| What residents provide | 1,000 homes | Data center |
|---|---|---|
| Students | about 1,500 new students | Minimal new enrollment |
| Daily traffic | A subdivision rush hour | Minimal once construction ends |
| Emergency calls | A new neighborhood of calls | On-site security and fire suppression |
| Water | 300,000 to 400,000 gallons a day | Closed loop. Pacifico: 23 LUEs |
| Power | Every new kitchen and air conditioner | Pacifico generates 710 MW on site |
| Tax relationship | Pays tax, then spends it | Pays tax, barely draws services |
The subdivision column is the comparison published by Building Bastrop County and Tomorrow Begins Here, not a specific plat already approved on these tracts.
Drinking water in a day
Pacifico
2,000 gallons
1,000 homes
300,000+ gallons a day
Building Bastrop County and Tomorrow Begins Here. Pacifico is published at about 2,000 gallons a day. The subdivision figure is the low end of 300,000 to 400,000 gallons a day for 1,000 homes. A bar that is under about 2% of the longest bar is drawn slightly wider so it stays visible.
Living-unit equivalents
Pacifico
23 LUEs
Residential equivalent
about 3,000 LUEs
Building Bastrop County. Pacifico’s potable use is counted as 23 living-unit equivalents. A residential use of that scale is put at about 3,000. A bar that is under about 2% of the longest bar is drawn slightly wider so it stays visible.
Water
Modern halls planned for this county cool with a closed loop. Liquid picks up heat at the servers, a heat exchanger moves that heat out, and the same water goes around again. Legacy evaporative cooling is the design people picture when they hear “data center.” It is not the design these sources describe for Bastrop.
Pacifico’s published potable use is about 2,000 gallons a day, counted as 23 living-unit equivalents. A residential equivalent of that campus is put at about 3,000 LUEs.
Tomorrow Begins Here sets a modern closed-loop campus near 5 million gallons a year. An 18-hole golf course is about 114 million gallons a year. A 1,000-home subdivision is 300,000 to 400,000 gallons a day. At the top of that range, 400,000 gallons a day is about 146 million gallons a year — roughly 29 times the closed-loop campus figure.
Nationally, every U.S. data center together used less than 0.5% of freshwater in 2023, about 15 times less than what leaks from municipal pipes. The Texas Association of Business puts every data center in the state combined at less than 0.5% of Texas water, and says newer buildings cool with air, recycle the same water, or use treated wastewater.
Power
Pacifico is the straightforward case. The campus includes 710 MW of natural gas generation on the property. Building Bastrop County describes that as zero draw on the ERCOT grid and no rate impact from the design.
EdgeConneX is a different electrical project: a hyperscale campus of up to 96 MW, under construction, not described as an off-grid plant. For grid-connected industry, Tomorrow Begins Here points to Texas SB 6. Large loads can be ordered down sharply in a grid emergency — the published example is from 100 megawatts to 5 — so homes and hospitals stay served. The same account says large customers pay for the substations and lines their load requires, rather than handing that construction to residential ratepayers. The state chamber makes the same point in plainer language: many companies build the power plant next door, and some can cut their draw on the hottest days.
Schools and roads
A 1,000-home subdivision adds about 1,500 students and a daily commute. The operating staff of a data center does not. Construction years are busy. Operating years are a specialized crew, not a thousand driveways emptying onto the same road at 7 a.m.
That is why the tax payment is so efficient. The district receives commercial value and does not receive the enrollment that usually comes attached to it.
Emergency services
The buildings watch themselves: on-site security and fire suppression are part of how a data center is operated. The county is not staffing a new residential beat inside the fence.
The tax payment still reaches the emergency districts and the county. It buys equipment and people for the households that were already here, because the campus is not spending that payment on its own new population.