Schematic rendering of Project Horizon, located near Fort Stockton, Texas.
Poolside Infrastructure Company
As data centers sprout up across America to fuel the AI boom, controversy follows. Protests have erupted in recent weeks over concerns about massive electricity demands straining grids, fears of water shortages in drought-prone regions, and disruptions to local communities from construction traffic and noise. Activists and some local citizens paint the industry as an environmental and social juggernaut, eating up resources while delivering benefits few truly grasp and which the industry has not adequately describes.
A Proactive Approach to Addressing Data Center Concerns
Amid this rising tide of opposition, one project in far west Texas is taking an innovative approach to addressing major issues up front: Poolside Infrastructure Company’s Project Horizon, a 1.2 GW AI campus rising in the Permian Basin desert near Fort Stockton, Texas. Rather than allowing problems to fester and attract organized opposition, Project Horizon demonstrates how vertical integration, smart engineering, and community focus can turn infrastructure challenges into competitive advantages.
“Public resistance to data centers in other areas like Ohio and Pennsylvania is real and it’s understandable,” Robert Bonar, CEO of San Francisco based Poolside Infrastructure Company, says. “Residents of those areas are being impacted, whether it be water usage, power rates, land prices and everything else. Looking at that, we believe there’s a better solution here.”
Robert Bonar, new CEO of Poolside Infrastructure Company.
Poolside Infrastructure Company
Located more than 25 miles outside Fort Stockton on a 559-acre footprint adjacent to the sprawling Longfellow Ranch, Project Horizon is deliberately isolated. The site sits in unincorporated Pecos County, buffered by vast ranchland, ensuring that mechanical operations remain inaudible from populated areas. Access comes via low-traffic roads off the highway. There is no nearby suburban sprawl; instead, it’s development in the open desert, near abundant energy resources. The Mitchell family, stewards of the 500,000-acre ranch, have been strong partners, underscoring how private land and local buy-in can enable progress without forced impositions on towns.
Innovative Data Center Cooling System Design
Water concerns dominate many data center debates and could become a major impediment in the desert lands near Fort Stockton. But Horizon directly addresses the issue with innovative cooling design. All campus water draws from non-potable groundwater within existing permitted allocations, thus avoiding putting any strain on the city’s municipal supply. The closed-loop system keeps processors cool using liquid coolant that flows directly over the computer chips. This liquid absorbs the hardware’s heat and carries it to an outdoor chiller plant, where the heat is released safely into the surrounding air.
Schematic of the innovative cooling system used to minimize water usage at Project Horizon.
Poolside Infrastructure Company
Unlike evaporative systems, this process reuses coolant continuously. Daily water consumption equates to roughly the irrigation needs of just two acres of West Texas alfalfa—an astonishingly light footprint for a facility of this scale.
“We’ll use more water for toilets than we do for cooling the data centers,” Bonar says without exaggeration. “I’m a mechanical engineer and I have a patent for using waste heat from data centers for power generation. One of the great things about AI data centers in this density is that we are taking liquid all the way to the chip and removing heat at that higher temperature. Because we are in these proprietary systems, we can reject that heat at a higher temperature, which means that we don’t need to rely on water anymore for cooling.”
Multi-Source Power Design Meets Data Center Uptime Needs
Power reliability poses another big challenge as data center clusters consume gigawatts with a near-100% uptime requirement. Project Horizon avoids potentially contentious public grid issues by generating its own electricity on-site, behind-the-meter. The campus operates its own power plant, initially fueled by natural gas via aero-derivative turbines with SCR systems for low emissions that are driven even lower by an accompanying carbon capture capability.
A multi-source architecture allows future blending of gas, solar, and grid power. A grid interconnection provides backup redundancy and potential export of surplus power. Stationary battery storage further enhances stability.
This self-sufficiency shields Pecos County homes, schools, and businesses from load spikes while positioning Project Horizon to scale modularly across eight phases, with an initial capacity of up to 1.2 gigawatts and another seven gigawatts of power potential identified.
Asked about potential issues surrounding widespread supply chain problems with gas turbines that have resulted in lead times of up to four years, Bonar has a ready answer.
“One thing that we’ve been good about so far is partnering, and we have some relationships with IPPs, folks that have generators in queue already, and that we have agreements in companies that are able to deliver by a little over a year from now.” He adds that PIC’s strategic decision to ensure it had adequate financing up front helps it to avoid pitfalls faced by other developers.
Workforce Integration is Key to Data Center Success
Workforce integration reveals Horizon’s most community-friendly innovation. Construction relies on a primary EPC contractor and regional subcontractors. Long-term operations roles, including electrical, mechanical, HVAC, and facilities target local hires, with training pathways developed alongside Midland College’s Fort Stockton campus.
To prevent housing market disruptions, the project supplies its own temporary on-site housing for builders during construction and subsidized permanent housing in Fort Stockton for operations staff. This approach of building its own integrated workforce ecosystem minimizes transient impacts and invests in regional skills, turning a data center into an economic catalyst rather than a burden.
Maintaining Effective Control Over Cost, Power, and Scale
Poolside’s vision transcends mere facility-building. By owning the energy and compute foundation alongside its AI intelligence layer, the company secures effective long-term control over cost, power, and scale. Situated near a major natural gas hub with established water infrastructure, the location leverages West Texas’s regional advantages over other potential locations. Horizon transforms infrastructure bottlenecks that are currently plaguing many facilities nationwide into strategic advantages through vertical integration and phased, flexible growth.
Critics of data center expansion often overlook such nuance, lumping responsible projects with poorly sited ones. Yet Horizon proves thoughtful development is possible: minimal public resource draw, emissions controls, local labor priority, and isolation that respects existing communities.
A Better Way For Data Center Design
As AI’s energy appetite grows, the U.S. cannot afford reflexive opposition that stifles innovation. Instead of defaulting to a thoughtless NIMBY obstruction approach to all data centers, policymakers and activists should invest the time to be able to distinguish between bad actors who try to bully communities and those who invest time and capital into proactively developing real solutions to valid concerns.
Because a better way does exist, and it’s happening in the Permian Basin’s vast desert expanse. With Project Horizon, Poolside is showing that the AI future need not come at the expense of communities or resources. If more data center developers follow this or similar models, sources of controversy today could ultimately yield to collaboration, powering America’s technological edge while respecting the landscapes and people who host them.