Controversial Bastrop gas plant for Claude maker Anthropic faces new pressure. Here's why.

After months of community opposition, Bastrop County officials are asking a state agency to hold a public hearing on a controversial data center and power plant project tied to Claude-maker Anthropic.

County Commissioners unanimously approved a resolution asking the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to hold a formal public meeting on an air permit for Pacifico Energy's proposed 48-turbine gas plant in Cedar Creek.  

According to public filings, the plant will power a massive data center whose primary tenant is reportedly Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company behind Claude. BlackChamber is developing the data center campus.

Residents have spent months opposing increased industrialization in Bastrop County, particularly in the Cedar Creek area. The Pacifico and Anthropic development would border some family neighborhoods and farmland and is near a public middle school and a local wilderness school. Roughly 3 miles away, EdgeConneX is building a multibillion-dollar data center campus.

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"I want to make one thing clear. This is our court, and you represent us, the people," Bastrop County resident Tyrone Smith said Tuesday. "You work for the people of Bastrop. Not Pacifico, not EdgeConneX. And not Anthropic."

The project

The more than $2.2 billion project will include at least two data center buildings powered by the proposed Pacifico gas plant, which will have a generating capacity of 710 megawatts.  

During peak demand, Bastrop County's more than 44,700 homes require about 224 megawatts of power. 

The proposed development would span more than 2,800 acres off Earl Callahan Road in the Cedar Creek area of Bastrop County - more than three times the size of New York's Central Park.

The first data center, known as Project Longhorn, officially filed publicly with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation this month. That filing detailed a nearly 500,000-square-foot building costing an estimated $366 million. Construction, according to a state filing, is slated to begin in late November and be completed in January 2028.  

Aqua Water Supply Corporation, the water utility serving the area, approved a resolution for water service at the project in August. The utility permitted the project to use a maximum of 6,900 gallons of potable water, or treated water safe for drinking, per day on the site. 

Pacifico and BlackChamber, in a public fact sheet posted online, said they plan to use about 2,000 gallons of potable water per day. The developers also said only about 600 acres - about 1.5 times the size of the University of Texas at Austin's main campus - will be developed.   

Permit request

TCEQ - the state agency responsible for managing clean water, air and the safe disposal of waste across the state - is not automatically required to hold a public meeting for every air permit application.

The developers initially sought tax abatements for the project but dropped the request after months of public comment stalled the approval process. With no tax breaks on the table, a public hearing was no longer required.  

The commission, however, can call a public meeting on specific permits only when certain triggers are met under state law. 

One of these includes whether the TCEQ executive director, Steven Schar, who began serving as interim executive director earlier this month, determines there is "substantial" or "a significant degree" of public interest in the permit application.  

Although Tuesday's vote does not require TCEQ to hold a public meeting, commissioners said it signals the level of public interest in the project.

"There's never been like a public front-facing, honest conversation with these companies," resident Cameron Allen, who lives about a mile from the proposed development, told the American-Statesman. "They've never once come out and said, 'This is who we are, and we're proud of this project for these reasons.'

"We have all these really large and existential fears around the public safety in the area, and we're not able to get satisfactory answers."

Bastrop industrial growth

Bastrop County, located just east of Austin's Travis County, has increasingly welcomed industry in. 

Elon Musk has chosen the largely rural county as the home for several of his companies. The Boring Co. and SpaceX both have major manufacturing operations there close to the city of Bastrop, and he said a few years ago that it would soon be the landing spot for his social media app X's operations. 

EdgeConneX's massive data center campus is rising also in the county. The company has invested at least $1.4 billion into several buildings near 6682 Farm-to-Market 535 in the Cedar Creek area. 

Amazon Data Services, an arm of Amazon, purchased roughly 1,200 acres a few miles from EdgeConneX's campus for a possible data center earlier this year.

The fight over data centers in Bastrop County comes as the industry expands rapidly across Texas and faces growing opposition from residents and local officials.

Texas is already home to more than 500 data centers, and developers have requested more than 500 gigawatts of additional electric load from the statewide grid for future projects, according to data discussed in legislative committee meetings this summer.

Gov. Greg Abbott has directed state regulators to review proposed data center developments, including a pause on some approvals, while Central Texas communities have taken their own steps. San Marcos officials voted in June to ban future data center projects, while Austin officials have begun the process of considering a ban on large and hyperscale facilities.

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This article originally published at Controversial Bastrop gas plant for Claude maker Anthropic faces new pressure. Here's why..