Same headline — water — across three states, and three completely different answers to what to do about it. If you're catching up: local data center pushback has moved from vague load-growth worries to actual county-level controls. Doña Ana County flagged Project Jupiter as out of compliance over water supply, De Soto residents pushed back after a project doubled from its initial designs, and Dubuque officials started testing ordinances around a site with a big one-time cooling-water need. This is The Data Center Daily. Today — a county writing safeguards while it courts a cooling-tower maker, a federal agency greasing the discharge pipe into Lake Erie, and Nebraska slamming the door for a year. Grimes County first. From Jamisyn Baker at KBTX:
At the 9 a.m. regular meeting of the Grimes County Commissioners Court at 270 FM 149 W in Anderson, commissioners are scheduled to vote on a resolution supporting “responsible data center and associated technologies development while protecting natural resources, and the interests of Texas communities.” In simple terms, the resolution says Grimes County supports new development, including large-scale data centers and related technology projects, but wants guardrails to protect what residents already depend on.
Grimes County Commissioners Court, Wednesday at 9 a.m., Item 19 on the agenda — a resolution backing quote “responsible data center development while protecting natural resources.” And right next to it, incentive talks with EVAPCO. So this court is writing water-use guardrails and, in the very same meeting, courting the company. That's the tension I want to sit with. Writing the rulebook and handing out the incentive check in the same nine-o'clock session. That's shopping with a coupon you printed yourself and calling it caution. And read the actual language — they oppose high-volume potable-water cooling in constrained areas unless there's a sustainable long-term supply. EVAPCO does evaporative cooling. So the guardrail lands right on the guy you're negotiating with. This is where the backlash story's been headed — Grimes moved from residents complaining in public comment to an actual resolution on the docket. Whether it has teeth or it's just a press release, we'll know by the water-supply clause. From Nikshep Myle at Gadget Review:
Ohio’s draft blanket permit would let data centers discharge biocide-laced, heated water into Lake Erie with no site-specific review - Ohio’s draft permit OHD000001 replaces individualized reviews with one blanket statewide NPDES permit. - Cooling-tower discharges carry biocides, heavy metals, PFAS, and thermal loads harming aquatic life.
Now flip to Ohio. Every other local fight this week has been a jurisdiction pumping the brakes — but Ohio EPA is drafting a blanket permit that lets data centers discharge biocide-laced, heated cooling water into Lake Erie with no site-specific review. A blanket permit. So no operator has to sit down and explain what's in the water at their site — the state pre-approves the whole class into a Great Lake. That's the mechanism: site-agnostic. One draft permit covering discharges nobody has modeled project by project — individually. And it's heated water on top of the biocides. You warm a lake, you change what lives in it. Who's the operator that eats it when the algae bloom shows up two summers from now? Nobody named in this permit, that's who. Set that next to the Grimes County item we just hit — a county writing safeguards while it courts EVAPCO. Same industry, but the arrows point opposite ways: local government tightening, federal-adjacent agency loosening. From Harrison Mantas at Fort Worth Star-Telegram:
A package of proposed regulations on new data center development in Fort Worth will not get a vote at the Aug. 11 City Council meeting, a city spokesperson said in a text message to the Star-Telegram. The City Council will instead only consider updates to the city’s rules around data center water use after City Manager Jay Chapa pulled agenda items covering zoning, noise, and economic development agreements, city spokesperson Sana Syed said in a text.
So the Aug. 11 vote everyone was watching — the zoning, the noise limits, the economic development agreements — City Manager Jay Chapa pulled all of it. Yesterday the process was live, with both city and county drafting ordinances; today it's formally stalled. Wait — pulled after the zoning commission already voted against recommending it? That's the second no in under a week. Somebody got loud. Not everything's dead. The pieces that survive Aug. 11 are the water-use rules, the water loading study, and a vote on whether to even start the months-long moratorium process. So the piece they kept is the piece that asks how much of Fort Worth's water a data hall drinks. Good. That's the one I'd fight to keep too. Line that up against the Ohio EPA permit we just hit — one federal agency greasing the discharge skids while Fort Worth is making developers prove their draw first. Here's Brian Foster at When In Your State:
Seward County commissioners voted Tuesday to approve a 12-month moratorium on data center construction, permits, and special-use requests within the county’s local authority. The resolution passed unanimously among commissioners present, with two members absent, giving county leaders time to draft rules before new projects move through the review process with more local guidance in place.
Seward County, Nebraska — commissioners voted Tuesday for a twelve-month moratorium on data center construction, permits, and special-use requests. Unanimous among those present, two absent. And here's the clean part: it's a hard freeze with a clock on it. An actual pause, up to a year, that lifts early only if the planning board finishes writing rules first. Finally somebody says the quiet part out loud — we don't know what these things do to our water and our power, so nobody builds till we figure it out. That's the honest version. Meanwhile, Grimes County is voting on safeguards and talking EVAPCO incentives in the same room. A rural county in Nebraska is doing administratively what a utility does with a tariff — draw a line, study the load impact, then decide. The grid people would love more of this. That's the OG&E move, basically — Oklahoma's 75-megawatt large-load tariff, November rate decision. Same anxiety, different instrument. Nebraska just skipped the paperwork and hit the brakes. This one's from BusinessInfoMedia:
Over the next four months, the company expects to scale its AI cloud to more than 40,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs and to around 85,000 GPUs by the end of this financial year. Yotta cofounder, managing director and CEO Sunil Gupta told Inc42 nearly all of this new GPU deployment is being driven by international customers and enterprises that are willing to sign billion-dollar contracts if delivery can be guaranteed within four to five months.
Yotta's putting numbers on the table — 40,000 Blackwell GPUs inside four months, 85,000 by the end of the fiscal year. And the customer mix just flipped: 70% domestic back in February to 75% international now, targeting 90-to-10 by year-end. So India built this thing to serve Sarvam AI and IIT Bombay, the training workloads finish, and now the GPUs go to whoever pays 50% more overseas. Domestic ambition was the down payment. That's the pricing tell — Gupta says international pricing runs roughly 50% higher, and enterprises will sign billion-dollar contracts if he guarantees delivery in four to five months. Delivery speed is the whole pitch. Billion-dollar contracts they'll sign if you deliver. Call me when the ink's dry. And the raise is $150 million from non-institutional investors at a 37,000 crore valuation — retail money funding a GPU sprint against a four-month clock. Set that next to the Csquare-Brookfield IPO — a public vehicle where the proceeds went to servicing a $734 million revolver and billions in securitized debt. Yotta's the mirror image: privately held, racing capacity on fresh equity instead of clipping coupons. If The Data Center Daily helps you stay ahead, take a moment to subscribe wherever you're listening. And if you can, leave a quick review — it helps other people find the show.
What we're watching next: Grimes County commissioners are scheduled to vote Wednesday at their 9 a.m. meeting on the responsible data-center development resolution. Fort Worth's August 11 council meeting is expected to take up water-use rules and whether to start the moratorium approval process. And Yotta expects to scale its AI cloud to more than 40,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs over the next four months.
Links to every story we mentioned are in the show notes, so if one caught your ear, you can dig in there. That's The Data Center Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.