What we know. Why it matters.
Data Center Facts
Data centers are not just office buildings or server rooms. Angelo State University has housed servers for the State for many years. Shannon Hospital has a data center. The Frontier Building houses a data center. A hyper scale data center is very different and serves a different purpose. Until 2015 Amazon, Meta, and Google build data centers specifically for web hosting and storage. AI workloads, at that time, were relatively small and limited to research. Now, large data centers are coming into communities and in many instances are trying to use zoning definitions that are decades old.
Data Center development uses valuable fresh water, a precious resource in Texas. A medium sized data center can use the same amount of water as 1,000 homes. The city passed a water usage ordinance on June 2, 2026 for initial infill at 1.98 M gallons per building (approximately 17.85 M gallons total across all 9 buildings). Full drain and refill will be allowed at most every three years. The annual refill is capped at 1.07 M gallons of water per year for the campus. Fire suppression, construction dust control/ curing, landscaping, and recycled water are not capped by these limits.
Do data centers cause cancer? Their contributions to environmental pollutions cannot be overlooked. Hyperscale centers are powered by fossil fuels. The emissions are being released into the air, creating pollution that residents are breathing in. Some data centers contribute to dangerous water pollution for the residents nearby throw blow-down related to the closed-loop system. That water is full of biocides and anti-corrosives, which then enter water systems and eventually aquifers to be consumed by people.
Data Centers operate continuously and because of this 24/7 operation are associated with an increase of noise pollution in their areas. The cooling systems make sounds. The generators make sounds. Normal human conversations are around 55 dB to 80 dB (people speak more loudly in crowded areas). The endless noise at a specific pitch is impossible to ignore. Persistent noise pollution can contribute to health issues (like sleeplessness, headaches, tinnitus, hearing loss, and more). Noise pollution is regulated through zoning ordinances. The endless operation also requires a tremendous amount of electricity - anywhere from 50 - 300 + megawatts (50 megawatts alone can power 15,000 homes). Due to citizen pressure, the City of San Angelo passed an ordinance capping noise limits at 55 dB at the property line at all times.
In order to operate the data center, they require new infrastructure during construction: new roads, new power lines, new substations...and the cost is passed on to citizens. The endless use of electricity also means that the data centers are hot. Temperature around the data centers can be warmer by up to 16 degrees and that temperature difference can be felt up to 6 miles away - especially large data center campuses. Of course, the close to the data center the more significant the temperature increase than farther away.
San Angelo is attractive for data center development because of cheap land, few regulations, and construction infrastructure. The Skybox Data Center site size is 350+ acres (roughly 260 football fields).
The City of San Angelo has said the Skybox data center will use a closed-loop system. This is an expensive system to install; it requires less water, but does have higher server room temperatures which means there will need to be additional cooling.
Data Center development uses valuable fresh water, a precious resource in Texas. A medium sized data center can use the same amount of water as 1,000 homes. The city passed a water usage ordinance on June 2, 2026 for initial infill at 1.98 M gallons per building (approximately 17.85 M gallons total across all 9 buildings). Full drain and refill will be allowed at most every three years. The annual refill is capped at 1.07 M gallons of water per year for the campus. Fire suppression, construction dust control/ curing, landscaping, and recycled water are not capped by these limits.
Do data centers cause cancer? Their contributions to environmental pollutions cannot be overlooked. Hyperscale centers are powered by fossil fuels. The emissions are being released into the air, creating pollution that residents are breathing in. Some data centers contribute to dangerous water pollution for the residents nearby throw blow-down related to the closed-loop system. That water is full of biocides and anti-corrosives, which then enter water systems and eventually aquifers to be consumed by people.
Data Centers operate continuously and because of this 24/7 operation are associated with an increase of noise pollution in their areas. The cooling systems make sounds. The generators make sounds. Normal human conversations are around 55 dB to 80 dB (people speak more loudly in crowded areas). The endless noise at a specific pitch is impossible to ignore. Persistent noise pollution can contribute to health issues (like sleeplessness, headaches, tinnitus, hearing loss, and more). Noise pollution is regulated through zoning ordinances. The endless operation also requires a tremendous amount of electricity - anywhere from 50 - 300 + megawatts (50 megawatts alone can power 15,000 homes). Due to citizen pressure, the City of San Angelo passed an ordinance capping noise limits at 55 dB at the property line at all times.
In order to operate the data center, they require new infrastructure during construction: new roads, new power lines, new substations...and the cost is passed on to citizens. The endless use of electricity also means that the data centers are hot. Temperature around the data centers can be warmer by up to 16 degrees and that temperature difference can be felt up to 6 miles away - especially large data center campuses. Of course, the close to the data center the more significant the temperature increase than farther away.
San Angelo is attractive for data center development because of cheap land, few regulations, and construction infrastructure. The Skybox Data Center site size is 350+ acres (roughly 260 football fields).
The City of San Angelo has said the Skybox data center will use a closed-loop system. This is an expensive system to install; it requires less water, but does have higher server room temperatures which means there will need to be additional cooling.
|
The money from the proposed data center will not go to San Angelo Independent School District. That area is part of the Veribest School District and it will go to Veribest instead. The lack of funding from this project to SAISD is also a reason to ask for a community benefit agreement that would include funding for San Angelo's schools and other educational programs.
Initially, the City Council said the facility would be a 600 MW facility, but a recent brochure from Emergent indicates the facility will 'actually be eight buildings instead of one and will have a total site capacity of 1.2 GW - which is enough electricity to power 700,000 + homes (depending on load). That's twice what they originally told us they were going to do. There are 9 buildings planned, up to 400,000 sq ft each as of June 2, 2026. |
Map of Veribest ISD
|
The City Council is also trying to use "by-right" zoning which means the community gets one vote in Phase 1 and then after that all we don't get any other input in any part of this process. Some citizens have been urging the Planning Commission to add guidelines to zoning, but the planning commission decided the guileless were too restrictive. Now, the city is planning on using city-resources for this data center - and that means those will be at the expense of the residents.
This specific data center project is expected to generate hundreds to thousands of temporary jobs (the housing plan for out-of-town workers remains open). The city projects there will be 30-60 permanent jobs in Year 1 growing to 120-200 permanent jobs over 10 years with a pay range of $75,000-$100,000.
Every single principal across all current data center projects (Dove Creek, Cipher, and San Angelo) operates through LLC structures that limit their personal liability. This is similar to the way that Shervin Pishevar had 25+ entities, with a burst of formations the same week his miscondut allegations went public. Nadia Partners creates a dedicated LLC plus a separate Manager LLC for every single investment, meaning Beacon (Dove Creek Project) has four corporate layers between the project and any individual human. Skybox creates a fresh LLC for each campus (Austin Data Center 1 LLC, Skybox Houston I LP, etc.), so San Angelo will almost certainly get its own thinly capitalized shell (San Angelo Data Center Campus Power, LLC - who the city signed a lease with?). Jeremiah Collins at Emergent has a trail of Glenwood Energy entities, some active, some inactive. John Halpin (partner at Nadia and co-founder of Beacon) runs nested UK holding companies and is based in the Cayman Islands. Even the intermediary, Attinger, appears to be operating through an entity (The Attinger Group Inc.) that isn’t registered anywhere.
The practical consequence for Tom Green County: if either project fails, gets abandoned, or creates an environmental mess, the community’s legal claims will be against a project-specific LLC that holds nothing but the local land. The actual people making money from the deal sit behind two to four layers of corporate protection with assets in other jurisdictions. Nobody’s personal wealth is on the line. What could the look like? Well, Shervin Pishevar (Bolt Mobility LLC) raised $40M+, vanished overnight in July 2022, abandoned scooters across 8+ cities, employees were unpaid for a month, and cities were left to clean up. Pishevar faced zero personal consequences. The LLC shielded him completely. Then, he resurfaced weeks later as Yeezy vice chairman. Sofreh Capital LLC / Pishevar Family Office LLC - both formed within 6 days of his December 2017 misconduct allegations going public. There are 25+ entities total, all sharing one Miami address and the same two officers across every entity. If something goes south, San Angelo is looking at a Bolt Mobility situation. Except it will be worse, because we aren’t talking about scooters. We’re talking about our water, our electricity, our river ecosystems, our aquifers, etc.
This specific data center project is expected to generate hundreds to thousands of temporary jobs (the housing plan for out-of-town workers remains open). The city projects there will be 30-60 permanent jobs in Year 1 growing to 120-200 permanent jobs over 10 years with a pay range of $75,000-$100,000.
Every single principal across all current data center projects (Dove Creek, Cipher, and San Angelo) operates through LLC structures that limit their personal liability. This is similar to the way that Shervin Pishevar had 25+ entities, with a burst of formations the same week his miscondut allegations went public. Nadia Partners creates a dedicated LLC plus a separate Manager LLC for every single investment, meaning Beacon (Dove Creek Project) has four corporate layers between the project and any individual human. Skybox creates a fresh LLC for each campus (Austin Data Center 1 LLC, Skybox Houston I LP, etc.), so San Angelo will almost certainly get its own thinly capitalized shell (San Angelo Data Center Campus Power, LLC - who the city signed a lease with?). Jeremiah Collins at Emergent has a trail of Glenwood Energy entities, some active, some inactive. John Halpin (partner at Nadia and co-founder of Beacon) runs nested UK holding companies and is based in the Cayman Islands. Even the intermediary, Attinger, appears to be operating through an entity (The Attinger Group Inc.) that isn’t registered anywhere.
The practical consequence for Tom Green County: if either project fails, gets abandoned, or creates an environmental mess, the community’s legal claims will be against a project-specific LLC that holds nothing but the local land. The actual people making money from the deal sit behind two to four layers of corporate protection with assets in other jurisdictions. Nobody’s personal wealth is on the line. What could the look like? Well, Shervin Pishevar (Bolt Mobility LLC) raised $40M+, vanished overnight in July 2022, abandoned scooters across 8+ cities, employees were unpaid for a month, and cities were left to clean up. Pishevar faced zero personal consequences. The LLC shielded him completely. Then, he resurfaced weeks later as Yeezy vice chairman. Sofreh Capital LLC / Pishevar Family Office LLC - both formed within 6 days of his December 2017 misconduct allegations going public. There are 25+ entities total, all sharing one Miami address and the same two officers across every entity. If something goes south, San Angelo is looking at a Bolt Mobility situation. Except it will be worse, because we aren’t talking about scooters. We’re talking about our water, our electricity, our river ecosystems, our aquifers, etc.
Read it yourself:
Data Centers and Water Consumption
"I can't drink the water" - life next to a US data centre
Communities Raise Awareness about Noise Pollution
What Happens When Data Centers Come to Town
What is Closed-Loop Cooling, and When Should Data Centers Use It?
Water Data for Texas
Emergent Brochure
AI Data Centers, already harmful, appear to be creating their own microclimates
The Dangers of Data Centers
"I can't drink the water" - life next to a US data centre
Communities Raise Awareness about Noise Pollution
What Happens When Data Centers Come to Town
What is Closed-Loop Cooling, and When Should Data Centers Use It?
Water Data for Texas
Emergent Brochure
AI Data Centers, already harmful, appear to be creating their own microclimates
The Dangers of Data Centers
| the_data_heat_island_effect_quantifying_the_impact.pdf |
