Before You Take a Side on Data Centers, Get a Groundwater Number Off Your Own Land

What Texas landowners can actually do about groundwater near a new data center - starting with a measurement most properties have never taken.

There is a version of the data center conversation happening across Texas right now where everyone is certain and almost nobody has a number.

One side says a single facility can consume millions of gallons a day and the aquifer cannot absorb it. The other side says cooling technology has improved sharply, most facilities buy treated water from a public system, and the groundwater share is small. Both sides are describing something real. Neither one is describing your property.

The state does not have that number either. When the Texas House Committee on Natural Resources took up data center water use in June, it learned that only 17 percent of the state's data centers had answered the Texas Water Development Board's required annual water use survey. Lawmakers were blunt about what a number like that does to long-range water planning. Among the facilities that did report, nearly 90 percent of the water used came from surface water purchased through public systems, with groundwater accounting for about 8 percent. A Senate committee returned to the question on September 1, by which point the response rate had reached roughly 30 percent.

That is where things stand. The rules will get written over the next two years, and they will get written using data. If you own land near a proposed site, the most useful thing you can do this year is not pick a side. It is to start a record.

The one number that matters on your own land

For a well owner, that number is your static water level - how far below the top of your casing the water sits when the pump has been off long enough to recover.

Taken once, it tells you very little. Taken consistently over time, it creates a property-specific record that can help distinguish normal seasonal variation from a longer-term decline. Nobody else is going to produce it for you. Your neighbor's well is not your well, and the monitoring well twelve miles away is not either.

If you have a well: how to take the reading

Four methods, in rough order of how most landowners end up doing it. And if you are unsure how to do this, contact your local well driller. If your well is already equipped to measure static levels, they will walk you through it. If not, you can hire them to install the appropriate equipment.

Electric water level meter. A weighted probe on a marked cable. Lower it until the meter beeps or the light comes on, which happens when the probe closes a circuit at the water surface, then read the depth off the cable at your reference point. For wells with suitable access, this is one of the most straightforward methods. Buy or rent one with a cable long enough for your well - they come in lengths from about 100 feet to well past 1,000.

Chalked steel tape. Coat the lower section of a graduated steel tape with carpenter's chalk and use an appropriate non-lead weight such as stainless steel. Lower it until part of the chalked section is under water. Line up an even foot mark at your reference point, note it, pull the tape, and read where the chalk is wet. Subtract the wet length from the mark you held. This works well when you already know roughly where the water sits and want to confirm it cheaply.

Air line. Some existing wells are equipped with an air line that allows water level to be estimated using air pressure. It can be useful where direct access to the well is difficult, although measurements may be less precise than a properly used steel or electric tape.

Pressure transducer and data logger. For landowners who want a continuous record rather than periodic manual measurements, a properly installed pressure transducer and data logger can track changes over time. This requires more upfront equipment and professional setup, but provides a much richer record of groundwater fluctuations.

Whichever method you use, the discipline matters more than the tool:

• Let the well rest. Static means static. Several hours with the pump off at minimum, overnight if you can manage it. An irrigation well needs longer.
• Use the same reference point every time. Mark the top of the casing with paint or a notch and measure from that mark, always. A reading from a different spot is a different number.
• Measure the same week each month, and note anything unusual - a neighbor irrigating, a recent hard rain, a hot dry stretch.
• Write down date, time, hours since the pump last ran, and depth in feet. One notebook or one spreadsheet. Photograph it periodically so the record exists in two places.
• Do not pull your well cap to get access. Many caps have a sounding port or tube built in. If yours does not, have your driller add one. There is live wiring down there and an open casing is a contamination path.

Normal swing is not a decline

This is the part that gets missed, and it is the part that will keep you from raising a false alarm or missing a real one.

Water levels move on their own every single year. They rise after recharge and fall through the summer as pumping picks up across the area. A well that reads twenty feet lower in August than it did in April is not, by that fact alone, a well in trouble. It may simply be a well in August.

A potential trend looks different from a seasonal swing: the same-period reading is progressively lower across multiple years, particularly when expected seasonal recovery becomes weaker.

One more thing worth knowing: in a confined aquifer, the level in your well reflects pressure, not the top of the water. It can drop noticeably before anything is close to being drained. That is exactly why it is a useful early indicator, and exactly why a single reading taken during one dry August tells you almost nothing.

Scale matters too. Suppose your level sat at 350 feet last year and reads 400 feet this year. Whether that is a footnote or a serious problem depends entirely on how thick the water-bearing zone is, where your pump is set, and whether the level recovers. Fifty feet in a thick aquifer with a deep pump setting is a line in your file. Fifty feet in a thin one with the pump set at 420 is something to be working on now.

If you do not have a well

If there is no well on the property, you cannot directly measure a static water level. But you can still begin building a groundwater baseline.

Start with existing well records in the surrounding area. Look at nearby well depths, reported static water levels, aquifer information and historical measurements available through the TWDB and your local Groundwater Conservation District.

A groundwater survey can add another layer of site-specific information by evaluating subsurface conditions on the property before drilling. Technologies vary - including electromagnetic, seismic and resistivity methods - so ask the provider to document the location, date, method and results.

These surveys are not a substitute for a measured water level in a completed well. They provide a different kind of information: a documented assessment of subsurface groundwater conditions at a particular place and time.

The goal is the same: replace assumptions about your property with information you can document and build upon.

Records you can pull for free this week

• Your Groundwater Conservation District. If your property is within a Groundwater Conservation District, start there. GCDs are locally governed entities that manage groundwater resources and often maintain well records and monitoring data within their jurisdictions.
• The TWDB Groundwater Data Viewer. An interactive map of Texas well records, aquifers, and construction details.
• The Submitted Driller's Reports database for wells drilled from 2001 forward, and the TCEQ Water Well Report Viewer for older ones. If your well was drilled in the last twenty-five years, its original report is probably sitting there. TWDB publishes a step-by-step guide to locating a well report that covers both.

If the original report includes a static water-level measurement, it gives you an older data point that may be useful alongside current measurements.

Why the record is worth the trouble

Groundwater Conservation Districts make permitting decisions and issue drought declarations based on water level data. County commissions and city councils hold hearings on rezoning, permits, and tax agreements. These are the rooms where the next few years get decided.

A landowner who arrives with eighteen months of dated readings is taking part in a technical conversation. A landowner who arrives with a concern is taking part in a political one. Both are legitimate. Only one of them changes what goes into the record.

And if no data center is ever built near you, the file is still worth having. You will know how much margin you have above your pump setting. You will know what to tell a buyer. You will know what to tell a driller before you put in a second well.

We are not here to tell anyone whether a data center is good or bad for their county. What we can say, after 3,800 on-site groundwater surveys across Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arkansas, is that this argument is going to be settled with numbers - and right now, most of those numbers describe somebody else's property.

Go get one off yours. Then get another one next year.