Corpus Christi Data Center Refuses to Make Usage Data public, Avoids taxes

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Corpus Christi faces an ever-deepening water crisis, in response to the Observer’s public information request, the city is refusing to release the latest 2026 records of the mine’s water usage. The city is appealing the Observer’s request for those records to the Texas Office of the Attorney General, citing a section of the Texas Utilities Code that allows nondisclosure of an individual customer’s account. That’s a change from just last year, when the city provided water-usage records.

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The city’s crisis has made state and national headlines amid predictions that its water demand could exceed supply as early as next summer without additional rainfall or some other water source. With drilled wells already dry and a hot-button desalination plant tabled for now, the city is readying itself for a more serious potential Level 1 Water Emergency, which would impose even more restrictions and penalties for exceeding limits. Residents already have been living under water restrictions since December 2024, curtailing activities like lawn watering and car washes. The next phase, which might come as early as December, would enforce a mandatory 25-percent reduction for residents, businesses, and large industrial users like petrochemical refineries.

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As the Observer previously reported, the city was promised millions of dollars in tax revenue for what was originally a pair of 300-megawatt-capacity Bitcoin mines developed by the Dallas-based Bootstrap Energy. A 2022 presentation by then-Assistant City Secretary Andrea Gardner predicted revenues of $32 to $50 million over a 10-year period in exchange for the city’s de-annexation of the property, a decision that would enable Bootstrap to escape more than $70.5 million in franchise fees and sales tax on its electricity use.

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From February 7, 2023, to January 8, 2025, mine operators paid the city just $2,639 in Payments in Lieu of Taxes fees, according to records previously obtained by the Observer via the local resident’s records request.

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The most recent records obtained by the Observer through a public information request and a separate request indicate that the city invoiced mine operators in November 2025 for $1,631.65, and that operators paid $1,647.97 on March 6, well after the due date. Operators paid just $16.48 in April.

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Now, as the city stares down a water emergency, Barrera told the Observer he’s considering asking the council to terminate the mine’s 2024 IDA prior to its end date in 2039 because the agreement hasn’t yielded the original revenues promised to the city. “Of course ’24 seems like a lifetime ago, with the year that we’ve been having with regard to water,” Barrera told the Observer. “If they’re using the water, they’re using the water, but my challenge is that we haven’t seen the return on the revenue from the IDA.”

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“We need to just do our due diligence. We know that these types of companies, that they use a lot of water, and we should have been more mindful of that instead of just listening to what they had to say,” she said.

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