Data centers in Nueces County, Texas: 2 projects mapped

Imagery: Esri, Maxar

Nueces County's data center is going up in a county short of water. Hut 8, a bitcoin miner turned digital infrastructure firm, is building its Beacon Point campus on about 525 acres of former farmland near Calallen, just outside Robstown's city limits. It announced the project in May with a 15-year, $9.8 billion lease from a tenant it names only as a "high-investment-grade company"; in July that tenant signed a second lease, bringing the total to $19.6 billion and the contracted power to 704 megawatts. Hut 8 says AEP Texas has secured 1,000 megawatts of interconnection for the site, and first energization is expected between January and March 2027.

When the project was announced, Nueces County was under stage 3 water restrictions and local leaders had warned the region could struggle to meet demand by December. Hut 8's Hailey Miller told KRIS 6 the campus would use a closed-loop system filled once with water trucked in from outside the county and recirculated for four to seven years, with municipal water only for sinks and toilets. "Under no circumstance will we use municipal water for cooling, at any point, for the project," Miller said. Aaron Bowman of the Corpus Christi Regional Economic Development Corp. called it "a non-water user" arriving when water constraints made other projects hard to attract.

The public has had almost no formal say. The site falls outside city and county permitting authority, and the county has no zoning. Hut 8 sought incentives from the Commissioners Court, which approved none; Commissioner Mike Pusley said that with construction under way it is too late to grant them, and how much property tax the campus will pay won't be known for at least a year. "The problem is nobody knows if this is going to be a positive or a negative," Shawn Flanagan of Citizens Defending Freedom told the Corpus Christi City Council in July. Three council members there have asked to discuss banning data centers inside city limits and requiring any that seek city utilities to fund their own infrastructure.

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.