Lacy Lakeview City Council members Tuesday voted 6-1 for a nonbinding agreement with data center developer Infrakey in front of a crowd of vocal opponents.
The memorandum of understanding affirmed Lacy Lakeview’s intent to annex and provide water to the 520-acre Infrakey property near Ross. It would pave the way for a $10 billion data center that could generate an estimated $50 million a year for Lacy Lakeview.
The council made no comment as it took the vote in a two-minute span that preceded the public comment period. Council member Cody Daniel cast the lone dissenting vote.
“Are y’all listening?” someone interjected from the audience following the vote. “We’d like to speak… We came to speak!”
Some 60 opponents filled the council chambers and spilled into a hallway where they watched a live stream of the meeting.
Waco leaders surprised
The crowd included Waco City Manager Bradley Ford and Assistant City Manager Ryan Holt.
Ford said he learned about the project details and annexation plans only in recent weeks through coverage by The Waco Bridge.
“I think any time you have a project of this scale that affects all the regional partners, affects the county, affects multiple communities like we heard tonight, you would hope that we’d be at the table much earlier,” Ford told the Bridge after the meeting.“That didn’t happen… (and) that’s highly unusual.”
The property is currently within Waco’s extraterritorial jurisdiction, where cities traditionally have had annexation and subdivision regulation powers. Infrakey has signaled that it will seek to use a new state law to exit Waco’s ETJ and pursue annexation by Lacy Lakeview.
Lacy Lakeview contracts with Waco for its water supplies, and the project will likely require Waco’s cooperation for full buildout.
The data center could need up to 16 million gallons of water a day once a proposed 1.2-gigawatt power plant goes online in coming years, according to the memorandum of understanding.
Infrakey spokesperson Sujeeth Draksharam told The Waco Bridge earlier Tuesday that the operation’s true demand would be closer to 3 million gallons a day. He said the company hopes to supply most of the needs from treated wastewater.
But Lacy Lakeview itself only produces enough wastewater for the earliest phase of the project, Draksharam and Lacy Lakeview Mayor Charles Wilson told the Bridge Thursday. Both said collaboration with Waco was part of the longer-term water supply plan.
Ford said no such discussions have occurred between the cities.
“How they plan to pass water to or through us, given our current contractual relationship with Lacy Lakeview, that’s something we’re seeking some additional answers on,” Ford said in an interview.
During the meeting, 12 speakers opposed the project and one supported it. Concerns included water use, hazardous air pollution from the gas-fired plant and noise pollution affecting people, pets and wildlife.
Several pleaded for more time to research the potential impacts of the plant and asked the council to press pause on further decisions until those questions were answered.
Wilson defends deal
Wilson concluded the meeting with a speech about the inevitability of change. He said he grew up in the project area and witnessed the sound of traffic slowly overwhelming the crickets and bullfrogs, “the song of the South.”
“The country tends to become the suburb and the suburb tends to become the city,” Wilson said. “That’s the nature of economic growth.”
During his speech, Lacy Lakeview police officers removed an audience member who repeatedly interrupted him.
Wilson ended with a list of pressing but unfunded needs in his city of 7,300 people that data center tax revenue could pay for, including sewer lines, streets and a new fire engine.
The speech did little to placate the crowd.
Many neighbors opposing the development are in Ross or unincorporated areas of the county and cannot vote in Lacy Lakeview elections or benefit from the boost in city tax revenue.
They complained that Lacy Lakeview would enjoy a financial windfall at their expense, potentially affecting air quality, water and utility rates and destroying the peace of rural life.
“You sold us out!” said a woman in the audience.
“You sold Ross and Elm Mott out,” said another opponent.
“Nobody’s been sold out,” Wilson responded. He reiterated that the project was still in an early phase and that the project’s anticipated benefits were too good to pass up.
“It is impossible for us to just say ‘No, thank you’ and walk away. It would be the most irresponsible thing we could do,” Wilson said.
This story first appeared in The Waco Bridge. To get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox, sign up for the Waco Bridge newsletter at wacobridge.org/newsletter.
