Aidan Haney has a habit of keeping track of his classmates’ birthdays. Not because he’s planning a party. He’s looking for the ones turning 18.
Haney, a senior at Lufkin High School in East Texas, spends much of his time outside class playing in the band and registering his classmates to vote. When he sees a birthday post on Instagram, he’ll find the student in the hallway or send them a message.
As a certified volunteer deputy registrar, he can help someone fill out a voter registration application in about five minutes.
Most don’t see it coming.
“They’re usually caught off guard,” Haney said. “They think I’m pulling their leg.”
He’s registered an estimated 20 or 30 classmates so far.
But once the paperwork is done, the questions start. Some want to know what they’ll be voting on. Others want to talk about what’s happening in their hometown.
Lately, Haney said, those conversations keep coming back to the same thing: data centers.
“No one likes it,” he said. “I haven’t had a conversation with someone on either side of the aisle who really wants to see the data centers pop up.”
And while Haney works to get more young people involved in decisions about their future, he wonders how much say Lufkin residents have in one of the biggest developments proposed for their community.
Questions of regulation take center stage
Denver-based Amp Z wants to build a data center campus on more than 1,000 acres at the former Southland Paper Mill site along State Highway 103 East, just outside Lufkin.
Angelina County Judge Keith Wright has described the roughly $1.5 billion proposal as the largest single investment in the county’s history. Supporters point to the potential economic benefits: an estimated $4.6 million in annual county property taxes, 500 construction jobs, and 30 permanent positions. Lufkin Mayor Mark Hicks has called it “truly a once-in-a-lifetime project for Angelina County.”
The plans could grow even larger. Amp Z’s materials describe a campus capable of reaching 1.1 gigawatts by 2028, with the possibility of expanding to 4,000 acres.
And it’s not the only one. Another company, HyperDataGrid, is pursuing a data center development along Highway 103 West.
But not everyone shares local officials’ enthusiasm.
In a reader poll conducted by the Lufkin Daily News, nearly 80% of respondents opposed a data center. The voluntary poll isn’t a scientific measure of public opinion, but it reflects some of the concerns residents have raised.
Water is among the biggest.
City officials have said the Amp Z facility would use a closed-loop cooling system requiring an estimated 500 gallons of water per day. At a June town hall, an environmental policy specialist warned that a data center campus of that size could potentially consume millions of gallons daily.
Those are vastly different figures, and residents are trying to figure out what the project would actually mean for their water supply.
Haney is among those worried about the long-term consequences.
As residents began raising concerns, they ran into another problem. The proposed site sits outside Lufkin’s city limits. Residents who approached City Hall were told the project couldn’t be placed on a city council agenda because it falls outside the city’s jurisdiction.
At the county level, Judge Wright has said he lacks the legal authority to stop it. He has pointed to the Texas Legislature as the body that could give counties more power to regulate developments like this one.
To Haney, it sounded like the decision had already been made.
“I took that as an answer,” he said. “They’re going to build the data centers, and the city council can’t do anything about it.”
Then he read reporting in the Lufkin Daily News that raised new questions about how the project gained support. The newspaper reported that local officials had been communicating with the developer months before the public learned of the proposal. It also reported that Mayor Hicks had endorsed the project using city letterhead, which violated city policy.
The reporting also raised questions about state Rep. Trent Ashby’s use of his bank email address in correspondence with the developer.
Hicks later wrote a column saying he had never concealed his support for the project. Ashby has since expressed support for giving counties limited authority over data center setbacks, lighting, noise, and water use.
The reporting made Haney think differently about what officials told residents.
“Sure, they can’t do anything public policy-wise about it, but how vocal they are against it is a big deal,” he said. “It seems as though they’re the polar opposite of against it.”
He understands there may be limits to what local government can legally do. But he thinks residents deserve to know where their elected officials stand.
‘If not now, then when?’
The debate in Lufkin is unfolding as Texas confronts broader questions about the costs of its growing data center industry.
The state has offered sales tax exemptions to qualifying data centers since 2013. Ken Paxton, then a freshman state senator, voted for the legislation. The Texas comptroller estimates the exemption will cost the state approximately $3.2 billion over a two-year period.
Paxton, now the state’s attorney general and the Republican nominee for US Senate, has described his position on data centers as “a yes with conditions.” He said the facilities shouldn’t drive up electricity rates or worsen local water problems. His office has also opened an investigation into data center water use.
His Democratic opponent, state Rep. James Talarico, has criticized Paxton’s connections to the industry, alleging that he has received nearly half a million dollars in related political contributions.
For Haney, the issue is personal, but so is the election.
He supports Talarico and has been organizing with local progressive groups since he was 16. One of his first efforts was a petition calling on his then-congressman to hold a town hall.
Now he’s helping his classmates register to vote in a state where Republicans have controlled the governorship and both legislative chambers for decades. He believes the data center debate has given people across party lines something to agree on.
“Republicans have had such a large advantage in Texas for so long, and they seem very, very comfortable,” Haney said. “Republicans, Democrats, and independents don’t like the AI data centers.”
What worries him most is what could happen to Lufkin if projects like these move forward without stronger local oversight. He fears a company could arrive, use the area’s resources and eventually “turn it into a company town.”
Haney knows some people think he spends too much time worrying about politics. He’s been told he’s too young. Too obsessive. He has a response for that.
“No one tells someone who’s interning at a doctor’s office that they’re too obsessive over medicine,” he said.
He doesn’t plan to stop organizing.
There are still classmates turning 18, still voter registration forms to fill out, and still questions about what the proposed data centers could mean for the place he calls home.
“At this point, it’s the AI data centers versus the people,” Haney said.
He knows change doesn’t happen overnight. But when asked whether this could be the year Texas takes a different direction, he didn’t hesitate.
“If not now, then when?”
