When Suzanne and Anthony Stinson married in 1980, they moved to a pioneer-built area out of doors of Castroville and raised their kids on land that were in his kinfolk for the reason that 1840s.Again then, “it was once all nation out that method. You’d have to sit down there for some time prior to a automotive would cross by way of,” she mentioned. However after neighbors bought their land to Microsoft for what the Stinsons say was once tens of 1000’s of bucks an acre, the couple now copes with mud and noise coming from the adjoining website the place an information heart has been beneath development since 2022. The contractor submit plastic sheeting, at their request, and the couple planted a row of timber. “It’s unhappy as a result of they’re getting rid of agricultural manufacturing for cloud area, for laptop knowledge,” she mentioned. “You simply marvel, why do we’d like all this?”In a county identified extra for farms that yield corn, cotton and hay than high-tech server farms, Microsoft is doubling down at the already large knowledge heart.As the development website expands, so does the selection of such amenities in rural Medina County forcing citizens there to reckon with one of those enlargement they by no means anticipated.
Situated at Farm-to-Marketplace Street 471 and Potranco Street, “SAT82” might be constructed subsequent to knowledge facilities named SAT80-1 and SAT80-2, every with 106,000 sq. toes of area, at the similar 206 acres the place development was once began two years in the past. The growth is predicted to get underway in April and price just about $500 million, in step with a state submitting. It follows any other Microsoft knowledge heart that was once constructed straddling the Bexar-Medina county traces and is derived alongside about the similar time any other is deliberate for County Street 6712 between Lytle and Natalia.Simply west of Castroville, an information heart is beneath development on U.S. Freeway 90, with about 124 acres cleared, even though no state submitting might be discovered for that location.The place as soon as there have been thickets of legacy oak timber the place farm animals grazed lazily on inexperienced rolling hills is a gated and energetic development website of stamped filth and a financial institution of grey stone that looks to function a holding wall.Like SAT82, it stocks a fence line with a kinfolk who has for years raised their households and farmed and ranched within the house. Large open spacesMicrosoft owns a minimum of 12 parcels of land in Medina County, in step with tax data. Many are contiguous parcels and all are positioned within the jap a part of the county.The combo of inexpensive, to be had land and plentiful calories assets is attracting corporations like Microsoft to construct knowledge facilities within the county, mentioned Medina County Pass judgement on Keith Lutz. SAT82 additionally certified for a 15-year, 80% belongings tax abatement from the county, he mentioned. Even with the tax abatement, knowledge facilities can generate earnings that’s identical in belongings taxes to nearly 900 residential rooftops, Lutz added. The state additionally gives tax breaks to qualifying knowledge facilities, together with a brief gross sales tax exemption and different incentives.Officers welcome the advance of big server farms within the face of a inhabitants growth within the county. “We have now an amazing quantity of enlargement occurring on this county — folks enlargement — and with that enlargement comes numerous demanding situations, a variety of infrastructure [needs] … that we’re going to need to achieve this are method larger than simply what the county voters can deal with,” Lutz mentioned. 
Building of a Microsoft knowledge heart north of Castroville in 2023. Credit score: Scott Ball / San Antonio ReportMedina County has a inhabitants of about 51,000, in step with the 2022 American Group Survey. Within the dozen years main as much as that survey, the county’s inhabitants larger 11 out of 12 years, with a mean annual enlargement price of one.3%.The biggest annual inhabitants building up was once 2.7% between 2020 and 2021, and the next yr, the inhabitants grew once more by way of 1.93%.This inflow is going on in a county the place there are 2,200 farms nonetheless family-owned, in step with the 2022 U.S. Census of Agriculture, and 2020 census knowledge displays 84% of the inhabitants is living in a rural house. “Sheer panic” is how Castroville Mayor Darrin Schroeder described the town’s response to the upcoming sprawl from San Antonio and the advance that’s going on as landowners unload their farms. “We’ve had this inflow of enlargement,” he mentioned of residential and industrial initiatives already in growth within the town and adjoining to its borders. “The present building agreements have tripled the dimensions of the town [and that’s] simply with those that we’ve already nailed down. And we nonetheless have many extra to head.” The 3-year mayor, talking at a up to date Northside Chamber of Trade tournament, and different officers have mobilized, hiring an city making plans company to lend a hand restructure the town’s building codes to maintain its small-town personality. Schroeder works as an IT program supervisor for Microsoft. Power and water useAcross San Antonio, corporations like Microsoft, Cyrus, Amazon Internet Products and services and others have constructed greater than a dozen knowledge facilities, the bodily infrastructure at the back of cloud computing, the faraway servers that offer computing products and services and garage to an unlimited array of web customers.They’re one of the crucial 5,387 knowledge facilities within the U.S., maximum alongside the Atlantic seaboard, in step with the community provider procurement company Cloudscene. The common knowledge heart development occupies about 100,000 sq. toes of area. Knowledge facilities are essentially the most energy-intensive varieties of constructions that exist and account for two% of overall calories use in the USA, in step with the U.S. Division of Power.“Sadly, the best way the call for goes for those products and services, knowledge facilities might be built in every single place,” mentioned Kanad Ghose, a pc science professor at Binghamton College in Canada. Ghose directs a Nationwide Science Basis-funded analysis heart this is taking a look on the useful resource intake of knowledge facilities. The expanding reliance on digital units is developing the call for and synthetic intelligence device is “very dramatically” using up energy intake, he mentioned.He estimates that in keeping with the present trajectory of knowledge heart development and electrical energy intake, in 5 to seven years, “we can exceed the overall electrical energy produced international.” Drought conditionsIn addition to calories assets, knowledge facilities additionally use water to chill the servers that retailer the arena’s virtual knowledge. Knowledge from the San Antonio Water Device (SAWS) displays that, in 2023, 19 knowledge heart amenities within the software’s provider house purchased about 31 billion gallons of potable water and 151 million gallons of recycled water. It feels like so much, however that degree of intake accounts for simply 0.25% of all industrial accounts’ water use, in step with SAWS.“Business is a large extensive sector that comes with such a lot of other forms of shoppers,” mentioned Karen Guz, vp of water conservation at SAWS, and contains faculties and condo complexes. “In that context, knowledge facilities seem to have accounted for not up to 1% of the quantity of water bought to industrial in 2022 and 2023.”When requested how a lot water the knowledge heart beneath development on Freeway 90 plans to make use of, the superintendent for the East Medina County Particular Software District, Bruce Alexander, mentioned that the software is operating with Microsoft to decide the phrases of a “non-standard provider settlement” to supply water provider.As in lots of portions of the state, Medina County has been experiencing reasonable to serious drought prerequisites since a minimum of 2021. The U.S. Division of Agriculture estimates 24,500 acres of cornfields in Medina County are in drought-stricken spaces. A Microsoft spokesman answered to questions by way of e-mail, pointing out handiest that Microsoft is making important investments to develop its presence in Texas and that knowledge facilities are large-scale and complicated initiatives. 
Cotton farms as soon as ruled the world surrounding Castroville. The combo of inexpensive, to be had land and plentiful calories assets is attracting corporations like Microsoft to construct knowledge facilities in Medina County, Credit score: Scott Ball / San Antonio ReportLegacy landIn the ultimate 8 years, Microsoft has established a minimum of seven knowledge facilities in San Antonio and one in Medina County. The primary two had been inbuilt 2015 at $90 million every. Ghose mentioned Microsoft has a tendency to paintings tougher at maintaining assets than different knowledge heart operators he has studied. “I’ve to mention they’re in fact relatively just right stewards of our environment,” he mentioned.The Seattle-based corporate makes use of potable water and warmth exchangers that don’t require as a lot water for cooling, he mentioned. Microsoft additionally makes an attempt to scale back its reliance on native calories resources. “What giant corporations have carried out, like Microsoft, is purchase a large parcel of land they usually generate their very own calories a lot more successfully,” Ghose mentioned. Frequently, they use herbal fuel, he added. “And in Texas, I believe they do use wind farms as neatly.”Medina County resident Clay Binford recalls the precise day he referred to as and discovered Microsoft’s plans for the land subsequent to his, 140 pristine acres alongside Freeway 90 the place he raises farm animals. “It was once April 28, 2022. … It didn’t cross neatly,” he mentioned. Binford is a municipal bond lawyer who is helping the county with financial building agreements, together with the only authorized by way of Medina County commissioners for the middle subsequent to the Stinsons’ belongings.Since development started this yr, Binford’s been dealing with over the top mild, mud, noise and smoke “from burning legacy oak timber,” he mentioned. He’s additionally fearful about the possibility of flooding and runoff because the topography is changed all over development for the 247,000-square-foot facility.He’s been disillusioned to this point with the reaction from corporate representatives about what he considers a “non-conforming use” of the land. The valuables as soon as belonged to his father, he mentioned. “It’s crucial to me as a legacy, and sadly, the longer term is considerably clouded each actually and figuratively.”Binford is now beneath contract to promote the land and his house, a transaction that he mentioned, “appears like a demise within the kinfolk.”
