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Data center tensions are coming to a head in Austin. Earlier today, environmental nonprofit Save Our Springs Alliance (SOS) announced that it has filed a lawsuit attempting to force the City of Austin to publicly disclose information on a proposed data center for Tesla, Inc.
The filing comes as the city council explores data center regulations and skeptical residents demand more answers about the local impacts of those facilities. Meanwhile, Tesla has sought connections to the Austin Water utility for a data center – the size and scale of which are not publicly known.
SOS formally asked for records of all data centers that have requested connection to Austin Water services since January 2024. The city supplied the requested information for one small facility but wrote the Texas Attorney General Office for permission to withhold the Tesla records, which Tesla argues are proprietary trade secrets.
SOS argues that the city then illegally withheld Tesla records that the Attorney General directed it to release. Instead, the city redacted almost everything from the SOS records that it provided to SOS.
SOS filed suit against the City of Austin on Sept. 21, asking a local state district court to uphold the Attorney General’s ruling, which it says directs the city to release some unredacted Tesla documents.
In response to a request for comment, a City of Austin representative wrote the Austin Free Press: “The city has not been served with this lawsuit, but will review it and respond appropriately.”
“My team and I will be discussing the Save Our Springs request with our legal department to ensure the city’s response complies with the law,” District 10 Council Member Marc Duchen wrote in a statement to the Austin Free Press. “Austin is a hub of innovation and needs to stay that way, but no one deserves special treatment.”
The original public information request submitted by SOS asked the city-owned Austin Water for records of any water and wastewater “service extension requests” for proposed data centers submitted to the city since January 1, 2024.
Meeting the water demands of burgeoning data centers could strain Austin Water’s supplies as the city faces a potential water shortage by 2070, even without any new data centers.
Large data centers consume roughly 528,000 gallons of water per 100 megawatts of energy for electricity generation and cooling, according to International Atomic Energy Agency estimates. That’s equivalent to the average daily water use of 6,500 households.
The lawsuit argues that the public needs basic information on the water and wastewater demands of Tesla’s facility, none of which have been disclosed. Site location and energy use also remain private.
“Projected consumption of public water is public information, not a trade secret,” Bobby Levinski, Senior Staff Attorney at SOS, stated in a press release. “The Texas Constitution makes conserving the State’s water a shared public right and duty. We cannot protect our water, if private companies can conceal how much water they intend to use.”
Tesla petitioned the Attorney General to allow the city to either entirely withhold everything that SOS requested or, alternatively, to just release the documents that Tesla had heavily redacted. Tesla argued that SOS requested “trade secrets” that could cause the company competitive harm.
The Attorney General’s May 26 ruling found that some of the requested information could cause Tesla “substantial competitive harm” but ordered the city to “release the remaining responsive information.”
Paxton’s office did this despite the fact that Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s America PAC has spent $2.6 million to support Paxton’s U.S. Senate race against Democrat James Talarico, according to the Texas Tribune.
The city ultimately released 15 pages of documents, eight of which are entirely devoid of information, and seven of which are “stripped of nearly all content, including subject lines, names, titles, contact information, and signature blocks,” according to the press release. The released documents cover correspondence between Tesla and Austin Water from January 2025 through January 2026.
Credit: Tesla, Inc. and the City of Austin.
By withholding records on water distribution and use, SOS maintains that the city violated the Texas Public Information Act, as well as its constitutional obligation to release non-competitive information upon request.
Only records that could cause the company “substantial competitive harm” can legally be kept secret, the AG ruling found. “How many gallons a competitor draws from a municipal utility confers no advantage in any market,” the SOS lawsuit argues.
The SOS filing says that the Texas Constitution defines “all of the natural resources of this State… including… the waters of its rivers and its streams” as “public rights and duties,” and Texas Water Code defines surface water as “the property of the state.”
The city did provide SOS with unredacted documents for an American Towers data center, including that site’s projected water demand and wastewater flow. The lawsuit further maintains that the city also violated the Public Information Act’s command to release information “promptly.” The city released the American Towers documents four months after the information was requested; the Tesla documents came 57 days after the request.
“The release undermines the public’s ability to see how its own water is being used,” SOS Senior Paralegal Namrata Chhillar stated in the press release. “Producing the records months late, with effectively nothing in them makes a mockery of the Public Information Act, which is meant to give people power over the documents that belong to them.”
Tesla did not immediately respond to requests for comment for this story. It will be updated if they do.
This story has been updated to include a statement from District 10 Council Member Marc Duchen.
Piper Guinn is the health equity reporter for the Austin Free Press, covering the disproportionate health burden carried by our city’s most vulnerable. Piper is a native Texan and recent graduate of Whittier College, where she received a B.A. in political science.
Disclosure: Save Our Springs Alliance Executive Director Bill Bunch is a member of the Austin Free Press Advisory Board.
Support for Austin Free Press reporting on government accountability and watchdog reporting comes from the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation. Sponsors do not influence AFP’s editorial decisions.
