Data Centers Are Quietly Taking Over Texas. The Pollution Could Be Catastrophic
Thousands of new fossil-fuel power sources are quietly firing up across the state to power the AI boom, thanks to a regulatory loophole, leaving residents feeling blindsided.
Guerra and Doty, both former TCEQ staffers, agree that their old agency should have required Stargate to obtain major permits to begin with.
“If a data center gets its operating permit, it's too late,” Doty says. “The only chance to stop something like this is to do it at the very, very, very beginning of the process—before the permit is issued—through the public participation process.”
The former regulators recommend that concerned residents pay close attention to notices from state environmental agencies to spot upcoming projects and request contested case hearings when possible.
Few of those avenues remain viable for Abilene residents. Guerra believes “it’s a foregone conclusion” that the expansion request will be granted.
Even if Stargate secures the appropriate permits, both former TCEQ staffers doubt the agency is properly equipped to enforce them.
“The data center industry is expanding at a rate that is beyond the capability” of the TCEQ to sufficiently regulate, Guerra says, adding that the agency’s enforcement backlog consists of more than 1,400 unresolved cases.
“This past year, they were able to resolve 39 of those 1,400 cases. At that rate, it's going to take them 35 years to resolve all of them,” she says.
“Every single permit that this agency issues, in my opinion, is one more than they can effectively regulate,” adds Guerra, who worked for TCEQ until 2016.
An agency spokesperson disputed Guerra’s claims, writing that “industry growth has not compromised TCEQ’s commitment to fulfill its mission of protecting public health and the environment.” The representative wrote that TCEQ had conducted more than 100,000 investigations in 2025 (one case can have multiple investigations) and claimed that the low number of enforcement actions taken by the regulator “reflects high overall compliance rates” rather than “a lack of enforcement activity.”
Guerra says that TCEQ is “full of folks who are very interested in protecting the environment,” but the leadership team—many of whom were appointed by Abbott—has made the agency notoriously lax on enforcement.
Originally published on Wired
