to try and welcome
[2:32:29] in people who are trying to escape these problems in their own communities as well.
[2:32:34] thank you. Thank you, brooke.
[2:32:43] hi, I'm patricia ramsey. One of the first things we are taught when we begin to venture out
[2:32:47] into the world is to pay close attention to high-pressure tactics, as they are almost always a sign
[2:32:52] that something rarely in our best interest is going on. We continue hearing this warning
[2:32:57] constantly at work through emails, for example,
[2:33:02] saying if you receive an email using one of these high-pressure tactics, that's suspect. One of the most
[2:33:07] common high-pressure techniques is an inflated sense of urgency. If you don't act
[2:33:11] on this right now, you'll miss out completely. Data centers are being built
[2:33:16] with a great sense of urgency, but why? It's not for the good
[2:33:21] of the host community. What are they bringing us directly? They provide a remote service
[2:33:26] which could be provided from any location. How many permanent jobs for local
[2:33:31] citizens have been promised. What else do they purport to offer
[2:33:36] to the average citizen? These centers are being built with extreme urgency in order
[2:33:41] to beat the regulatory clock. I suspect that investors are
[2:33:45] drastically overbuilding in order to overpower their competitors.
[2:33:50] but if this amount of power is truly needed, the demand will continue and
[2:33:54] companies will eventually have to accede to regulatory requirements.
[2:33:59] and if we wait, learning even more from other communities,
[2:34:03] we actually put the city in a much better position. One of our greatest abilities as
[2:34:07] humans is that we can learn from each other and adapt. And
[2:34:12] in the course of learning and adapting, I believe we will find ways
[2:34:16] to do better and be better without selling out the local community
[2:34:21] for a handful of assumptions, and suggestions, which is all we have
[2:34:26] at this time. Thank you, patricia. Thank you
[2:34:32] for allowing me a moment to speak. I, for the board's benefit,
[2:34:36] 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
[2:34:41] to navigate around the many notes I've made throughout today's presentation. My name
[2:34:45] is zan argo. I was born and raised here in the high plains, and I am currently
[2:34:50] working as a policy analyst researcher at texas tech university, and I wanted to
[2:34:54] present several concerns I had with this bill. Justly, it's
[2:34:58] public health. The amount of energy that we need to produce in order to
[2:35:04] facilitate these data centers, whoever will build it, will most likely be done from gas, and we all know that
[2:35:09] gas generators pump a lot of nitrogen, nitrogen monoxide and nitrogen dioxide
[2:35:13] into our atmosphere, which causes asthma. And we're
[2:35:18] going to be trading our children's health for nothing. I also wanted
[2:35:22] to speak to you to the members of the board who state we have to keep them here because if we
[2:35:28] let them go elsewhere, then they'll be unregulated.
[2:35:32] to you, I'd say we don't care. We are here to speak to them in the
[2:35:36] city because we will fight them in the city. If they leave and go elsewhere, if they go
[2:35:40] to the county, we will fight them in the county. If we have to go to the capitol, we will
[2:35:44] fight them at the capitol. We will go wherever they are. We only need you
[2:35:50] to represent us here in the city. We will take the fight to them. Also, I wanted
[2:35:57] to say this isn't the first time that the high plains has been fighting with a billionaire
[2:36:02] for our water. In 2011, a billionaire, an oil billionaire, tried to buy all
[2:36:06] of ogallala, around 200,000 acres, and sell it to dallas. Today, I ask you, are we going
[2:36:12] to have to do it again? Is the high plains residents again
[2:36:17] going to have to spend over $100 million to buy our own water back? And
[2:36:22] lastly, I wanted to touch on a quote that you had asked. You asked,
[2:36:27] why should we care? Just in layman's terms, why should we allow this? And it's the demand.
[2:36:31] but I ask you, who demanded this? Because it wasn't me. Thank you, zan. We
[2:36:39] could have vanessa, vanessa hernandez, ruben vasquez,
[2:36:43] gonzalo ramirez, jessica sanchez, and robert rogers.
[2:36:56] hi, good evening. Sorry. Oh
[2:37:01] yeah, that's fine. Thank you. I'd like to start with my favorite bible verse,
[2:37:05] mark 8:36. For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain
[2:37:10] the whole world and forfeit his soul? My question for you today, for what shall
[2:37:14] it profit a tech giant if they shall gain the whole world's data and forfeit the
[2:37:19] community's soul? The decisions we make today will determine whether future generations
[2:37:24] inherit the same lubbock we all love, or are they going
[2:37:28] to be left with the remnants of a past we should have preserved? While many data
[2:37:32] centers attempt to address the water concern through air cooling systems instead, this simply replaces
[2:37:38] one resource concern with another, as they also heavily rely
[2:37:42] on massive amounts of electricity while continuously releasing waste heat and
[2:37:46] operating industrial cooling equipment around the clock. In one of the world's largest
[2:37:51] concentrations of data centers, northern virginia, concerns have been raised over the rising
[2:37:57] electricity demand, transmission lines cutting through rural landscapes,
[2:38:02] constant generator noise, and pressure on local infrastructure,
[2:38:08] to name a few. Last month, san marcos became the first city in texas to prohibit data centers with
[2:38:12] within its city limits because its leaders concluded that the benefits do not outweigh the
[2:38:17] costs. And another texas, if another texas community is prohibiting such developments,
[2:38:23] shouldn't lubbock take notice? Yes, building facilities creates hundreds
[2:38:28] of temporary construction jobs. However, the key word is temporary. And once
[2:38:33] construction is complete, many large data centers employ only a few dozen or at most a couple
[2:38:38] hundred full-time employees, despite occupying hundreds of
[2:38:43] acres and consuming enormous amounts of electricity, resources,
[2:38:48] and infrastructure. We all have to ask ourselves, are we building a stronger
[2:38:53] lubbock, or are we simply lining the pockets of corporate entities and investors while
[2:38:57] our community foots the bill? Thank you, vanessa. Ruben?
[2:39:06] robbin. Hello. Just
[2:39:12] want to touch on some of the things that everybody's kind of already brought up. One of
[2:39:16] the biggest things that I think that I would agree with the
[2:39:21] most and that people should probably listen to is probably clayton tucker. You know, he has some very, very good information
[2:39:27] about how things have gotten to where they're at right now. For example,
[2:39:33] and how things have switched, right? Because how does ai
[2:39:38] serve us? I believe that we've tried touching on that once and we don't have a definition yet
[2:39:43] of what they even are. But let's see who benefits most.
[2:39:48] it's not really regular people who are looking up recipes and making funny videos to put on
[2:39:53] facebook or something. It's big
[2:39:58] companies, big companies that are coming in. And I think that
[2:40:02] we need to remember that we're a republic, right? So,
[2:40:07] but there's a word for whenever maybe city officials or,
[2:40:13] you know what I mean, and companies come together
[2:40:18] to subvert the will of the people. What's that called? Fascism, right? And I
[2:40:22] don't believe that this is something that is just
[2:40:27] happening now, but I think like this lady had said earlier,
[2:40:31] like there is a very, very like push through. I don't know why.
[2:40:37] I just think it's kind of strange, but I, there's
[2:40:43] something that I heard earlier where okay, so let's do all this
[2:40:49] with energy and stuff, but we're in the middle
[2:40:53] of a war right now. You're like, what are we going to do with that, right? Like, what if everything stops coming,
[2:40:58] right? And we have these places that are, I think somebody said
[2:41:03] about diesel, like they got these big diesel generators and things like that. It's like,
[2:41:07] well we got to kind of make sure that we have what we need.
[2:41:12] thank you, ruben. If we could have blaine shipman, j.r.
[2:41:18] ferguson, and brandon elam come
[2:41:26] up. Gonzalo ramirez. Good
[2:41:32] evening. My name is gonzalo ramirez, and I want
[2:41:37] to first thank you, mayor and councilpersons,
[2:41:41] for having this forum. Forum where we can have that freedom of speech. I also want to thank
[2:41:46] the people that don't live in district 1 or district 2 that
[2:41:50] have actually come up here and advocated for district 1 and
[2:41:54] 2. I live north, I live north
[2:41:59] of loop 289 within the city limits. I have a private well.
[2:42:03] I spent 15 years away from
[2:42:08] lubbock. I was born and raised, educated here, and job opportunities took me away
[2:42:12] for 15 years. And when I came back, I decided I wanted to live back in my community.
[2:42:17] so I built a house 20 years ago in north lubbock. I have the
[2:42:22] same concerns as far as water. I have a private well. I have to go 140 feet to get water. I
[2:42:27] have the same concerns about noise because there are older
[2:42:32] homes in north and east lubbock. And so they don't have the soundproofing that newer
[2:42:37] houses have. So that's my concern with those 2 things. But the thing that I want
[2:42:41] to bring up today, or the last thing I want to bring up actually, is the
[2:42:46] slide that said data centers will only be allowed in 2 zoning districts
[2:42:50] through a specific use permit. Well, we know now that it looks like district 1 and district 2
[2:42:56] will be those 2 districts. So really, I'm asking those of you that are that represent the
[2:43:02] other districts. And I'm making eye contact with those of you that are not in
[2:43:07] district 1 or district 2 because I really want you to support the idea
[2:43:14] of not having these data centers in district 1 and
[2:43:19] district 2. If you want to have that conversation with data centers, that's fine. My only question
[2:43:23] that I would ask, that I would want you to ask as part
[2:43:28] of the overall discussion with data centers is what technologies are you bringing
[2:43:33] in? Thank you. Thank you, gonzalo. Jessica? Thank you for
[2:43:42] taking this time and staying. I
[2:43:47] don't want to repeat what everybody's already questioned. I have those questions written
[2:43:52] down. But I just want to go back to I live right
[2:43:56] on the line between the city and the county and where the data center was going
[2:44:04] to be put previously. And my
[2:44:08] question is, why lubbock? The developer was coming from san
[2:44:13] francisco. My mother grew up there,
[2:44:18] and my grandmother's house is made, was built
[2:44:24] in the 1920s and it's worth $1 million. So it's a 4-bedroom, very simple house. Why
[2:44:31] lubbock? Because we have cheap
[2:44:36] land? Why? We already know we have problems with water. I have one other question. If there was one built and they
[2:44:44] had to use solar panels, what about the light and the heat
[2:44:49] on the airport? Has anything been looked
[2:44:53] into as far as that? And that's all. Thank you. Thank you,
[2:44:59] jessica. Robert rogers. Robert rogers, no. Blaine shipman.
[2:45:11] thank you for letting me address y'all tonight. Many of the concerns have already been
[2:45:16] addressed. I had prepared remarks, but I'm gonna kind of set those aside. Really, I
[2:45:21] want to get down to the heart of the question that is being
[2:45:25] asked. All of these concerns are valid, the environmental concerns, the water concerns,
[2:45:30] the land use concerns. But the question is, what is going to give us the most control
[2:45:35] at this point in time? Is it going to be passing the moratorium and waiting
[2:45:40] on the state to give the county more power to regulate these? Or is it
[2:45:46] going to at least have a mechanism for us to cope and at least to push back
[2:45:51] on these power brokers? Individual citizens, we can come together, but without the backing
[2:45:55] of y'all and without a system that y'all come up with and help us
[2:46:00] to come up with, we can't push back on that. And my worry is if we just say
[2:46:06] no wholesale, they will go out to the counties. They will take advantage of texas law. They
[2:46:11] will express their right as landowners of texas to have unfettered access
[2:46:17] to all of the water under that ground with no regulation, no
[2:46:22] oversight, no care in the world for the actual community that we have called
[2:46:27] home, some of us for decades, probably a few of us in this room for centuries. So
[2:46:33] thank you for your time addressing me. Please take this into consideration. And to
[2:46:38] everyone who's spoken tonight, thank you all as well. Thank you, blaine. Okay, if matthew
[2:46:46] conklin, rebecca komarek, and mason patton, if you'd come up.
[2:46:51] in the meantime, j.r. Ferguson or brandon elam. I'll
[2:47:05] be brief because everybody pretty much covered my concerns. I will start off with
[2:47:10] saying I think this meeting came about in the wrong order.
[2:47:14] I think the citizens should come first, and then the council addresses the citizens.
[2:47:19] if the citizens wanted a data center. It should have been presented. But going on,
[2:47:25] lubbock, texas receives an average about 19 inches of rain a year. Your charts
[2:47:31] confirm we don't get water from here, it comes from everywhere else. The worst
[2:47:36] drought I experienced, I believe like 2011, we had
[2:47:41] maybe 5 inches of rain. And a large facility drawing water will dry up wells. And it will
[2:47:47] leave people without water who rely on wells. Even a mid-sized data
[2:47:51] center can consume as much water as a small town, which, say roughly 50,000 people,
[2:47:56] it'll consume roughly 5 million gallons of water in a day. There's different ways
[2:48:01] of cooling data centers, of course. You have air. One of the bigger concerns is noise
[2:48:05] pollution. I don't believe the decibel ratings that you had up
[2:48:10] were entirely correct. Because around 200 feet outside the
[2:48:14] perimeter of a mid-sized data center the ambient noise level
[2:48:19] is 65. So imagine a hair dryer next to your ear
[2:48:24] for infinity. And clayton tucker did cover
[2:48:29] this. The ambient heat that these facilities give off can raise surface temperatures
[2:48:35] around the communities 3.6 degrees at the lowest, and sometimes as much as 16.4
[2:48:40] degrees. I don't know about y'all, but I don't want a
[2:48:44] 124-degree day in west texas.
[2:48:49] now, I'll end by saying I just hope the council listens
[2:48:53] to the people. It should be the people first, followed by who represents them. We give
[2:48:58] the orders, right? Or we make the requests, and you represent us. Thank you
[2:49:03] for your time. Thank you, brendan. Matthew. I'm matthew
[2:49:11] conklin. Ah, first, y'know,
[2:49:16] like he said, you represent us, and so, ah, I don't see what
[2:49:20] the problem would be with having a referendum, just voting on it. I mean,
[2:49:24] we the people, ah, seemingly don't want it. I don't see why
[2:49:29] we couldn't just all vote on it. Secondly, I, I know I
[2:49:36] can't remember who someone got upset about, someone saying bingo. There's a bingo card out there that has
[2:49:41] all these lists of if this is brought up, it goes on the bingo card.
[2:49:46] yeah, it's a funny joke, but in seriousness, like, people are predicting what the fake
[2:49:52] platitudes and promises are that have been given to given to us by these people, and
[2:49:59] they're predictable because they're over and over and over again. Well, there's data
[2:50:04] centers out there now that have been out there, and people are being hurt by it,
[2:50:08] and it's being documented. There's you know, lawsuits and
[2:50:13] health costs and all these things that go along with it. The data is out there. A lot
[2:50:19] of people have brought up a lot of that. I don't, I mean,
[2:50:23] even just that being out there should be enough to just say, hey,
[2:50:27] let's not do this. Like and that kind of goes back
[2:50:31] to our priorities, which there was a gentleman, and I'm not trying
[2:50:36] to knock him, but he said how is this going to affect us economically? That wasn't the number one
[2:50:41] priority by like 90% of the people that came up here and spoke. It was health, it was
[2:50:46] pollution, it was water consumption, electricity, all these different things.
[2:50:51] economics is like down here. We don't want it here
[2:50:55] for all these reasons. And so, yeah, that's all I got to say. Thank you. Thank you.
[2:51:00] thank you, matthew. Rebecca?
[2:51:09] yes, I'm speaking tonight from my niece. She couldn't be here. She just had a baby. I'm
[2:51:14] just really tired
[2:51:20] of my voice not being heard, and I don't understand why this
[2:51:24] country is just allowing people that have money to just control
[2:51:30] everything and act like the rest of us don't matter, like we're not important. This
[2:51:35] is our country just as much as anybody that has money, and we have rocks. So I just
[2:51:44] don't understand that, and I don't, let's see. I don't
[2:51:50] understand why we can't vote on this, just like you said.
[2:51:58] and I've seen the drinking water on tv, I believe it was
[2:52:03] georgia, and it wasn't only brown, it was dark brown. And that's the drinking water that
[2:52:09] the citizens had to drink and bathe in. We're already being they scaled back
[2:52:14] all the regulations for the epa and we're exposed to so many chemicals and
[2:52:19] contaminants, and now you want to add something else. And I've also heard that children living
[2:52:25] within 10 miles of a data center have lower bone mineral density. I don't understand why
[2:52:30] we would want to put our children at risk for something that a tech
[2:52:35] billionaire wants, and I don't understand what the urgency is. You know, all of a sudden
[2:52:40] they're just building all these data centers against the people's will,
[2:52:45] and I know, and I, I feel it, and that it has to do with mass surveillance,
[2:52:50] and they want to take away our rights and probably turned this
[2:52:55] into a dictatorship. I don't know, but that's what it feels like. And I'm, I've called my
[2:53:00] congresspeople and they ignore me. I call them every day. As a matter of fact,
[2:53:05] they laugh. I'm tired of it. I have, I'm a citizen. This is a democracy. We have
[2:53:10] rights and the people's voices need to be heard. Thank you, rebecca. Hello, my name is
[2:53:21] mason grant patton. I'm actually a new farmer. I inherited 2,500 acres. My
[2:53:26] mother passed away in january for it. Don't think it was a fair trade-off, but you know,
[2:53:31] you take what you can get. So a lot of the stuff that was on this slide wasn't correct. I,
[2:53:36] I figure water for a living. We use around 35 million, like,
[2:53:41] gallons of water a year, which is a lot, but that's for a farm like mine, which configures with the
[2:53:46] 100,000 gallons a day, but that's
[2:53:51] for a small-scale data center, not a 940-acre one. That adds up to around 1.5 to 5 million
[2:53:57] gallons a day, or 365 million
[2:54:03] gallons a year. That's way more than what they were saying right there. I feel like that was pretty false,
[2:54:08] what they were claiming. But not only that, don't get me
[2:54:14] wrong, I'm proud to be part of this, but I don't understand
[2:54:18] how this benefits us. I know it's been said a lot, but how does this benefit me? I mean,
[2:54:23] they're collecting data on us, building a profile on us. How does that help us?
[2:54:30] and they're keeping this all in this data center. Well, who's to say some country like china or russia can't
[2:54:35] access that, hack into that, and then breach our livelihoods? I don't think that's fair
[2:54:40] 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
[2:54:45] speak. Thank you very, thank you very much, mason. If we could have rebecca
[2:54:52] lindsay, michelle wilkinson, addison hightower, and kevin
[2:54:56] allen come up. And michelle,
[2:55:01] you will be first. Hi everyone,
[2:55:10] thank you for your time and attention today. Michelle wilkinson, I'm just a gal
[2:55:15] from lubbock, but I do want to reiterate something that has been said repeatedly tonight,
[2:55:21] and that what is the hurry? What is the hurry if we are so
[2:55:27] smart and technology is moving so fast. Can we just take a
[2:55:32] moment to see how this affects other communities? Right there
[2:55:36] in abilene, we can watch our neighbors going through the
[2:55:40] same thing that we're signing up for. Also, I want
[2:55:45] to point out, when we're doing the planning for this thing, we don't have
[2:55:50] to act like there's an imaginary data center. We have real-life examples with real
[2:55:56] data that show that there are negative impacts happening in
[2:56:00] the communities that just put these things in. We're not even 5 years out. The last thing I
[2:56:09] wanted to say is that I just implore you guys,
[2:56:15] we're a little bitty town, a little speck up against the interests of
[2:56:20] corporations that have more money than independent nations in the world, than some
[2:56:25] of the nations in the world. We need people who have vision
[2:56:30] and who have foresight to look and stand up and say,
[2:56:36] I love what you're doing, this is great, we got to slow down. We got
[2:56:40] to slow down. Let's wait. Let's at least let our state
[2:56:45] legislature meet and talk about the safeguards that they need to put in place
[2:56:49] for oversight, for well-being, for, what are they going to do when
[2:56:55] the multibillion-dollar company doesn't play by the rules
[2:56:59] like they said they would? How do we hold them accountable?
[2:57:05] but I thank you all for your time, and I hope you take this all
[2:57:10] into consideration. Thank you.
[2:57:14] has rebecca lindsay spoken? Rebecca? No, I have not, but I've been looking forward
[2:57:20] to it. My name is rebecca lindsay. I live in lubbock. I have since 2017. It is not
[2:57:27] about data. It is about mass surveillance. We are
[2:57:31] the data. They are collecting everything on us, on our kids. There is more
[2:57:35] information in the, the data centers regarding my
[2:57:40] granddaughter who is less than a year old than there are of, of most of us who have been
[2:57:45] here forever. That is about control. There was a young lady who was tracked
[2:57:51] from texas to arkansas, I believe, using 83,000 block cameras. Where are they keeping
[2:57:57] that data? This is all about control and mass surveillance.
[2:58:03] we are making digital prisons for all of us. And those with
[2:58:08] money can buy their way out. And this is, when you look at the rich, who, elton john,
[2:58:14] who thinks because he donates $1 million that he can fly an
[2:58:18] airplane, a jet, wherever he wants, but we have
[2:58:23] to set our thermostats at 72 or conserve our water. The rich
[2:58:27] get no, no, no no negatives out of this, it keeps coming
[2:58:32] on the back of the american taxpayer. We don't need data
[2:58:37] centers. They are not good for anybody or anything that
[2:58:41] regards natural god-given
[2:58:45] rights. We are a constitutional republic, not a democracy. A
[2:58:49] constitutional republic, read your declaration of independence. There were 21
[2:58:54] grievances in that declaration. From 56 men, and there were a, b, c, d,
[2:59:00] e parts of some of those declarations of those grievances. We had
[2:59:06] to take care of business as our forefathers need to take,
[2:59:10] needed to take care of business. Stop letting them buy us out. That's all we want,
[2:59:17] to be natural and to be healthy and
[2:59:21] to have our water available to thank you, rebecca.
[2:59:28] addison hightower. Thank you.
[2:59:34] hi, my name is addison hightower, but more importantly, I am a local lubbock educator
[2:59:39] as well as the daughter, granddaughter, and relative of generation upon generation
[2:59:43] of ranchers and farmers from childress, texas. I can't bring you a bunch of data
[2:59:49] on data centers, and people have expressed my concerns today here, but I am going
[2:59:53] 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
[2:59:58] if we invite them into our community. Childress is in a stage 4 water shortage. That is less than 2,615 feet
[3:00:05] of water and only 6.1% capacity in lake greenbelt. They didn't
[3:00:11] know a thing about data centers coming into their community until it was and done. It's not
[3:00:16] within the city limits, it's within the county. That is a huge problem. It took everyone
[3:00:21] by shock, and it has brought in a lot of problems with it. Traffic has increased,
[3:00:26] become increasingly dangerous. It was already dangerous considering there's highway 83
[3:00:30] and interstate 287, but it's backed up through town. There's many
[3:00:34] wrecks and fatality upon fatality, including the dps officer who was recently killed, who I graduated with.
[3:00:39] crime and assault cases have significantly risen, and the
[3:00:45] grocery store shelves are empty. My family cannot get all of the supplies that they need
[3:00:49] in their hometown, and that's something that would not just happen in a small community
[3:00:53] but could come to here too. Apartments are being sold and people are being locked out
[3:00:57] of their rental properties. There have been, that's not only a problem, but
[3:01:02] 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
[3:01:08] to me is there's a constant cycle of children in and out of schools, which increases stress not only
[3:01:12] on an already stressful profession, but as well as on the poor children who don't
[3:01:17] even ask for that. And we talk about jobs and this creating jobs, but for childress, those
[3:01:21] people were brought in to construct them. It was not local people that constructed
[3:01:26] them. It's given very few jobs within the community. And someone said earlier that they
[3:01:31] promise that they'll throw money at it, but that doesn't buy back our livelihood, nor does it buy back our ranchland
[3:01:36] or water. Thank you, addison.
[3:01:40] as kevin allen comes up, we would like to have noel
[3:01:45] zavala, elena white, and john macias come up. And kevin
[3:01:51] allen is next. All right,
[3:01:57] my name is kevin allen. I'm here today as the patient advocate. The state of texas
[3:02:02] and the president of lubbock young republicans. And I think a lot of the questions that
[3:02:07] should be asked are not getting asked. We need to be asking what would the data center do
[3:02:11] for texas tech health science center, medical hub of west texas, and the healthcare
[3:02:16] system here. My brother works in healthcare. It has significantly improved his part
[3:02:21] of texas over by vernon, texas. There are multiple aspects that are not being
[3:02:26] looked into. We have solutions for a lot of problems that have been brought up that we can
[3:02:31] talk about and discuss at another time. They're real easy to fix. I'm not going to
[3:02:36] get up here and grandstand and perverse the bible like james
[3:02:42] talarico and his supporters would, but I think we really need to pay attention
[3:02:47] to the work that's been going on and the development. I spent most of last month in dallas,
[3:02:51] texas fighting for big pharma, healthcare companies, medical equipment suppliers
[3:02:56] to come and develop here in lubbock, texas. And I can tell you that
[3:03:01] at some point we're going to need one of these ai data centers for the healthcare system. I warned
[3:03:07] in 2024 if we didn't update infrastructure at texas tech
[3:03:11] university health science center, umc would suffer internal failure. And sure
[3:03:16] enough, we did for several months. That type of data center can be used
[3:03:22] for medical and healthcare, something we need to capitalize on in lubbock. There's a lot
[3:03:27] of restrictions and regulations to look into, and thank god for the lubbock fire
[3:03:31] department that gives us one of the best bargaining chips that we've got that allows us
[3:03:36] to have these discussions. You know, I think as long as we're
[3:03:40] mindful with the restrictions and policies and the oversight, good. You allow them to go
[3:03:44] outside city limits and have free rein and do what they want, we lose our chance. We
[3:03:49] don't have a say in it. We can't complain when everything goes wrong afterwards. Thank
[3:03:53] you. Thank you, kevin. Noel.
[3:04:07] hi, I'm dr. Noel zavala, born and raised in lubbock, texas. I spent my college years at
[3:04:11] tech state ecology and the environment, and I want to thank the community
[3:04:16] for addressing the concerns about the environment. Because they already did that, I wanted
[3:04:21] to mention something else. At present, I'm an ob-gyn here in town, and I deliver 250 babies a year. I feel greatly
[3:04:27] privileged and am incredibly honored to serve this city. So
[3:04:32] how do davis centers serve us? That question has been asked repeatedly. My peers here,
[3:04:37] agree they don't serve us. In fact,
[3:04:41] they actively cause harm. So I wanted to share a new term I learned recently. It was
[3:04:46] published in nature magazine: never scaling, a term that
[3:04:51] addresses the phenomenon of relying on ai
[3:04:55] during the learning process with the consequence of not actually learning,
[3:05:00] failing to build basic critical thinking skills that are necessary
[3:05:05] to tackle advanced problems. These are people problems.
[3:05:09] additionally, learning and memory recall has been shown to be poor when using ai. Your
[3:05:14] brain doesn't light up when using ai in the same way it does when you get creative and
[3:05:19] problem solve. It atrophies. That's bad. Think
[3:05:24] about what that means for your future teachers, lawyers, spiritual leaders,
[3:05:29] politicians, and healthcare workers. So yes, I agree. Let's learn from the
[3:05:35] mistakes that others have made. Let's invest in people, not
[3:05:40] in data centers. Thank you. Thank you, dr. Zavala. Elena
[3:05:49] white. Hi, everyone. My name is
[3:05:58] elena. Myself and my family, including my 67-year-old
[3:06:02] mother, live in district 2 here in lubbock. Her yard is also, to quote stephen sanders,
[3:06:08] yellow as hell from conserving our water. The presentations provided this
[3:06:14] evening mentioned that we have excess water and electricity. However, we're experiencing
[3:06:18] forced rolling blackouts and being asked to conserve our resources. We
[3:06:23] all seem to find that to be a pretty interesting contradiction. The
[3:06:28] presentations tonight are also bringing in numbers on usage for theoretical data centers.
[3:06:33] they're nowhere near accurate numbers for other centers around us, and I would ask that you all
[3:06:38] take the time to look those numbers up yourselves. You can't tell me that these other
[3:06:43] cities and other communities that are around us didn't have conversations about their excess resources or their
[3:06:48] infrastructure themselves. Whether it was behind closed doors or
[3:06:53] in front of their constituents, those that chose to allow these data centers to
[3:06:57] be built are actively experiencing the negative effects. A data center in lubbock, texas is unnecessary.
[3:07:02] we're having a discussion tonight about what sort of precautions we can take and
[3:07:08] specific use permits that we can use to protect our communities.
[3:07:12] several people here this evening have asked for all of you to protect and care
[3:07:16] for what we have now and protecting our communities and resources would mean preventing
[3:07:21] the building of an unnecessary essential resource vacuum. I thank you all
[3:07:26] for hearing us all out. Good night. Thank you, elena. Now,
[3:07:31] as john macias comes up, I would like to ask cole daniel and adrian lowen
[3:07:37] to come up, please. Hello, my name is john macias. I was born
[3:07:41] and reared here in lubbock, texas. I grew up on the east
[3:07:45] side. I grew up on north ash and east stanford about,
[3:07:49] I walked to estacado. I spent my whole life here. And I can't help but to think that this
[3:07:56] whole idea is just the definition of systemic racism. It will be
[3:08:01] a political choice that will disproportionately affect minorities. And that being my
[3:08:06] community and that being my neighborhood and that being where my dad lives now,
[3:08:10] it's already hard enough. It's already hard enough over there, and it's just wild
[3:08:15] to me we're even considering this whenever there's so many people against it. And this is
[3:08:19] not a new phenomenon. We've seen, we've seen enough to know that there's no reason
[3:08:24] to rush this decision, and there's absolutely really no reason to consider it until, as many people have said,
[3:08:29] there's state legislation against or to protect its citizens. So I
[3:08:33] really urge y'all to do your job and protect your people, your constituents. And please
[3:08:39] keep in mind that that the amount
[3:08:44] of infamy and the amount of shame that will happen if this doesn't you will historically
[3:08:50] let down your community more than any other politician. And we're really looking for y'all,
[3:08:55] 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
[3:09:02] can't even protect its citizens from predatory business practices of the electric companies. So I
[3:09:07] am a little bit, I'm a little bit nervous that it's going to go the people's way,
[3:09:12] but this is how it should be. We're tired of the welfare system
[3:09:16] for the elite class, for the billionaires, for the epstein class. We're tired.
[3:09:21] we're tired of, of how our government never seems to work for the working class during
[3:09:26] covid we were essential workers. And now what are we? Our communities are going
[3:09:31] to be taken over. The noise pollution, the water pollution, the environmental factors. And
[3:09:36] there is no type of economic possibility that could possibly
[3:09:40] outweigh that. Thank you, john. Cole daniel. Good
[3:09:51] afternoon. I'm a lubbock native. I'm a 4th-gen texas tech student
[3:09:56] in computer science, and I'm a technician at a local technology company here in town. I am going
[3:10:01] to discuss ai as it pertains to data centers and shoot down the pie
[3:10:06] in the sky that a lot of businesses will lobby you with for building data centers. The
[3:10:10] tech itself is not evil, but the current adoption is not viable long-term,
[3:10:15] and I encourage you to research it beyond lobbyist speeches including mine. I have
[3:10:20] a few points. A handful of companies accruing vast majority of the revenue,
[3:10:25] while anthropic and open ai, the companies developing this technology, are hemorrhaging money. And the
[3:10:31] rest of those companies subsidize the service to make it viable
[3:10:35] 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
[3:10:41] brings. Like we've been saying, software engineering, my field,
[3:10:45] is one of the best cases for it, but benefits are not measurable relative to cost
[3:10:49] in my field. More lines of code does not directly mean more value, and so we can't say that
[3:10:54] it's making it better. You can abstract into the niche cases where someone does the hard
[3:11:00] thing and makes a good thing with ai, but that does not outweigh the irresponsible
[3:11:04] rollout and the worsening of general software and security that harms everybody. Third,
[3:11:09] data centers host few jobs while the tech is being sold in the media for the sake
[3:11:14] of eliminating them. The reality is that they cannot replace us, but it can give companies probable cause
[3:11:19] for layoffs. Personally, I think the whole thing is just
[3:11:24] for the sake of centralizing compute away from consumers so companies don't have to deal
[3:11:30] with our demand for the right to repair and true ownership, ownership of digital assets.
[3:11:35] but all in all, because it's not profitable for the owners, not the low-hanging efficiency boost
[3:11:41] that was promised, and it's an incentive to eliminate jobs, it would not be responsible
[3:11:45] to host it here or elsewhere. Thank you. Thank you, cole. Crystal? Crystal? I think, yes,
[3:12:02] that's great. Thank you. Hello. Thank you all for being here. I mean, it's late. Thanks everybody for
[3:12:07] voicing your opinions and sharing your experience and concerns. I am a lubbockan,
[3:12:12] been a lubbockan for many, many years. I do some things
[3:12:16] behind the scenes that I don't really address quite a bit of. I'd like to touch on me
[3:12:22] personally and my experience in the community, hearing some
[3:12:27] of our community's concerns.
[3:12:32] over the infrastructure of it all. It is concerning,
[3:12:37] but just doing my best to stay educated, doing my best to ask questions
[3:12:41] and attending these events. They're very helpful. I am a
[3:12:47] mommy of 4 beautiful kiddos and married to my husband
[3:12:52] for some time now. My questions for y'all and I really hope
[3:12:57] that y'all can really take these in. I do live in the heart of texas, sorry,
[3:13:04] the heart of lubbock. My questions to y'all are,
[3:13:08] how does this project align with the goals of making lubbock a place where young
[3:13:14] people can stay, build their careers, and raise their families?
[3:13:19] another is, what guarantees are there that this development
[3:13:26] respects private property rights and concerns
[3:13:31] of surrounding communities? Also, what lessons have we
[3:13:36] learned from other cities that
[3:13:41] have welcomed larger-scale developments like this, data
[3:13:46] centers, both private and both positive and negatively. What
[3:13:51] does that look like? And if y'all could possibly provide
[3:13:55] more strategic line items, I, I stress that, and give more
[3:14:00] and more information for us. Thank you. As adrian comes up,
[3:14:06] we'd like to have tristan pettis, kyle abernathy, and
[3:14:12] only have initials tb, come up please. Hi, my name is
[3:14:19] adrian. I appreciate y'all giving us the floor tonight.
[3:14:24] I'm against building a data center here in lubbock, and I just wanted to voice some questions that I think we would
[3:14:29] all kind of have before we ever consider putting something like that here. So I was going
[3:14:35] to list them off. Some of them have already been said, but I'm going to repeat them.
[3:14:40] so who would these data centers, so who would keep these data centers accountable
[3:14:45] if they overuse their water, if they overuse their power? I know there's regulations in place, but who's going to
[3:14:49] actually hold them accountable and keep them to those limits? How can we be sure the city won't prioritize
[3:14:54] them over us in these water power disputes?
[3:14:59] if there's a strain on the grid and there has to be rolling outages or something, who's going
[3:15:04] 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
[3:15:09] center in abilene, they got an 85% tax abatement. Is lubbock willing to give up all that tax
[3:15:14] revenue as well to a data center? What is
[3:15:19] lubbock's plan for the depletion of the, like, ogallala aquifer in 20, 30, 40
[3:15:23] years or whatever it will be? What happens when 60% of that water that we have right now
[3:15:28] that he talked about goes away or 42%? Once lake 7 is in place. What do we
[3:15:33] do then? Also, I believe he mentioned that none
[3:15:38] of this water actually comes from lubbock county right now. I don't know that, like,
[3:15:43] boasting about getting our water from these rural communities is really something
[3:15:47] to brag about. And I just want
[3:15:51] to know how lubbock can be a leader in west texas and set a standard for not allowing these large corporations to come in
[3:15:57] and bully and do whatever they want. They're building data centers in small towns
[3:16:01] like people have mentioned, and they don't have the resources or the voice that lubbock has.
[3:16:07] so how can we set a standard for our surrounding small communities? And if anyone
[3:16:12] signs, wants to sign the petition, just find someone in blue and you can sign.
[3:16:18] thanks. Thank you, adrian. Tristan. Thank you. Hi, my name
[3:16:26] is tristan perez, and I moved to lubbock at the beginning
[3:16:31] of this year. I'm originally from new mexico, a small town
[3:16:35] in new mexico just like lubbock, and I've grown to love lubbock a lot. And me
[3:16:41] and my husband are planning on having a family here, raising our family. My mom just
[3:16:45] came to visit me. I want to bring my family here and all that kinds of stuff. And I
[3:16:51] wanted to touch on a subject that I've heard clayton tucker touch on
[3:16:56] before as well. And I just want to say that I have a concern
[3:17:00] about these farms
[3:17:05] near data centers, the cattle, the just everything, pigs,
[3:17:10] chickens, all of that. They're having stillbirths and mutations in their babies. And
[3:17:14] so what happens if you build one next to lubbock? What happens to the pregnant women and the little children? What
[3:17:21] happens to all of that? Are we going to have mutations,
[3:17:26] just genetic disorders, all of that crazy stuff? And that's like something that's really,
[3:17:31] really, really concerning me because there was another family, I believe, in
[3:17:36] minnesota or wisconsin, I believe, and her little boy had
[3:17:40] terrible migraines and constant ear infections, and they had to move away because of it.
[3:17:47] and then another one in morgan county, georgia. Meta built a massive data center.
[3:17:53] they have clear-cutted forests and began heavy construction in may, and families in the
[3:17:58] area have seen their water pressure and water quality decrease. Their appliances have stopped working due
[3:18:03] to water quality. They now rely on bottled water to drink, cook, clean, etc. Their water
[3:18:07] bills are expected to increase by 33%. Their water is the color of the red clay that
[3:18:13] in the mountains of new mexico. That's how red it is. Red, dark brown,
[3:18:18] everything full of sediment, rock, all of that stuff. And
[3:18:22] most of these ai data centers come with zero regulations or guardrails. Thank you,
[3:18:28] tristan. Thank you, tv. Kyle
[3:18:33] abernathy. Kyle, if you hold
[3:18:39] on a second. We could have cassie green, stephen glenn,
[3:18:45] irving quant, and sequoia ertner. Y'all are the last ones
[3:18:50] on the list. If you'll come up and take a seat. And I think
[3:18:54] we're ready for you. Thank you. Thank you, council, for hosting
[3:18:59] this forum. I've heard a lot of people speak about the very valid concerns
[3:19:04] about natural resources, public health. I've seen charts
[3:19:08] about the offset of tax revenue. My concerns are
[3:19:13] more far-reaching. These, these
[3:19:18] other concerns, local, more immediate. But as a few
[3:19:22] people have spoken about. I see more concern
[3:19:27] with the surveillance aspect of it and the global,
[3:19:35] far-reaching endgame of what the data centers are actually
[3:19:39] doing. What is the data used for? Information is power.
[3:19:43] information is economic advantage. And information can
[3:19:51] definitely be a tool of societal control. I see this
[3:19:58] all in the big picture, as huge as these data centers are, and as much of the natural
[3:20:06] resources could be used harmed,
[3:20:10] and I, I see big brother is what I see. I see the
[3:20:16] infrastructure that ultimately can lead to things that people don't
[3:20:20] like to talk about, like social data scores.
[3:20:29] ultimately, as we lose jobs to ai, the specter of universal
[3:20:34] basic income and how that can,
[3:20:40] the digital currency connected with that can be cut off,
[3:20:45] our access to our own money, loss of personal freedoms and
[3:20:50] controls. Anyway, big brother is looming. Thank you. Thank
[3:20:55] you, kyle. Tb,
[3:21:01] did tb ever know. Good evening,
[3:21:08] everybody. Hey, thank you for taking my time, I mean,
[3:21:12] allowing me to speak. And I just want to say I have similar
[3:21:17] concerns as to where this is all going and what's being planned in advance,
[3:21:22] that it's outside of, like, more from a federal level, and how that is going
[3:21:28] to be then converted into each person having a certain value to them, and more than just,
[3:21:33] like, this is tax revenue for an average citizen and how
[3:21:38] by making things more digital and allowing that infrastructure to take place,
[3:21:42] they can lead to exposure for us as a county and less sovereignty. And I'm really
[3:21:46] concerned about the implications as future generations who are accustomed
[3:21:52] to this type of service and how
[3:21:56] that can then change how we review certain things
[3:22:01] in our own governance, so federally. So, and also, as many have previously
[3:22:07] mentioned, just as far as like taxes and whatnot and where that leads to. So, but also,
[3:22:17] I think that a lot of the farmers are worth listening to.
[3:22:23] so thank you. Cassie green. Thank you guys for having this
[3:22:31] meeting. I actually drove all the way from amarillo to give
[3:22:36] you my personal testimony. I listened to the, the podcast all
[3:22:40] of the way here, and I cried the whole way because I, we,
[3:22:45] my husband and I have a business out of amarillo,
[3:22:50] but we do more than half of our work here in lubbock, and we were planning
[3:22:54] on moving here. And I implore you not to do this because
[3:22:59] y'all are going to be my safe haven to run from fermi america. So I again
[3:23:05] want to thank you for this. I'm a texan from randall county and amarillo.
[3:23:10] currently we're plagued, we're plagued with a monstrosity
[3:23:15] of an ai data center claiming to be the biggest ai data center in the world. Yes, I'm
[3:23:21] talking about fermi america, the matador project. Why on
[3:23:28] earth did our city council decide to sell our fresh water
[3:23:32] straight from our ogallala aquifer is beyond me. They
[3:23:37] started off selling them 2.5 million gallons a day
[3:23:42] of our precious fresh water. The contract says that they can
[3:23:47] go up to 10 million gallons of water a day. You know what,
[3:23:52] to me, data centers are just like the devil. You give them a little bit and they take a
[3:23:57] mile. They're already using wells, not just the contract
[3:24:02] water agreement. They have set up the wells in the acquired
[3:24:07] land that they have gotten, and they're doing the right to capture. They're using that
[3:24:12] law for their benefit, as all ai data centers are doing
[3:24:17] currently and will do. How foolish of us in amarillo to
[3:24:23] think that we were just going to, that they were just going to stick with the plan.
[3:24:28] lubbock, I implore you, please learn from our mistakes. Don't make a
[3:24:33] deal with the devil. Thank you, cassie. Don't do it. Stephen.
[3:24:42] hi I just want to say I'm impressed with everybody's speaking ability and you know, passion for, for
[3:24:49] speaking up and paying attention. And thank you to the community
[3:24:54] for that. I wanted to kind of flip the question on its head. How much money would we pay if we had a data
[3:24:59] center here to kick it out? I feel like it would be bigger than the $3.8
[3:25:03] million a year, like if you were to ask amarillo or these other children's, these other
[3:25:08] places, like, how much would they pay to kick it out and return it back to how it was? I think they'd pay
[3:25:12] quite a lot more than that. So I think that's just not,
[3:25:19] that's okay. The second thing was about the decibels rating. So that's a measure
[3:25:24] of how loud things are. So there's dba, which is a measure of sound
[3:25:28] loudness as it is perceived by the human ear. Then there's actually something called dbc,
[3:25:35] which incorporates more of the low-end frequencies. The human ear only hears down to about 20 hz. So if you were
[3:25:41] to make a regulation, you probably should include the lower frequencies below human
[3:25:45] hearing that also affect or have physiological effects on animals and humans.
[3:25:51] but I mean, that's kind of in the weeds. If you think about it let's say the
[3:25:56] regulations are perfect. Perfect. Let's say the enforcement is perfect, which I think we all are pretty
[3:26:01] skeptical of that with the amount of time and effort and money it would take
[3:26:05] to monitor them and create reports and go back and forth.
[3:26:10] but let's say the enforcement is perfect. At, at that point you have to ask yourself,
[3:26:16] are these people regulatable? Like, ask yourself, can you regulate a multi-billion dollar
[3:26:22] international corporation you can't do it. Like, they,
[3:26:27] they can get out of it. They have the power and the means to do it. So I think just that
[3:26:31] 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
[3:26:36] in check. It doesn't matter. You can't control it. So don't invite it in in the first place. Thank you.
[3:26:42] thank you, stephen. Sequoia.
[3:26:52] hi, I'm sequoia, and I think reality is pretty real. And I
[3:27:00] stand for what's real. That is why I don't really
[3:27:05] like data centers, and I do really like statistics. And I would
[3:27:10] like real statistics to be used
[3:27:17] in this decision and spread
[3:27:22] to everyone that needs to hear them. Not that are
[3:27:30] cherry-picked to make one group look bad or good,
[3:27:36] but that show the best, the worst, and the middle of the road. And I want
[3:27:45] numbers, I want exacting standards and uncompromising oversight to maintain those
[3:27:51] standards. I want accountability standards in place if that oversight fails, but one thing at a time. I'm a
[3:27:56] third-generation lubbockite, and lubbock throughout my life
[3:28:00] and my parents' and my grandparents' lives, I'm third
[3:28:04] generation, has been very slow to jump on any new bandwagon. If there was ever a time when
[3:28:10] that is a standard to live up to, it is now. If you want tourism,
[3:28:15] if you want a thriving economy, stand against data centers and for people. It will make you
[3:28:21] guys, yeah, I'm talking to all of you guys, it will make you guys my heroes. Thank you.
[3:28:29] thank you, sequoia. Irving?
[3:28:40] irving. You guys took a beating tonight, didn't you? I am
[3:28:46] somewhat asking the same question, but before we move on, I want to thank all of you. You guys
[3:28:52] are normal people like all of us, and you volunteered to be where you're at. It's
[3:28:57] just, it's hard. Mr. Atkinson, it's hard to run the city, so thank you,
[3:29:02] sir. And you guys, you read a lot, I know. The, I'm not
[3:29:07] in favor or against data centers, and the reason why I'm not
[3:29:12] against it is because I don't have enough data to be able to say what are the good things
[3:29:17] about data centers. Lida published a 9-page commentary,
[3:29:24] per se, we need to see the data. We need to see what are the benefits
[3:29:30] of this, but specifically to the citizens of lubbock. You want to go one step further
[3:29:35] and really make an economics nerd happy, make it by the district. What are the
[3:29:40] benefits in each one of the districts for all of us? We know the risks. We
[3:29:46] know what are the consequences of taking on these massive projects.
[3:29:51] what's in it for the city? What are we getting in return for that? So if we can voice
[3:29:57] that and publish that and make it more transparent, I think that the conversation would be
[3:30:02] a lot more pleasant, a lot more open, and we would all be able to
[3:30:06] make that decision a lot easier. So once again, council, thank you very much
[3:30:10] for all that you do. Thank you guys. You guys go get some rest. Thank you very much,
[3:30:15] irving. That concludes our citizen comments
[3:30:20] for tonight. I want to personally say thank you. I
[3:30:25] asked you to follow the rules and be respect, respectful, and y'all were great. Thank you
[3:30:29] very much. Good night. Thank you. This meeting is adjourned.