Temple Mayor Defends Big Data Centers

Data centers are the kind of project cities usually pitch as easy wins — big capital spending, flashy tech branding, and new tax revenue. But in Temple, Texas, they’ve turned into a straight-up political fight over water, power, noise, and whether city leaders moved too fast. That fight sharpened on April 29, when Mayor Tim Davis sent residents a public letter defending Temple’s backing of Rowan Digital Infrastructure projects even as a recall effort targeted him, Mayor Pro-Tem Jennifer Walker, and Council Member Mike Pilkington. (kcentv.com) ### What changed this week? Davis didn’t just say he still supports the projects. He laid out the city’s most detailed public defense yet, answering five recurring complaints — water use, electricity, noise and traffic, environmental impact, and taxes. The timing mattered because recall organizers say they are already collecting signatures, and the letter landed as that campaign was gaining momentum rather than calming it down. (kcentv.com) ### What are these projects, exactly? The center of the fight is Rowan Digital Infrastructure, which already has a major Temple campus underway and has kept expanding its footprint there. Rowan’s flagship Temple project is described as a 300-megawatt campus with a minimum $700 million investment on more than 700 acres along Bob White Road, and a separate April council vote advanced another Rowan project known as Project Ranger. (rowan.digital) ### Why are residents so angry? A lot of this is about trust. Opponents say the city approved another data center after hours of public objection and still brushed aside concerns about long-term utility strain and quality of life. Protesters launched a recall drive on April 24 and set a goal of 5,000 signatures to force recall elections for Davis, Walker, and Pilkington. (kxx([rowan.digital)n-against-the-mayor-and-city-council-over-approved-data-center)) ### What is Davis’s actual defense? Basically, he’s arguing that people are picturing old-school data centers and missing how these newer facilities are supposed to work. In his letter, Davis said the Rowan sites would use closed-loop cooling, with an initial roughly 2 million gallons of water recirculated for 10 to 12 years rather than burned through daily. He also said domestic water use would be capped at 4,000 gallons a day and enforced through city controls. (kcentv.com) ### What about the power-grid argument? This is one of his sharper points. Davis said Temple doesn’t control the Texas grid anyway — ERCOT, Oncor, and state policy do. So, in his view, rejecting a project inside Temple would not spare Central Texas from data-center-driven grid pressure if similar projects just get built somewhere nearby. That’s a regional argument, not a neighborhood one, but it’s the city’s core logic. (kcentv.com) ### Why do city leaders still want them? Money, mostly — but also growth strategy. Davis said each Rowan project is expected to generate about $7 million in city revenue during its 10-year tax-abatement period, then roughly $12 million a year after that. He framed that as money for fire stations, public safety, infrastructure, parks, and other services without raising the burden on existing taxpayers. (kcentv.com) ### So what’s the real disagreement? It’s not just “jobs versus environment.” The deeper split is over what kind of growth Temple wants and who bears the risk when a city bets on AI-era infrastructure. Supporters see a city using its land, water contracts, and electric access to capture investment. Critics see a low-job-count industry asking for hug(kcentv.com)politics. (kcentv.com) ### Bottom line Temple is becoming a test case for how smaller Texas cities handle the data-center boom. Davis is betting the projects will look like disciplined long-term planning once the numbers come in. His opponents are betting voters decide the city gave away too much before the benefits were real. (kcentv.com)