SATIRE: This is parody. Not a real news report.
HARLINGEN — Flanked by 1,100 acres of freshly graded dirt east of Valley International Airport, tech giant Fluidstack ceremonially broke ground Tuesday on the first phase of its $4 billion data center campus, a project company officials praised as “fully shovel-ready” — except for the part where nobody has decided where rain goes.
“Today we begin building the future of artificial intelligence in the Rio Grande Valley,” said Fluidstack spokesperson Devon Kohler, standing beside a gleaming backhoe. “We have poured the slab. We have raised the steel. The only thing we have not poured is water, because legally speaking, we’re not sure it’s allowed to move yet.”
Harlingen commissioners tabled Fluidstack’s request to discharge stormwater into a city-owned canal last month, asking for a town hall first. Because the site sits in unincorporated Cameron County between Harlingen and Rio Hondo, construction is proceeding anyway, meaning the company is now building roofs at a pace roughly 400 times faster than the city is approving gutters.
Company Insists Cloud Doesn’t Actually Contain Water
At the groundbreaking, Kohler repeatedly emphasized the campus will use a closed-loop cooling system with minimal ongoing water usage, a statement several commissioners found suspiciously detailed.
“They keep saying ‘closed-loop,’ like that’s a magic word,” said one Harlingen official, who asked to speak anonymously because the drainage agenda item has now been tabled so many times it qualifies for its own ZIP code. “Great, the servers are dry. But when a September huracán drops nine inches on 1,100 acres of concrete, that water is going somewhere. Physics has not been tabled.”
Fluidstack has offered the city $20 million plus $7 million in canal improvements for drainage rights, a package officials describe as “very generous” and “possibly the first time anyone has paid $27 million for permission to make puddles.”
Town Hall Scheduled For Possibly Before Or After Next Hurricane Season
The commission has announced it will schedule a town hall on the drainage question “soon,” with “soon” defined internally as any date before the data center becomes self-aware and files its own drainage permit.
Meanwhile, county officials confirmed the worksite permit is valid, the concrete is curing, and the rain — currently still in the Gulf of Mexico — has been placed on the agenda for the meeting after next.
“We want to assure residents that no stormwater will be discharged anywhere until we identify where ‘anywhere’ is,” Kohler said, cutting a ribbon across a trench labeled TBD. “This is a responsible project. We have thought of everything except the water.”
