Texas governor Greg Abbott has directed state regulators to penalise datacentres that fail to comply with laws requiring them to disclose their water usage, warning that operators must "share the duty to protect Texas water". The move reflects growing pressure on the drought-prone state, which has become a hub of the US datacentre boom, as officials try to balance rapid industry growth against strain on scarce water and power supplies.

In a letter to the Texas Water Development Board, Abbott said major water users, including datacentres, "appear to have committed civil and criminal violations" by not submitting required water use surveys, and instructed the board to use its enforcement powers against past and future non-compliance. It follows an earlier directive ordering an audit of datacentres in the state's power grid interconnection process, with projects that fail to complete it denied grid access. Texas already hosts 335 datacentres, with 248 more planned, and datacentre water use — an estimated 25 billion gallons in 2025 — could rise to 161 billion gallons annually by 2030, roughly equivalent to the consumption of 1.3 million US households.