How Close Is Close Enough?
How Far Is Far Enough?

Texas is being asked to help build the digital future. The question is whether the communities hosting that future will become stronger places to live—or simply convenient locations for power, water, and land.

We should expect more than a fenced campus and a ribbon cutting. Data center investment should help create vibrant small towns: places with reliable infrastructure, attainable homes, good schools, local businesses, and a character worth preserving.

But first, we must ask two questions: How close is close enough to share the opportunity? How far is far enough to protect the quality of everyday life?

Start with evidence, not a circle on a map.

Cooling equipment, electrical systems, and generators can create noise with different characteristics. Loudoun County, Virginia, identifies persistent tones and low-frequency sound as particular challenges, explaining why a single conventional decibel reading may not tell the whole story.¹

That does not mean every data center is an incompatible neighbor. Virginia’s legislative review found that most do not generate noise complaints because of their location or design.² It does mean that communities deserve more than assurances.

Before homes are planned nearby, independent specialists should evaluate daytime and nighttime sound, low-frequency and tonal components, generator testing, full-campus buildout, and cumulative effects from neighboring facilities. Where warranted, assess ground-borne vibration separately; sound and structural vibration are not interchangeable. Require mitigation, post-construction monitoring, and a funded process for correcting problems.

Distance is one variable. Terrain, equipment placement, operating conditions, and the design of both the facility and the neighborhood matter. A ten-mile ring is not a safety standard. A forty-mile ring does not guarantee affordable electricity, available water, or an easy commute.

Bring your own electrons, molecules, and bytes.

This should be a planning principle, backed by transparent commitments from data center owners and operators.

Electrons: help fund the additional generation, transmission, substations, and resilience the project requires. Account for peak demand and the cost of backup arrangements. Existing households should not become the default financiers of infrastructure built primarily for a new industrial customer.

Molecules: establish a credible water budget before making a development promise. The U.S. Geological Survey describes the importance of cooling choices, local climate, and competing water demands in data center planning.³ Evaluate reuse and lower-water cooling where suitable; disclose tradeoffs, drought plans, treatment needs, and who pays for capacity.

Bytes: turn the arrival of major digital infrastructure into an opportunity to improve community connectivity. Support affordable broadband for homes, schools, libraries, and businesses through appropriate providers and agreements. A secure data center network is not automatically a public broadband service.

“Bring your own” need not mean every facility operates off-grid. It means growth comes with a credible, funded plan—and a fair allocation of costs.

Build a town people would choose.

The housing opportunity should extend from small luxe homes to attainable homes, sharing the same attention to comfort, durability, efficiency, and neighborhood design.

Imagine compact homes with welcoming porches, shaded sidewalks, useful parks, and places to gather. Make room for teachers, nurses, technicians, young families, and older residents. Offer different home sizes, prices, and tenures rather than reserving good design for the highest-priced address.

Start with the town already there. Reinforce its main street, preserve its landmarks, support local merchants, and respect its landscape. Charm grows from useful public places, human-scale design, and relationships built over time.

Plan for the wider community, not only data center employees. Virginia’s review distinguishes substantial construction activity from a smaller permanent operating workforce.² Housing demand and school enrollment deserve independent analysis, not assumptions based on the size of an investment announcement.

Make education part of the infrastructure.

Owners and operators should help support schools, community colleges, universities, and workforce pathways. That could include paid apprenticeships, teacher development, technical laboratories, and training in electrical systems, cooling, water management, cybersecurity, and construction.

These investments should equip residents for opportunities across the regional economy—not depend on a promise that every student will work inside one campus.

Put the commitments in writing: identified funding, responsible parties, delivery milestones, public reporting, and provisions for a delayed, downsized, or closed project. Involve residents early. Infrastructure sponsorship should complement public accountability, not substitute for it.

Put the commitments on a scorecard.

A shared vision needs a disciplined checklist. GO’s proposed 100-point framework gives the greatest weight to noise and vibration, water, power, and site safety, while also requiring housing choice, infrastructure, town character, education, digital access, and accountability.

The weights are a starting point for discussion—not a scientific standard or an approval formula. A high score for housing or amenities cannot compensate for an unresolved essential condition. First address the non-negotiable requirements; then evaluate the strength of the complete plan.

Use the map to begin the conversation.

The GO interactive map below opens at Texas A&M–RELLIS Campus and moves its 10-, 20-, 30-, and 40-mile rings to any data center you select and identifies nearby small towns and Texas A&M System sites. It helps ask where housing, education, infrastructure, and local enterprise might connect.

It does not answer where a home is safe, whether a site is available, or whether utilities can serve it. Those answers require local evidence and professional study.

We can welcome the digital economy and insist on better places. The measure of success should include what remains outside the fence: a stronger main street, a reliable water system, a family that can afford a home, and a child with more possibilities.

Close enough to share the opportunity. Far enough—and thoughtfully designed enough—to protect the life of the community.