SATIRE: This is parody. Not a real news report.
HARLINGEN — In what officials are calling “the single greatest act of governance in Cameron County history,” commissioners announced Tuesday they have issued a worksite permit for Fluidstack’s $4 billion AI data center on 1,100 acres east of Valley International Airport, while simultaneously declaring — with visible pride — that the county will provide absolutely nothing else. No tax abatements. No infrastructure help. No emotional support.
“We gave them a piece of paper that says they may move dirt,” said a county spokesperson, framing the permit with museum glass. “Future building permits? They’ll have to earn those like everybody else. We are not in the business of handing out permissions to just anyone who asks politely and brings four billion dollars.”
County Forms Committee To Debate Whether Committee Is Needed
Meanwhile, the Valley Intergovernmental Panel on Meteorological Semantics entered its ninth month of hearings on whether rain is technically wet, with testimony expected from two hydrologists, a rancher, and a man from San Benito who insists humidity is “just rain that hasn’t committed.”
The panel was convened after Fluidstack announced its closed-loop cooling system would drink only recycled water from East Rio Hondo Water Supply Corporation, prompting local leaders to demand clarification on whether the water being recycled had ever, at any point, been wet.
“We can’t approve water that’s in a philosophical gray area,” said one commissioner. “That’s how you end up with a chisme scandal.”
Fluidstack Promises To Be The Most Polite Billion-Dollar Neighbor In County History
Fluidstack representatives reportedly agreed to pay full local taxes, import its own water, pave its own roads east of FM 509 and west of FM 106, and — according to one leaked clause — “apologize to the caliche before disturbing it.”
“We chose Cameron County specifically because it offers nothing,” said a company spokesperson. “Zero abatements means zero expectations. It’s very freeing. We may build the whole thing and leave it empty just to respect the county’s boundary-setting.”
County officials confirmed site work will begin immediately, with 2,500 construction jobs projected and hundreds of permanent positions, all of which will be legally classified as “volunteers, but with paychecks, since we’re not providing those either.”
At press time, the county had voted 4–1 to form a subcommittee to determine whether the permit it already issued counts as infrastructure, with the lone dissenter arguing the paper it was printed on “came from the county printer, which is technically support.”
