The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality shut down its automated electronic archiving system after watchdog groups said the agency violated a directive from Gov. Greg Abbott and issued several stormwater permits related to data center construction.
The agency said it this week suspended certain data center permits identified by the watchdog groups. On Wednesday, TCEQ also announced on its website that its electronic filing system “used for automatic approvals” would be temporarily disabled.
“To ensure that all applications are thoroughly reviewed by agency staff to determine whether they relate to data centers, applications must be physically submitted to TCEQ,” agency spokesman Ryan Vise said in a statement.
The online system, called the State of Texas Environmental Electronic Reporting System (STEERS), is used for a variety of permit applications, including those related to air and water pollution. It is also used by companies to report operational information. The system allows some approvals to be approved automatically initially.
The STEERS web portal was not accessible on Wednesday.
Public Citizen, an advocacy group that fights data center development alongside concerned residents, and FracTracker Alliance, a nonprofit that studies the environmental impacts of industrial development, identified several stormwater permits that the groups said were approved by TCEQ for large data center-related construction projects.
Their findings came a month after Abbott ordered TCEQ to stop issuing “all permits related to data center projects” while other state agencies and the state’s electric grid operator collected and reviewed information about the data centers’ planned water and electricity usage.
The agency’s chaotic messaging and actions, along with the shutdown, showed the pause wasn’t real until the media and regulators scrutinized it, Sam Law, research and communications manager for the FracTracker Alliance, wrote in an email. The groups identified other types of approvals that they said TCEQ has made progress on.
“If our own Environmental Protection Agency cannot figure out what permits apply to data centers, or has to shut down its entire system because of those permits, that is a real sign that we need a real moratorium backed by law,” Law wrote.
According to the agency’s website, stormwater permits help regulate the water quality impacts caused by water flowing over a construction site that may contain pollutants. Companies submit a “letter of intent” in the online system, which is then automatically approved.
“In this case, the agency’s rubber stamp worked so well that even the agency had difficulty stopping it,” Kathryn Guerra, director of Public Citizen’s TCEQ Watchdog Campaign, said in a prepared statement. “Texans don’t need another reason to distrust TCEQ, but here it is.”
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
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