Data centers in McLennan County, Texas: 3 projects mapped

Imagery: Esri, Maxar

McLennan County has three data center proposals around Waco, each facing pushback from neighbors. The largest is Infrakey's roughly 1-gigawatt, $10 billion campus on about 520 acres in the Ross and Elm Mott area north of Lacy Lakeview, a suburb of 8,000 counting on about $50 million a year in tax revenue. Lacy Lakeview would have to annex the site and a three-mile corridor of private land, and Infrakey would need to build a sewer plant to treat up to 2 million gallons of wastewater a day for cooling; Waco, which owns the regional sewer system and the water rights, learned of the project from a newspaper.

"Without the City of Waco agreeing to it, Lacy Lakeview can't do anything out there and neither can Infrakey," said state Rep. Pat Curry, a Waco Republican. "Those guys don't know what the hell they're doing." Rural residents organized as soon as they heard, and in May 2026 Lacy Lakeview voters elected Amy Gage, who ran against the data center, as their top council vote-getter.

Ten miles east of Waco, Cipher Digital has quietly bought about 300 acres by the Sandy Creek coal plant outside Riesel for a data center of up to 500 megawatts and applied to connect to the state grid; it says it will not use Riesel's water. "We just want to be left ... alone, live our life, live in our little farms," said Josh Havens, who farms nearby. In McGregor, the city council approved Galaxy Digital's Project Merlin in June 2026, a campus north of the SpaceX site, with water capped at 3,000 gallons a day per building; its closed-door approval, along with years of water violations tied to SpaceX engine testing, has prompted a petition to recall Mayor Jim Lilley.

Every project above is drawn from public records, filings and local reporting. Each row links to what it is based on. Statuses change, so check the source date before you rely on one. Found something wrong? Write to [email protected] and it gets fixed.