Five jurisdictions in five days, and today it's a governor writing to a grid operator and a DEQ hearing that turned into a shouting match over discharge water. The buildout finally hit the permit counter. This is The Data Center Daily. Today: Ohio's omnibus bill, Abbott's letter to PUCT and ERCOT, Meta signing 168 megawatts in Jamnagar, and a contentious water hearing at Lake Anna. And a Brattle white paper that puts actual numbers on who pays for transmission in Iowa and Wisconsin. Spoiler — it wasn't the hyperscalers who paid for that study. Start with Ohio — because they packed the whole stack into one bill. Delaware put self-supply in statute. Ohio's bill goes after tax breaks, utility billing allocation, water use and testing, local government impacts — and NDAs — all at once. That gives other states a template. The NDA piece is the one nobody's pulled on yet. What exactly are operators allowed to keep secret from local governments? Because if ratepayer advocates can't see the data, they can't fight the bill. And watch the grandfather gap — same one we flagged in New York. The teeth are in the water and billing provisions. An application already in the queue may slip right past it. Texas next. Abbott's letter puts the executive branch directly into the cost-shift fight. The governor is telling ERCOT, in writing, that Texans don't eat the interconnection tab. That's the enforcement ask I've been waiting on all week. But it's a letter. Now I want to see ERCOT's queue procedures actually reflect it — otherwise it's just a press release with a signature. Right — a political commitment isn't a tariff. The follow-through is whether interconnection rules change. Then Meta: 168 megawatts with Reliance at Jamnagar. We’ve got a hyperscaler, a partner, a number, and a specific location. A signed deal hits differently from an approval headline. AirTrunk announced gigawatts in India. Meta just put a megawatt figure and a counterparty on the table. Big difference. And Brattle — commissioned by Alliant Energy. A utility hired the economists to argue large loads should carry their own transmission costs in Iowa and Wisconsin. The grid people finally got their own study. I kept asking this without a source attached — now there's a ratemaking framework and a price tag for ratepayer exposure. Close on Lake Anna. The AWS discharge hearing at DEQ turned contentious — first public meeting this week with real friction on the water side. And it's the same flashpoint every time — discharge into natural waters. Reno was zoning, Statesboro was permitting, now it's a state environmental permit. The water fight just moved up a regulatory level. Three answers in one news cycle. Now we find out whether any of them are enforceable — or whether they're still just words on paper. Route Fifty, with Nick Evans:
It’s a significant revision of state policy, touching on tax breaks, nondisclosure agreements, water use and testing, utility billing, and potential impacts on local governments. Despite some quibbles, lawmakers and witnesses found a lot to like in the initial proposal.
Ohio dropped a full-stack bill Tuesday. Sen. Brian Chavez took a measure that was originally supposed to study data centers and grafted on tax breaks, NDAs, water use and testing, utility billing, local government impacts — all in one bill. And he wants it on the Senate floor, potentially the day after introduction. So if you blinked, you missed your window to amend it. What I keep coming back to is the NDA provision. What exactly are operators allowed to keep secret from local governments? Because if you NDA the water draw and the billing terms, you've muted the ratepayer advocates at the exact moment they'd need the numbers. And one day from introduction to a floor vote? DeMora nailed it — swift legislation ends up bad for everybody. That's not enough time to read the billing section, let alone fight it. Compare that to Delaware. They put one mechanism — self-supply — into statute. Ohio's trying to legislate the whole stack at once. Other states can copy a template like that. And remember the hole we flagged in New York and Seattle — this bill bites through water and utility billing. It doesn't freeze the queue. So check the NDA language for the same grandfather clause. An application already in the pipe might walk right past all of it. This one's from KXAN:
In a letter to the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), Gov. Greg Abbott called for immediate action that would ensure Texans do not pay the price of connecting data centers to the state’s electric grid.
Quick update on ERCOT large loads — Abbott's now writing to PUCT and ERCOT directly, telling them to make data centers fund their own grid hookups. And the language matters. Senate Bill 6 already called for upfront contributions from large loads last year. Abbott's letter goes further — he wants full recovery of 'all of their electric infrastructure costs.' This is the enforcement ask I've been waiting for: the governor, in writing, saying Texans don't eat the interconnection tab. He even told the PUC to make these hookups reduce residential bills. That's a hell of a promise in a letter. The bite comes from whatever ERCOT actually writes into the queue procedures. Right. A directive can only go so far before the tariff does the work. SB 6 is the statute; the PUC is still drafting the rules. This nudges the pen, it doesn't sign the page. From Aabhas Sharma at The Times of India:
NEW DELHI: Meta has signed its first artificial intelligence data centre deal in India, partnering with Reliance Industries on a 168-megawatt facility in Jamnagar, Gujarat, as technology companies race to secure the computing infrastructure needed to power AI applications.
Meta signed its first India AI data center deal — 168 megawatts in Jamnagar, partnering with Reliance, operational within two years. And notice the split: Reliance designs, builds, and runs it; Meta pays for the energy and water. Now that clause I like. Meta eats the power and water bill on its own workloads — that's the cost allocation written into the contract instead of dumped on whoever's downstream. And the relationship was already there — this rides on Meta's $5.7 billion into Jio back in 2020, per Times of India. So it predates the AI gold rush by four years. Renewable power, desalinated seawater for cooling. On paper, that's the cleanest sentence I've read all week. I want to know whether 'renewable' means signed offtake or a press-release aspiration two years out. So there's the gap — operational within two years, expandable over time. The megawatt figure is specific. The energy sourcing is still a promise. Compare it to where we keep landing stateside — the operator pleads it's the ratepayer's problem. Here Meta's name is on the energy line. I'd take that structure in Texas tomorrow. From Long Lam, Ryan Hledik, Sanem Sergici, Adam Bigelow, Tina Zhang at Brattle:
In a recent white paper commissioned by Alliant Energy, Brattle energy experts identify system conditions, ratemaking approaches, and contractual structures that utilities can leverage to address electricity affordability concerns related to demand growth from large new electricity customers, including data centers and other energy-intensive facilities.
Here's the part nobody's clocking — Alliant Energy commissioned this. A utility paid Brattle to put numbers on who carries the transmission costs. The grid people just hired their own economists. And the finding is almost a flex — IPL and WPL are well-positioned. Existing contractual protections, substantial owned generation, limited exposure to wholesale capacity volatility. Translation: we already wrote the contracts, so we're not the ones scrambling. Right, and that's the contrast that lands. After that Ohio bill we just hit — a state drafting cost-allocation rules from scratch in one omnibus — Alliant's sitting there going, we did this years ago, here's the paper proving it. The number I'd flag: from 2010 to 2025, retail price growth in Iowa and Wisconsin stayed at or below inflation. That's the baseline they're defending. The fight is whether large loads break that line — and they're arguing the contracts hold it. A study commissioned by the utility says the utility's fine. Fine, I'll read it. But the framework is what matters here — ratemaking approaches, contractual structures, who eats transmission. I've been asking for that analytical spine all week, and now it has a named source instead of just me yelling. Here's Maggie Glass at WHSV:
Amazon Web Services is seeking permission from the Department of Environmental Quality to release treated water from its data centers into Louisa County’s natural water sources. The requested Virginia Pollutant Discharge Elimination System Permit would be used at Amazon’s Lake Anna Tech Campus.
AWS wants a Virginia Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit to discharge 280,000 gallons a day of treated cooling water into Sedges Creek, which feeds Lake Anna. DEQ held the hearing at Louisa County Middle School Monday — and it got combative fast. Dozens of people show up, and only four are allowed to speak — because you had to have filed a comment during the official window to open your mouth. That's the process working exactly as designed to keep the room quiet. DEQ's defense was, quote, we're only following state law. Which is true, and exactly why people were yelling. And here's what makes it touchier — Lake Anna is more than a lake people live on. It's the cooling reservoir for a nuclear plant. You're discharging data center water upstream of a nuclear cooling source, and the locals get four speaking slots. Three nights ago we asked what the water permit language actually binds. Now we can see it in the room: a filed application has become a packed gym arguing over Sedges Creek. Got a data center story we should be tracking, or a correction to something you heard? Send us a note at datacenterdaily at lantern podcasts dot com. We read your feedback, and it helps shape the show.
We’ve put links to all of today’s stories in the show notes, so if something stood out, you can dig into the full reporting there.
That’s The Data Center Daily for this Thursday, June 11th. This is a Lantern Podcast.