SATIRE: This is parody. Not a real news report.
HARLINGEN — With its data center moratorium now stretched to the legal maximum of 180 days, the Harlingen City Commission announced this week that the additional 60 days will give a hired engineering firm time to complete the most ambitious study in municipal history: determining whether a data center is, in fact, still a data center.
“We’ve been looking at the Eneus Energy proposal for six months now, and honestly, the thing keeps being a data center,” said Commissioner-at-Large Dale Puente, who has personally driven past the proposed 1,800-acre site near the airport eleven times to confirm. “Every time we check, it’s still servers. We need professionals to verify this. You can’t just assume. What if it’s a very large H-E-B? What if it’s a chisme warehouse? We don’t know. That’s why we hire engineers.”
The engineering firm, paid a sum officials described as “definitely a number,” will spend the next two months studying the facility’s impact on water, sewer, electricity, and the environment, as well as the more philosophical question of whether a building that stores data and centers it can accurately be called a data center, or whether that term retired in 2019.
Water Contract Includes Exciting ‘Surprise, It’s Drinking Water’ Clause
Documents reviewed by this publication confirm the facility’s contract with Harlingen WaterWorks “prefers” reclaimed water but allows potable water if needed, a provision legal scholars are calling the “pero si hay” loophole.
“The contract prefers recycled water the way I prefer to win the lottery,” said fictional water policy expert Dr. Karen Resendez of Texas Southmost College’s Institute for Optimistic Plumbing. “Preference is not a plan. My cousin prefers not to use his check engine light as a dashboard nightlight, and yet here we are.”
Officials estimate the facility could eventually draw millions of gallons per day, a figure one commissioner described as “a number so large we had to extend the moratorium just to count the zeros.”
Commission Confident Six Months Is Exactly Enough Time To Do Nothing Twice
“The first 120 days were a practice pause,” explained Assistant City Manager Gloria Treviño, gesturing toward a posterboard that just said ‘INFRASTRUCTURE?’ in 90-point font. “Now we do the real pause. The pause where we also consider whether data centers count as heavy industrial use, which they do, which we already said, which is why we paused.”
The commission is expected to reconvene in 60 days to vote on extending the study into whether 180 days is still 180 days.
