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