SATIRE: This is parody. Not a real news report.
HARLINGEN — What began as a straightforward 120-day moratorium on data center development has now entered its 847th consecutive day of public comment, with no end in sight and at least three commissioners reportedly aging in real time.
The moratorium, originally approved to study the impact of a proposed 2-gigawatt hyperscale facility near Valley International Airport, was supposed to give officials time to research water, energy, and infrastructure concerns. Instead, it has spawned an ever-expanding bureaucracy of subcommittees, focus groups, consultant reports, and at least one man who has spoken at every meeting since 2023 purely to read aloud from a binder of water-meter readings.
“We’re on page 4,371,” said the man, who asked to be identified only as ‘Concerned Resident Number 12,’ adjusting his reading glasses. “We still haven’t reached the McKelvey Road corridor data from the second quarter.”
Proposal Quietly Grows While City Talks
Meanwhile, the original 1,780-acre Eneus Energy proposal has reportedly grown in the intervening months from a 2-gigawatt facility into a 14-gigawatt “hyper-hyperscale” cloud city complete with a simulated downtown, an artificial lake it cannot fill, and a digital replica of Harlingen that will run entirely on electricity Harlingen does not currently generate.
“Every time we finish a study, the project gets bigger and we have to start a new study,” said a city planner who spoke on condition of anonymity because they had not slept since March. “Last week someone submitted a 600-page traffic impact analysis. For a building that stores emails.”
The city has now hired a consultant to study whether they need another consultant to evaluate the findings of the first consultant, whose report concluded that additional consultation was recommended.
Residents Remain Evenly Split
Public opinion remains divided between residents who fear the Rio Grande Valley lacks sufficient water and power for such a massive facility, and residents who fear the moratorium will never end and they will die inside City Hall Chamber 1-A.
“I came to speak against the data center in June,” said one woman holding a lukewarm cafecito in a styrofoam cup. “It is now November. Of the following year. My son has started first grade. I have missed it.”
At press time, the Harlingen City Commission was scheduled to hear Item 7B: “Discussion and possible action on whether to continue discussing Item 7B.”
