A company planning a data center near Princeton has quietly secured one of the few approvals available to it: a permit to drill a well outside city limits that could eventually pump more than 5.5 million gallons from an aquifer already showing signs of strain. BT Aycock Data Center LLC applied for the permit, which the North Texas Groundwater Conservation District approved in June, for a well on a nearly 50-acre property owned by Aycock Enterprises, located roughly 40 miles north of Dallas.
The approval comes as the company behind the project has only early plans for a facility near Princeton, according to The Dallas Morning News, which first reported on the permit. BT Aycock Data Center is tied to a developer that announced plans last year for six data center sites across North Texas representing a combined power load request of 1,435 megawatts, according to a PR Newswire release tied to Belltown Power Texas. Belltown Power did not respond to multiple requests for comment, per the Morning News report.
District records cited by the paper show the well could draw 5.56 million gallons of water through 2028 to support construction, then 1.65 million gallons annually after that for commercial operation. The well has a production capacity of 150 gallons per minute and draws from the Woodbine Aquifer, which stretches across 17 counties in North Texas. Residents in the area have begun raising questions about whether a data center is actually coming, the report notes.
A Statewide Freeze Collides With a Local Approval
The Princeton well permit landed in the middle of an aggressive state crackdown on the data center boom. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has moved to rein in the industry, issuing an executive directive on August 3 to audit data center projects and pause new grid connections, according to the Office of the Texas Governor. He followed that on September 21 with an order instructing the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to freeze environmental permit approvals for new data centers pending statewide audits, a move Hoodline detailed in its coverage of a fourth Skybox project in Hutto…