Bastrop County Fact-Check Hub

Modern data centers deploy closed-loop cooling systems that continuously recirculate water in a sealed loop rather than evaporating millions of gallons. On Pacifico's 2,842-acre parcel, the water demand is just 23 Living Unit Equivalents (equal to 23 single-family homes). A housing subdivision on that same acreage would require over 2,000 homes and 2,000+ LUEs.

Property taxes are calculated as: County Budget ÷ Total Tax Base = Tax Rate. When billions in commercial value are added to the tax base, the denominator expands dramatically. This allows taxing jurisdictions to lower or compress the Maintenance & Operations (M&O) tax rate for residential homeowners while collecting more net revenue.

Data centers have high capital investment but relatively small operating headcounts (~60–100 workers per shift). While temporary construction traffic occurs during phase builds, permanent operation generates negligible traffic compared to any residential, commercial, or retail alternative.

Modern data centers are engineered with sound attenuation baffles, variable-speed low-RPM chillers, and large perimeter setbacks. Sound obeys the inverse-square law, dropping by approximately 6 dB for every doubling of distance. By the time sound travels 500 to 1,000 feet to property boundaries, it drops below ambient day-to-day background sound.

Rather than straining Bluebonnet Electric or drawing away residential power during freezes, Pacifico is building an on-site, self-contained 710 MW natural gas generation plant. Major facilities also deploy utility-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS) that can feed power back to the grid during emergency demand spikes.

Unlike a residential subdivision of 2,000 homes that adds 1,500 to 2,000 new children to classrooms and requires building new elementary schools, data centers and advanced manufacturing facilities add minimal new students while contributing hundreds of millions to the school district's taxable asset base.

Bastrop County does not write checks to companies. Economic agreements under Texas Chapter 381 require companies to invest their own private capital first, construct facilities, and pay full taxes. Any rebates apply solely to net-new value created by the company. Furthermore, Pacifico completely withdrew its tax abatement requests and is paying full taxes from Day 1.

Local education institutions have aligned vocational and engineering curricula with arriving employers. Programs at Bastrop High School, Cedar Creek High School, and Austin Community College Elgin provide certifications in AWS structural welding, fiber optics, instrumentation, and data center operations.