On the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele Dufilho.

San Antonio is a fast growing, fast moving city with something new happening every day.

That's why each week we go on the record with Randy Beamer and the newsmakers who are driving this change.

Then we gather at the reporters roundtable to talk about the latest news stories with the journalist behind those stories.

Join us now as we go on the record with Randy Beamer.

Hi, everybody, and thank you for joining us for On the Record this week.

I'm Randy Beamer.

We're starting with the topic that is in the news across the country, as well as here in San Antonio data centers.

They use a lot of water or can they use a lot of electricity?

And there are other issues about what they bring to a city, both good and bad.

And San Antonio is taking a look at that right now.

Here to talk about it is Rick Galvan, councilman for district six.

Thanks for coming in.

Thank you for having me.

You brought this up, last year.

Why?

This is our big first, policy initiative that we put forward.

The district six office, wanted to see how can we, regulate the growing data center industry?

Right.

We know district six is home to some of the largest concentrations of data centers in our entire city and county.

And so it was front of mind for a lot of our residents are figuring out, as we're seeing this grow across the country and across the state, how is it impacting us locally as much as we're seeing new industry come along to?

And so we want to put forward, good.

Look at it.

I was looking at land use and we looked at zoning, of course, as well as including our utilities and seeing how can this industry, how is it impacting us now, and how can we be more prepared for it in the future?

What were the biggest concerns you heard first from people living there?

Two big ones.

One, utility cost.

Right.

How is it that some of these water, sales rate increases or CPS rate increase requests that we're getting at city council going into serving the infrastructure needs for these particular in this particular industry.

And two of the neighborhood concerns talking about noise pollution, talking about tree cutting, talking about, parking needs, all the different things that come along with data centers and the growing, construction of them, too, as they continue to expand further and.

Further and across the country.

The same issues here.

How close can they be to neighborhoods?

And is that one of the things you're looking at now, maybe 1000ft from other homes?

Correct.

And then we're looking at, through our policy initiative that we put forward back in September, the city services, DSD Services Department is looking to look at not only the zoning and how it can be used there, but looking at the buffers around it, looking at where it can be next to and also looking at, one thing I'm really pushing for specific use authorization, which enables the public, including city council, to get a vote, approving some of these, projects in our community.

Now, some of the data centers you say are used for different purposes.

And that's what you also want to look at, is where the data goes.

Correct.

A little bit of that.

Trying to understand a bit more about what's going on under the hood here.

Some data centers are simply there for data storage and data transmission for banks, hospitals, etc.

that contract different companies that want to have their data stored there versus having it online.

Microsoft.

Correct.

Right.

All the teams messages, things like that, outlook emails, while others are looking at, hyperscalers which are AI generation.

And so usually those are owned by the one company who kind of focuses in, in their own company, work on how to use AI here.

And so we have some of those here primarily it's more so.

The other one is data storage.

Data transmission either way or trying to figure out what the buildings themselves.

How can you make some calls and guidelines for both of them.

So we understand a bit more about what kind of water needs to have and needs to have, and how that impact neighborhoods nearby them.

But it's not the content, per se that people might think, well, you don't want this one because it's going to be using AI for something we don't like.

That's not an issue.

No, not necessarily not something that we can regulate at the local level either.

That's more of a federal maybe mid state conversation I look at is trying to see how can we make sure that, our city is, properly planning for it in terms of the urban planning and land use conversation.

How different are the needs for the different kinds of data centers?

So there's a couple different things.

One is the kind of the way that they're built.

We are including the fire department a little bit on some of the ones, including our district, that have taken, has some issues with safety as well.

And having the fire department understand a bit more about how to go navigate through these buildings as their issues may come up.

So looking at the fire code and understanding what the difference is between a hyperscaler and a regular old data center, and some of the different structure they have there, some of the larger, some are more compact.

And so trying to make sure that we have the same kind of a clear sight of what we need to do here in terms of fire emergencies or even when we look at regular code inspections there, too.

And these are speculative, at least a lot of them are planning across the state.

I understand there were so many that the state regulators decided to approve them now by batches.

Right.

And so they can talk about developing here.

Talk about coming to San Antonio.

But then they may or may not.

Right.

So one of the big things about data centers, right, is when they look at, going to the site, going to the city, the request, the utility, hey, we need all this kind of energy infrastructure to be able to develop here.

And so at CPS, thankfully, through some of this request conversation that we've had recently, CPS energy is now looking at a local ordinance to say, within their policies, charging a fee to see, how much energy do you actually need here?

Do you have a company that's actually going to contract with you, or are you just going to be an empty warehouse waiting for someone to contract you?

Because if you are, we're not going to build an infrastructure for you just to sit there.

We're looking for actual companies that are ready to go.

And so what that has done for those batches, at least here locally, is reduce it pretty significantly until those companies actually prove they're going to have, actual activation there.

And when you look at water rate increases and power rate increases, how do these play into that?

Yeah.

One of the big things is CPS and sales are always looking at trying to make sure that, residents and other kind of, utility ratepayers here in our community are not subsidizing the needs for other industries, in particular ones that are significantly needing, energy and water.

And so sort of doing their best to kind of shepherd these, companies along their purple pipe with the recycled water pipelines that we have in our city.

A lot of them kind of stretch out to west over hills.

And so that way, once they use that one little water, they keep it there.

The entire time.

And it's not taking for our freshwater resources.

CPS very similarly, trying to figure out ways to have them, pay for the infrastructure themselves or these costs split it in some way.

Our state's done some work there too.

And so there's a lot of big focus on how do we make sure that when we're getting requests for, the city council to approve rate increases or any kind of rate changes, for our residents, that they're not going to go to subsidize the infrastructure for these companies, that a lot of our residents have a lot of concerns about.

A lot of big money coming in with these.

What can you do in terms of zoning?

Are they going to be in the middle of neighborhoods?

And what does that do to communities?

So what do you want to see?

So the main thing I want to see is getting a specific use authorization, which is a very technical term, but it means quite a little bit says if you want to be authorized here, you need to have a specific use for it.

And we need to understand it at city council.

And so that requires city council to approve it.

So we have to go to public vote.

It also requires public meetings for our community to get to understand what's going on there.

And site plans not only for that current moment, but for the longevity of it.

And so if X company wants to build a datacenter here, is it going to be just one story, one single structure, or is it gonna expand further and further?

And how much energy and what is going to be needed for all that?

Being able to get that information will help us, the City Council make those decisions and the community better understand to and hopefully shape any kind of tree scaping, landscaping in the area, parking requirements that may be needed for it to reduce, hopefully so it's not too much tree cutting the area.

How much construction may be happening over time too?

All that I believe, is, and there for the public to understand what.

About, putting them in one area or industrial area, you know, on the east side, when we think of industrial areas, we had the warehouse, that was sold to ice.

Yeah.

Why not encourage that or can you encourage that?

Yeah, it's something we've been pushing for as well, adding a definition for janitor so we can have that kind of conversation about is this, is a specific, industry.

It's something we need to look at a bit more, that's within our own code doing that as well as looking industrial areas.

The only thing I would flag about that one is that, we don't want to also do is that we let it all go by, right?

And so that they're able to kind of live on their own without city council taking a look at it and getting all that information for our public.

If we do that, then we still leave out the plan for overall to see what the longevity is going to be, who's going to be, contracting there, likely some of the kind of community benefits that people are asking for is that it can be done if, well, this is already industrial.

We do need to worry about the buffers, etc.

and so we can do a bit of both.

But I really want to focus on the civic use authorization form.

Do you worry about the character of the neighborhood?

Are you hearing from people saying, you know, I moved in here because it was nice.

It was beautiful.

There's trees.

And then clearcutting of trees and noise.

Absolutely.

We hear a whole bunch of that.

And so, why isn't Boulevard of Ice over Hills in particular?

We see a lot of construction all the time.

Because these things are constantly growing, right?

There's different changes they need to have the technology changes, need to update their buildings as well.

And so try to figure out ways to how can we split some of the infrastructure cost as well?

Some companies have an openness to seeing how can we support some of that?

Of course.

Also looking at the noise buffering as well, trying to figure out how can we reduce some of that.

And then the trees are a big one too.

So now it's even encouraging.

Some of our council members, including myself, to review, some of our tree policies and tree mitigation fund, how he some of these trees back on site.

So that way, you know, it's not a giant, ugly building.

It's a beautiful kind of community that there's still stays intact.

It's not a big factory.

Where are you in the timeline of what happens and input from people?

Yeah.

So I'm very grateful that, back in September, we filed this one.

It came to city council very quickly, I believe they were early March and now is moving to the process of having a stakeholder conversation to update those zoning code and rules.

We're also looking at workforce component to see if we can add some kind of conversations there with our local school districts.

We're working on that one right now.

But other has just started last Friday, with the first conversation with stakeholders, taking place with city staff as well as industry folks that kind of come together, gets a good spot and get it approved by August.

One last question.

In the past state legislators and the governor have shrunk.

Quite a city can do it.

Is this one of those things you expect state law?

City ordinances will conflict?

I don't think so.

I think actually what we'll do is set a pathway for for the state to take a look at.

We see right now state legislators from both parties and all the different parts of our communities of rural urban are trying to take a look at how can we address at the state level.

So I think they'll actually compliment each other and maybe whether it be a little bit of overlap, that we can clarify that at the state level.

But otherwise I think this will actually kind of help dictate and maybe even guide our, our legislators to take a look at what can be done across this entire state.

All right.

Well, thanks.

Fascinating topic.

And I know we're going to be talking about forever, Rick, for years.

Rick Galvan Councilman district six.

Thank you.

San Antonio City Council will vote in June on a requested water rate increase by San Antonio Water system.

Here to talk about that is Robert 20 of San Antonio Water System.

Thank you very much for coming in.

And tell us, first of all, you had talked about this back in November.

Trustees have talked about it, put it off until this year.

Why do you need this rate increase?

That would, take water rates up by 32% in the next four years.

Well, first of all, we put it off because we had four new board members, four of the seven.

We had a brand new council, including the mayor.

So we wanted to give them time to settle in, understand what's going on, educate them on that.

So the education is our rate, our rate adjustment and why we need it.

It's a four year rate plan.

If you go back to 2022, we actually lowered our rates by 11.7%.

And so those rates, were lowered because of a cost of study that we did that we were getting a lot of revenue coming in on the residential side because of our growth.

So we did the right thing.

We actually went in front of council unanimous vote to lower our rates.

So we're asking now, three, four years later for a rate plan that gets us four years of, revenue to pay for some of the infrastructure that we need, and.

It would only pay for some of it.

Right.

Because as I understand it, it would be about 300 million that you would take in from the rate increase.

But you really need or expecting.

Yes.

Spend more.

This is a four year rate program.

The past five years, we've already committed, $2.8 billion worth of capital work.

These next four years is, 3.2 billion.

So the next five years, it's a 3.2 billion.

But this is a four year rate increase to pay for our wastewater treatment plants that need major upgrades.

The the newest one was built in 1988.

So just like a homeowner fixes this roof as often as they can, at some point you need a new roof.

And that's where we are at.

And it is not just to to fix the, but it's also to expand the capacity because we are growing.

It's to expand the capacity at the treatment plant, expand the capacity at the Leon Creek treatment plant because we are growing so much.

And, expansion and new equipment, new energy efficient equipment, equipment that will last longer.

We are at the point where the maintenance of this equipment is starting to be equal to what it would cost for new capital investment.

We've seen construction projects delayed by aging pipes, downtown as well as as elsewhere.

How much of that can you work on?

Do you still need to work on?

Well, we have, over 7000 miles of water mains under the street, 7000 miles of sewer main under the street.

So that's 14,000 miles.

We, inventory all those pipes.

We know when they were put in what the material is, even what the soil type is around them.

And so we prioritize the pipes that are the oldest, most fragile and are in, areas of town where the soil it contracts and expands and causes these line breaks.

So through all this data in artificial intelligence, we know what pipes to change out, to help on this non-revenue water.

So this infrastructure never stays static.

We put in I started as I was 18 years ago, that first month that I was there, there was an appropriation to do new waterline replacement.

Those pipes are now 18 years old.

They're halfway through their their their life cycle.

So every year, pipes get, another set of pipes get older and older.

So we try to keep it up as much as possible.

But it's a very, very expensive.

And throughout.

I was surprised to learn that in terms of the length of pipes, we are behind only is it in New York and Los Angeles?

New York and Los Angeles are the largest water systems as far as the amount of miles of of mains.

So we're we're third in the, in the nation.

And we have to keep it up.

We have to do that maintenance on a regular basis.

You've had some pushback from some city council members saying they want to hold, I think Mark Weiss said they want to hold saws more accountable.

What do you tell people?

I said, this is, I can't pay this increase.

You know, $20 more in four years.

What I want him to understand and what council to understand is, for example, the repair of 2004 agreed to a rate increase that built our underground storage of water, the largest in the nation, so that today, in drought conditions, we can draw on that storage of water, water that we put in there ten years ago where we're throwing now.

And that's this saline water on the southeast side at the same location.

We're injecting fresh Edwards water into a different aquifer, and it's stored there.

When we need it.

And now is the time when we need it.

So what I want to get across as ratepayers of 20 years ago invested in the system, invested in songs for the benefit of today's ratepayers.

We're asking today's ratepayers to invest in songs for the benefit, of, wastewater treatment plants that need upgrades.

And they're going to serve the next 40 years of of treating sewage that comes into this, into our system.

Now between 20 some years ago and today, there was also investment in Vista Verde, the project that brings in water from, the Bastrop area.

And I think people might have thought, well, that's all we need.

This is going to bring us water for a long time.

Well, that is true as far as water supply.

And so what this rate increase is for is upgrades to our wastewater treatment plants and a lot of upgrades to our water mains, to replace a lot of water mains.

There is some component in there to expand the local Carrizo Aquifer, infrastructure of the ACR.

That's in 2028, because we're a fast growing community.

We can't these projects are not, done in 1 or 2 years.

You have to plan very far ahead in the world.

How much of the problem is drought and the increased temperature from the drought?

And you said a dryness itself.

Yes.

Drought.

It is a big factor in line breaks.

The Earth contracts that your soil contracts, and it causes a break to the to the pipes.

During drought, a lot more water is pushed at a higher pressure, through the pipes to get it because of the demand is higher.

And so those two, those two things cause a lot of line breaks.

And the peak was in 2023.

In 2023, it took us 14 days to us to respond to a leak.

But because of, additional hires of crew members out in the street, we got it down to two days.

So the next day we can get out there and start repairing it.

So our lost water, numbers have gone steadily down since 2023.

We've heard a lot of talk about data centers.

We heard that earlier.

How big an issue is that?

And is it is it fair?

Our business business rates are going to go up higher than the residential rates.

Right.

The commercial rates are also going up.

Ray Galvan, Councilman Vaughn, brought this issue to the forefront about data centers.

We've worked very closely with him and with council educating council on what Sars's situation is with data centers right now, today, with currently the data centers that we have, we're very much able to supply them with the water.

What is, out there is how many more data centers are going to come in the amount and are there going to be water intensive or energy intensive?

Some of them are closed loop, some of them have a water neutral, point of view.

Amazon actually has a water positive, that they want to be water positive, during the 2030s.

So all these are factors that, Councilman Galvan is working on, and we're providing the information necessary for him to make good decisions.

You have plans for low income residents right now, and are those going to continue?

So if somebody doesn't have the money, how does that work?

This this, rate adjustment will not affect the people that are currently on, our affordability program.

So they have a totally different rate.

We are not touching that rate.

In fact, we were able to go from 135% of poverty level to 150%.

That will allow us to probably double the amount of families we're able to help.

Council going to look at it a couple more times before the vote in June.

It would take effect in July, first.

July 1st, what do you expect to happen?

Do you think council will approve?

Council has been, very good about understanding the needs for investment.

At different times, CPS is in front of them needing to invest in their system.

Right now it is our turn to be in front of them, needing to invest in our system.

I think they understand that overall, SA sauce is a very good steward of our ratepayers money.

We have the highest credit rating that we've ever had.

We are a model utility that is, well known throughout the nation, not just in Texas.

I think that will prevail.

I think the city will want to invest in itself.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

We'll see what happens.

Robert Plant, a San Antonio water system.

Appreciate your.

Time.

Thank you.

On reporters roundtable this week also talking about water a huge issue right now down in Corpus Christi, a magnitude much worse than any problems in San Antonio.

Dylan, the door is the Texas reporter for Inside Climate News.

And thanks for coming in.

This is so unreal what they're talking about declaring a water emergency.

As you write, they could be the first major modern city to run out of water, within months and expect to declare an emergency by September.

Yes, indeed.

It is an amazing situation.

It's basically what people have been talking about for decades.

Now about to happen, the emergency that they would declare in September is emergency restrictions on water use.

So it doesn't mean they've run out of water.

It means they are now trying to save their last drops.

So presumably we would think they're not going to run out of water because they're going to continue restricting use.

And, you know, as supplies get down to those very last.

Very, very severe restrictions, very.

Very severe.

The big question is coming, when do they cut off the industrial users.

Is, is.

The which is a huge issue in Corpus Christi because of the petrochemical plants, the refineries.

How did this develop over the last few decades and especially the last few years?

Well, yeah, like you said, the refining and petrochemical sectors there use half of the region's water on a daily basis.

The single plastics plant uses as much water as all the residents of Corpus Christi.

So.

And one of those was recently built.

One.

It's the newest one added in 2022.

It uses 13.5 million gallons of water per day.

So what we saw is that, you know, in the last 15 years, you had the shale boom just here south of Corpus Christi, big action in the oil fields.

All that production required a need to build more downstream facilities, expand the refineries, expand the plants.

And all of this came with more and more water use.

During this time, Corpus Christi was bringing in these projects saying, don't worry about water.

We're going to build a desalination plant, a seawater desal plant.

And they brought in all the users.

They did not build a desal plant.

And at the same time they entered into a catastrophic drought, which we are in today still.

And that is, people might not realize, you know, where all the reservoirs and lakes are down, or most of them, even though we've had rain recently, the drought for two years, Lake Corpus Christi and Choke Canyon Reservoir, how far down are those?

Like 8%.

Collectively, they're around 8% full.

If you go to Lake Corpus Christi today, it does not look like a lake.

I was there a few weeks ago at a fishing pier, and you stand underneath this fishing pier and the water is way off.

It's 30 or 50ft below you.

So you go there and you say, there's a heck of a lot of water that they're missing, right?

And it's like people here, my, Madina lake, we've seen those pictures, but it's not the major reservoir for a city like it is down there.

But they do have other, sources now.

They've added some anyway.

They corpus they're adding right now emergency groundwater projects that they're pumping into the Noyce's River.

These are just in the last year.

And none of these projects have gone as well as the city initially said they would go.

Many of them have problems with salty, salty water.

So Corpus Christi right now is relying on what they call its eastern supply, Lake Texarkana, over an Edna.

And that was because after the 1990s drought, they built this emergency 100 mile pipeline to Lake Texarkana.

And that's what's keeping them alive today.

But it's not a big reservoir.

It's not a big reservoir.

And it was not designed to handle the volume of pumping they're putting on it now.

So it's level changes quite quickly.

What happened to the desalination plant.

Because that was big news a few years ago.

Oh, this is going to modernize everything.

But how did it not happen?

Well, that is certainly the big question here.

And they're continuing to push for it.

But, it had to do with many things.

It had to do with, that nobody in the city or state had the relevant experience in building a seawater desalination plant.

It had to do with rival projects of the Port of Corpus Christi and the City of Corpus Christi, who in the background were trying to tear each other down.

It had to do with petty feuds of local leaders of the county in the city who didn't like each other for a long time.

And their spouses were highly involved in the politics, of this sort of stuff.

So there was every little problem imaginable.

But they did not think that the timeline was this tight, as it turned out, being because of the severity of the current drought.

And speaking of political, impact, Governor Abbott, at least a few months ago had talked about taking over, the water issues in Corpus Christi.

What's happening there?

Nothing's really happened there.

He did issue that threat, which was unprecedented.

Nobody's sure exactly what it means for the governor to take over a city, but presumably it means that he put somebody in the city manager's chair who now rules as an authoritarian.

Governor Abbott does not want to be in this position, because what needs to be done is issuing edicts on the large industrial users to reduce water use.

This is Exxon, Valero, Citgo.

These are the institutions that fund the political system here and are many of the biggest supporters at the state and federal level, of many candidates.

So they are not easy, sparring partners to go up against in the realm of water conservation.

And up until this point, Abbott's office has continued to keep its distance from that city manager.

Is it business versus residents there mainly now in terms of what they want to do?

What triggered the governor?

I'm trying to remember his specific threat that the council did or didn't do.

What triggered the governor was a story that I wrote in March, and a reporter for KXAN asked him about it at an unrelated press event, and it sort of set him off, yelling there.

It was clear that he was not happy with what leaders of Corpus Christi, with the situation that they have created.

So those threats really got the city moving.

But, you know, maybe not sufficiently.

You can only move so much.

What about, rain?

And there's different predictions about how much we have or will have over the summer.

How much could that affect timelines of, emergency restrictions?

Well, that's really going to affect it all.

That's what the question that we're hanging on here, it's not looking like through the summer there's going to be salvation.

But into the fall, we might see a big change there.

Forecasting a major El Nino.

And the last time we had a major El Nino, the 2011 to 2014 drought ended with 2015, the wettest year on record.

And like Wimberley, got washed away and stuff like that.

2016 2017 brought huge floods to Houston and Hurricane Harvey.

So if we're entering a weather pattern like this, it could be another one of those things where you just got right up to the edge of disaster and the rains pull us back.

But it's important to savor this moment in Corpus Christi, to realize how close to the edge they are.

Even if, you know, the relief comes this year, and.

Even since we've had rain, it hasn't pushed them up.

So it would take quite a bit more rain.

We're like two years below what they have had in the area.

It's nothing.

A rain storm will help.

It's a change in weather patterns.

There is a huge storm that blew over the noises this last weekend.

It up to the reservoir levels by 0.6%.

Well, soils are so dry that much of the water just is absorbed into the dirt where it falls.

You need repeated rainfall events to create substantial runoff.

And it isn't just affecting the city of Corpus Christi.

There are other towns and they are threatening to sue or suing the city of Corpus Christi where they get their water from.

How does that work?

They don't know what to do.

Like like you say, Corpus Christi supplies water to actually 20 other cities and towns of the whole coastal Bend region.

They're the only water supplier.

So if Corpus Christi goes down, everyone goes down with them except those who can build an emergency water well or something like that.

As you say, it comes down to threats to sue.

And the real consensus here is that when the water runs out, the lawsuits start flowing and who's going to get left behind?

It's whoever pays the least for a lawyer.

Wow.

Well, thanks very much for coming in and explaining all this.

Obviously, your reporting has made a difference with the governor reacting like that, and we will have you back when it rains and it's all over with.

We hope.

Thanks very much.

Dylan Madore, a Texas reporter for Inside Climate News.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Randy and thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record.

You can watch this show again.

You can watch any previous shows.

You can download them as podcasts.

Just go to KLRN.ORG I'm Randy Beamer and we'll see On the record.

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