$7.2 billion+
Combined investment published for the EdgeConneX and Pacifico campuses in Cedar Creek.
Bastrop County, Texas
Billions on the tax roll.Almost nothing asked back.
Data centers are the rare project that widens the tax base and barely uses the services that tax base pays for. Schools get the revenue without the students. The county gets a commercial payer that brings its own security, its own fire suppression, and, at Pacifico, its own power plant.
710 MW
On-site generation at Pacifico. That campus is described as drawing nothing from the shared grid.
less than 0.5%
Share of U.S. freshwater used by every American data center combined, in 2023.
Cedar Creek, drawn to scale
The local numbers, side by side.
Bars use the published figures. Investment and water are different subjects, so they sit on separate charts.
Published investment
EdgeConneX, phase 1
$1.4 billion
Pacifico campus
$2.2 billion
EdgeConneX, full buildout
$5 billion+
Building Bastrop County. The full-buildout bar uses $5 billion, the published floor of “above $5 billion.” These lines are not added again into the $7.2 billion combined figure above.
Water in a year
Closed-loop campus
5 million gallons a year
18-hole golf course
114 million gallons a year
Tomorrow Begins Here. A modern closed-loop campus beside an 18-hole golf course. The campus bar is that example, not a meter reading from Cedar Creek.
Texas Association of Business
The state chamber’s count.
These are statewide figures, not a reading of the Cedar Creek tax roll. The state chamber says the buildings usually run for decades, and that many pay for their own power plants, water systems, and roads instead of sending that bill to local taxpayers.
- 300+
- Data centers already operating in Texas
- $4.8 billion
- Texas data center construction in 2025
- 48,000+
- Texans employed in data centers
- 38%
- Growth in those jobs, 2018–2024
- 10%
- Share of the nation’s data center workforce
- less than 0.5%
- Of all water used in Texas, by every data center combined
The same page says each data center job supports about 6 more jobs elsewhere in the local economy, and that newer buildings cool with air, recycle the same water, or use treated wastewater.
Two more statewide readings
The rest of Texas, on the record.
These pages describe the state, not the Cedar Creek tax roll. They are not added to Pacifico’s or EdgeConneX’s figures.
Texas Economic Development Corporation
The market, and the paycheck.
The state’s economic development office says Cushman & Wakefield ranks Texas the number one primary data center market in the world. Its May 2025 brief says Texas data centers supported 485,000+ jobs and $35 billion in labor income in 2023, counting direct and indirect work together. That job total is much larger than the chamber’s count of people employed inside the buildings, because it includes the wider supply chain. The same office notes that in 2026 the Governor told the Public Utility Commission and ERCOT that growth should add electric capacity, not only demand.
Data Center Coalition
A statewide tax total.
The coalition’s February 2025 report on Texas tax revenue says data centers provided the state with over $1.6 billion in tax revenue in 2024, and generated almost $1.6 billion for local taxing authorities the same year. Property tax, sales tax, and the franchise tax are the channels it names. That pair of totals covers the whole state. It is not a Bastrop County appraisal, and it is not a second copy of the campus figures on this site.
Its FAQ gives the local version of the same idea, using Loudoun County, Virginia: data centers paid $875 million in taxes in 2024, 38% of that county’s tax revenue, on 3% of the land. A PwC finding the FAQ cites says each data center job supports 4.5 jobs elsewhere. Both of those are outside Bastrop County.
Texas tax revenue, 2024
State revenue
over $1.6 billion
Local authorities
almost $1.6 billion
Data Center Coalition, February 2025. Both bars use $1.6 billion because the report says “over” that for the state and “almost” that for local authorities. Statewide only. Not a Bastrop appraisal, and not added to the campus figures.
Loudoun County, 2024
Share of county tax revenue
38%
Share of county land
3%
Data Center Coalition FAQ. Virginia, not Bastrop. Data centers paid 38% of that county’s tax revenue while occupying 3% of the land.
The bargain
They pay in. They barely draw out.
A house pays tax and then sends children to school, cars onto the farm-to-market roads, and calls to fire and EMS. A data center pays tax and then mostly takes care of itself.
What they contribute
- Property tax far beyond what the same acres paid as raw land — $25,000 a year before.
- School revenue without a matching wave of enrollment.
- A commercial share of the county levy, so houses are not the only payer.
- 400–600 construction jobs in each build phase, then permanent technical pay of $55,000–$130,000+.
What they ask of residents
- Minimal new students, against about 1,500 from a 1,000-home subdivision.
- Minimal daily traffic once construction crews go home.
- On-site security and fire suppression, instead of a new neighborhood of emergency calls.
- Closed-loop water. Pacifico is published at 23 living-unit equivalents, not a town’s worth of taps.
The full footprint, resource by resourceWater, noise, and heat, myth by myth
Cedar Creek
Two campuses, one county roll
Under construction
EdgeConneX
Cedar Creek
A hyperscale campus selected over 535 competing sites. Phase one is a $1.4 billion build. The full campus is planned above $5 billion, with capacity up to 96 megawatts.
Pays full property tax
Pacifico & BlackChamber
Cedar Creek
A $2.2 billion campus with 710 megawatts of on-site natural gas generation, on 2,842 acres. Chapter 312 and JETI abatement requests were withdrawn. The published potable draw is about 2,000 gallons a day.
Schools and the night shift
The money stays. The demand does not.
Building Bastrop County’s plain version of the school math: a data center puts millions into the local ISD without adding a class of students. Teacher pay, buildings, and classroom technology are what that revenue is for. A subdivision spends the new tax dollars on the children it brought.
Emergency services work the same way. The campuses fund their own security and suppression. The commercial tax can buy engines and staff for Elgin, Smithville, Cedar Creek, and Bastrop, because the project is not a new subdivision of medical calls.