A proposal for a data center spanning approximately 200 acres has been rejected by the city council of San Marcos, Texas.

The proposal, submitted by law firm Armbrust & Brown on behalf of landowners Highlander SM One LLC, called for the land use designation of a land parcel located west of Francis Harris Lane and south of the intersection between Grant Harris Road and Francis Harris Lane to be changed in order to allow the construction of a data center.

San Marcos a city located between Austin and San Antonio in southern Texas.

The proposers stated that the campus would employ a closed-loop cooling system using up to 75,000 gallons of water per day, but details about the facility’s energy usage were not revealed.

This would amount to one percent of San Marcos' total daily water usage of 7.5 million gallons, according to water usage statistics provided by the San Marcos Texas Utilities.

The site is also adjacent to the gas-fired Hays Energy power plant.

It is the second time that these plans have been submitted to and denied by the local authorities – an earlier iteration of the proposal was submitted in March 2025 before being voted down in October.

Opposition to the data center has remained fierce. Several organizations, including the Save Our Springs Alliance and the San Marcos River Foundation, have spearheaded an organized effort to thwart the proposal by mobilizing local residents against it.

An online petition opposing data centers in San Marcos, Crystal Clear Special Utility District, Hays, Comal, Caldwell, and Guadalupe Counties has also gathered more than 4,000 signatures.

There are some campuses located in the area outside of San Marcos, but most of Texas’ data centers are clustered around the neighboring cities of Austin and San Antonio, as well as Houston and Dallas.