The draft defines a data center to include server facilities and associated cooling, generators, batteries, fuel or hazardous-material storage, and cryptocurrency mining. It excludes server rooms that are incidental to another principal use. The distinction matters because a business with an ordinary server room would not necessarily enter the proposed data-center approval process. The draft would set a 50-acre minimum lot size and place buildings and equipment at least 2,000 feet from residential property and listed sensitive uses, and at least 500 feet from other uses and streets. It would also limit height to 30 feet and two functional stories. Those distances and dimensions are draft standards, not approved site plans for any particular project.
Water, utilities, noise and site safeguards
An applicant would have to submit a water, cooling and conservation account; a generator summary; site and elevation plans; a traffic analysis; and a professional noise study with a 72-hour baseline. The proposed noise limit is 35 decibels at sensitive property lines and no more than 5 decibels above ambient conditions at other property lines. Council could impose conditions through the special use permit. For residents near a potential site, the studies and permit conditions would be the place to test a specific facility against the proposed rules; the ordinance itself does not approve a facility.
The draft would bar a data-center special use permit over or within the listed Edwards Aquifer Recharge or Contributing Zones, or within 300 feet of an identified fault line. It would also keep components out of the regulatory floodway and 100-year floodplain, with a further 300-foot separation from that floodplain. The proposed cooling rule calls for a non-evaporative closed-loop system or a similarly low-water alternative. Applicants would need utility approval letters addressing capacity and effects on existing customers; the draft says the data center would bear infrastructure costs and calls for zero cost or availability impact on existing ratepayers. Those protections are proposed legal standards, not a finding that a particular utility connection can meet them.
The proposed ordinance also calls for annual public disclosure of water and electricity use unless law prohibits disclosure. Before occupancy, an operator would need an emergency response plan. Closure provisions call for notification, equipment removal and site cleanup. These provisions give commissioners and residents several distinct questions for the hearing: whether the siting limits are workable, whether the utility protections can be demonstrated for an actual application, and how the city would check compliance after a facility opens.
How to participate and what else is on the agenda
The Planning Commission meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, at 6 p.m. in the City Hall Council Chambers, 550 Landa St., New Braunfels. The agenda provides a citizens’ communications period for issues outside the listed business and a public hearing on the data-center proposal under item 6A. Residents who want to address the proposed rules should use that public hearing. The City Secretary’s Office asks people seeking disability accommodations to call (830) 221-4010 at least two work days before the meeting.
Item 3A asks the commission to consider the Oct. 7 meeting minutes. Item 4 is the citizens’ communications period for off-agenda issues. Item 5A concerns the commission’s 2027 calendar. The agenda also includes call to order, roll call, a possible executive-session notice and adjournment. Those entries provide the rest of the scheduled meeting context; none establishes an outcome before the meeting.
What happens next
The staff report lists Nov. 9 and Nov. 16 as planned City Council reading dates after the commission’s recommendation. Those dates are a prospective timetable, not evidence of council action. The next records to check are the commission’s recommendation and any revised ordinance sent to council. Residents can inspect the proposed standards in the draft ordinance and compare the later council text with it to see whether the siting, utility and noise provisions change.
