Greenbelt moves forward with Lancium water proposal

Aaron Ramos, Greenbelt Intrepid

Ashlee Estlack, Contributing Editor

The Greenbelt Municipal and Industrial Water Authority may soon have a new source of water thanks to a proposal from the Lancium datacenter near Childress.

Representatives of the data center met with the Greenbelt Board of Directors and the Childress City Council Tuesday, August 18, at Fair Park Auditorium in Childress to discuss the proposal as the community continues battling Stage 4 drought conditions.

If implemented, the proposal would provide water to Greenbelt member cities Childress, Quanah, and Crowell and easing demand on Greenbelt Lake and the groundwater sources in Donley County. 

Lancium proposed dedicating three of the six wells located on its data center property near Kirkland to provide water into the Greenbelt system. The plan proposes a two-year lease to Greenbelt for the pipeline and treatment facility at zero dollars – no fee, no water rate, and no concession in return to Lancium. The deal would include approximately 16.5 miles of new pipeline and a water treatment facility to connect the wells to Greenbelt’s system – all paid for by the data center. This would not send water back to the Lancium campus.

“This would tie into our 6-million-gallon tank on the Memphis side of Childress and would utilize an AMO system to treat the water,” Bobbie Kidd, Greenbelt General Manager told the Intrepid. “The greatest thing is any water produced by groundwater in Childress County will take a load off of the entire Greenbelt system.”

Childress is the largest user of Greenbelt water with Red River Water Authority as the second largest customer. This pipeline would directly support water supply to Childress, Quanah, Crowell, and Red River customers.

“This can help supply water to more than 40 to 50 percent of the Greenbelt system,” Kidd said. “I don’t see how you lose. I don’t see the negative if you might run out of water.”

Lancium previously requested water supply from the Greenbelt system but was denied due to Greenbelt being unable to provide the requested volume.

Kidd said “we told them no because we don’t have the water. They saw the lake for themselves, and the deal changed somewhere after that.”

Kidd said Greenbelt will most likely need to rebuild chlorinator system in Childress, but Lancium would pay for those upgrades as well.

For Greenbelt and its five member cities, the additional supply could help reduce some of the demand currently placed on Greenbelt Lake and existing wells as the drought conditions persist. Lancium says the goal with this project is to move the region from Stage 4 toward Stage 3 drought conditions.

The water authority is already developing a new groundwater well field and pipeline in northern Donley County to tie that into its distribution system, but the completion date for that project is November 2027. 

The data center proposed funding the construction and operation of the project as part of a two-year agreement. The company estimates the wells could provide up to one million gallons of raw water each day with hundreds of thousands of gallons a day of treated water.

The importance of maintaining a dependable water supply was also emphasized by Childress Regional Medical Center CEO Holly Holcomb, who said a significant interruption or decrease in water could affect critical hospital services, including dialysis, chemotherapy, surgeries, and deliveries.

Lancium’s proposed water source is the Blaine Aquifer, and the data center presented an independent study from Jacobs Engineering regarding the potential impact of pumping from the aquifer. Engineering, water quality requirements, and permitting through the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality must be completed before the project can begin, but Lancium said construction permitting can begin immediately with water targeted to flow by the first quarter of 2027.

While the Greenbelt board voted to move forward with the project, nothing has been signed yet by any parties. The proposed terms will now be drafted and reviewed by legal teams for a formal vote of the Greenbelt board and will also need to be approved by TCEQ.