Billionaire Toby Neugebauer laughed when the Amarillo City Council asked him how he planned to handle the waste his planned datacenter would produce.\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m not laughing in disrespect to your question,\u201d Neugebauer said. He explained that he\u2019d just met with Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who had made it clear that any nuclear waste Neugebauer\u2019s datacenter generated needed to go to Nevada, a state that\u2019s not taking nuclear waste at the moment. \u201cThe answer is we don’t have a great long term solution for how we\u2019re doing nuclear waste.<\/p>\n
The meeting happened on October 28, 2025 and was one of a series of appearances Neugebauer has put in before Amarillo\u2019s leaders as he attempts to realize Project Matador: a massive 5,769 acre datacenter being built in the Texas Panhandle and constructed by Fermi America, a company he founded with former Secretary of Energy Rick Perry.If built, Project Matador would be one of the largest datacenters in the world at around 18 million square feet. \u201cWhat we\u2019re talking about is creating the epicenter for artificial intelligence in the United States,\u201d Neugebauer told the council. According to Neugebauer, the United States is in an existential race to build AI infrastructure. He sees it as a national security issue.\u201cYou\u2019re blessed to sit on the best place to develop AI compute in America,\u201d he told Amarillo. \u201cI just finished with Palantir, which is our nation\u2019s tip of the spear in the AI war. They know that this is the place that we must do this. They\u2019ve looked at every site on the planet. I was at the Department of War yesterday. So anyone who thinks this is some casual conversation about the mission critical aspect of this is just not being truthful.\u201dBut it\u2019s unclear if Palantir wants any part of Project Matador. One unnamed client\u2014rumored to be Amazon\u2014dropped out of the project in December and cancelled a $150 million contract with Fermi America. The news hit the company\u2019s stock hard, sending its value into a tailspin and triggering a class action lawsuit from investors.Yet construction continues. The plan says it\u2019ll take 11 years to build out the massive datacenter, which will first be powered by a series of natural gas generators before the planned nuclear reactors come online.Amarillo residents aren\u2019t exactly thrilled at the prospect. A group called 806 Data Center Resistance has formed in opposition to the project\u2019s construction. Kendra Kay, a tattoo artist in the area and a member of 806, told 404 Media that construction was already noisy and spiking electricity bills for locals.\u201cWhen we found out how big it was, none of us could really comprehend it,\u201d she said. \u201cWe went out to the site and we were like, \u2018Oh my god, this thing is huge.\u2019 There\u2019s already construction underway of one of four water tanks that hold three million gallons of water.\u201dFor Kay and others, water is the core issue. It\u2019s a scarce resource in the panhandle and Amarillo and other cities in the area already fight for every drop. \u201cThe water is the scariest part,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re asking for 2.5 million gallons per day. They said that they would come back, probably in six months, to ask for five million gallons per day. And then, after that, by 2027 they would come back and ask for 10 million gallons per day.\u201dDuring an October 15 city council meeting, Neugebauer told the city that Fermi would get its water \u201cwith or without\u201d an agreement from the city. \u201cThe only difference is whether Amarillo benefits.\u201d To many people it sounded like a threat, but Neugebauer got his deal and the city agreed to sell water to Fermi America for double the going rate.\u201cIt wasn\u2019t a threat,\u201d Neugebauer said during another meeting on October 28. \u201cI know people took my answer\u2026as a threat. I think it\u2019s a win-win. I know there are other water projects we can do\u2026we fully got that the water was going to be issue 1, 2, and 3.\u201d\u201cWe can pay more for water than the consumer can. Which allows you all capital to be able to re-invest in other water projects,\u201d he said. \u201cI think what you\u2019re gonna find is having a customer who can pay way more than what you wanna burden your constituents with will actually enhance your water availability issues.\u201dAccording to Neugebauer and plans filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the datacenter would generate and consume 11 gigawatts of power. The bulk of that, eventually, would be generated by four nuclear reactors. But nuclear reactors are complicated and expensive to make and everyone who has attempted to build one in the past few decades has gone over budget and they weren\u2019t trying to build nuclear power plants in the desert.Nuclear reactors, like datacenters, consume a lot of water. Because of that, most nuclear reactors are constructed near massive bodies of water and often near the ocean. \u201cThe viewpoint that nuclear reactors can only be built by streams and oceans is actually the opposite,\u201d Neugebauer told the Amarillo city council in the meeting on October 28.As evidence he pointed to the Palo Verde nuclear plant in Arizona. The massive Palo Verde plant is the only nuclear plant in the world not constructed near a ready source of water. It gets the water it needs by taking on the waste and sewage water of every city and town nearby.That\u2019s not the plan with Project Matador, which will use water sold to it by Amarillo and pulled from the nearby Ogallala Aquifer. \u201cI am concerned that we\u2019re going to run out of water and that this is going to change it from us having 30 years worth of water for agriculture to much less very quickly,\u201d Kay told 404 Media.The Ogallala Aquifer runs under parts of Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming. It\u2019s the primary source of water for the Texas panhandle and it\u2019s drying out.\u00a0\u201cThey don\u2019t know how much faster because, despite how quickly this thing is moving, we don\u2019t have any idea how much water they\u2019re realistically going to use or need, so we don\u2019t even know how to calculate the difference,\u201d Kay said. \u201cBelow Lubbock, they\u2019ve been running out of water for a while. The priority of this seems really stupid.\u201dAccording to Kay, communities near the datacenter feel trapped as they watch the construction grind on. \u201cThey\u2019ve all lived here for several generations\u2026they\u2019re being told that this is inevitable. Fermi is going up to them and telling them \u2018this is going to happen whether you like it or not so you might as well just sell me your property.\u2019\u201dKay said she and other activists have been showing up to city council meetings to voice their concerns and tell leaders not to approve permits for the datacenter and nuclear plants. Other communities across the country have successfully pushed datacenter builders out of their community. \u201cBut Texas is this other beast,\u201d Kay said.Jacinta Gonzalez, the head of programs for MediaJustice and her team have helped 806 Data Center Resistance get up and running and teaching it tactics they\u2019ve seen pay off in other states. \u201cIn Tucson, Arizona we were able to see the city council vote \u2018no\u2019 to offer water to Project Blue, which was a huge proposed Amazon datacenter happening there,\u201d she said. \u201cIf you look around, everywhere from Missouri to Indiana to places in Georgia, we\u2019re seeing communities pass moratoriums, we\u2019re seeing different projects withdraw their proposals because communities find out about it and are able to mobilize and organize against this.\u201d\u201cThe community in Amarillo is still figuring out what that\u2019s going to look like for them,\u201d she said. \u201cThese are really big interests. Rick Perry. Palantir. These are not folks who are used to hearing \u2018no\u2019 or respecting community wishes. So the community will have to be really nimble and up for a fight. We don\u2019t know what will happen if we organize, but we definitely know what will happen if we don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"