'You'd have to be nervous': Google's $40 billion Texas project raises water concerns

by Briannagh Dennehy,
Wed, June 3, 2026, at 3:19 PM

STAMFORD, Texas — Two Google data centers are currently under construction in Haskell County, forming part of a $40 billion investment in artificial intelligence and cloud infrastructure across Texas. As development progresses, the project is beginning to register as a meaningful economic force within West Texas. Stamford, located on the border of Jones and Haskell counties, is now assessing the long-term pressures this growth could place on water resources and infrastructure.

Two Google data centers are currently under construction in Haskell County (KTXS/Scott Martin).

Mayor James Decker acknowledged that the scale of the development has brought both excitement and uncertainty to the community.

"You'd have to be nervous. It's wild. It's a big change," Decker said. "We remain cautiously hopeful about this whole situation. We went from being somewhat isolated from the global economy to suddenly becoming the epicenter of the technology universe."


Stamford is located on the border of Jones and Haskell counties (KTXS/Tavish Leffall).

While data centers have drawn scrutiny nationwide for their water consumption, Decker explained that the proposed facilities will use air-cooling technology rather than traditional open-loop evaporative cooling systems, a distinction he described as a prerequisite for conversations with Google.

"We're very cognizant of people's legitimate concerns. Water should always be a foremost concern," Decker said. "If Google had proposed an open-loop evaporative cooling system, then we never would have been willing to talk to them."


The proposed facilities will use air-cooling technology rather than traditional evaporative cooling systems (KTXS/Scott Martin).

While air-cooling technology is expected to reduce water consumption, concerns persist about future demand. KTXS asked, “If water demand rises beyond projections, what safeguards are in place?”

According to Decker, the city is already evaluating additional water supply options to ensure that future growth does not outpace available resources.

"We're looking at other options. We've thought about increasing the size of Lake Stamford and looking at other secondary supplies. We're always going to keep looking for additional supplies to make sure that we have backups upon backups. We've already mentioned this to Google. We noted that we want them to help us out with that part as well," Decker said. "We've brought in a third party to do a sedimentation survey of our lake. This will allow us to have a really good idea of how much water we have available. Stamford is fortunate. We built a lake with more capacity than we've ever used. We've always thought that it might be beneficial and help enhance the growth of Stamford one day. That day might just be here."