County
Milam County, Texas
County ranked by announced AI data-center load
1.2 GW
Announced AI load
Property tax Δ (3y)
+10.1%
Median HH income (2024 ACS)
$66,141
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Key takeaways
- Milam County has 25,567 residents. The Stargate Milam campus, anchored by SoftBank and SB Energy with OpenAI as primary tenant, is announced at 1.2 GW, the largest announced site in batch 4 and roughly 47 kW per county resident.Source: Census ACS 2024 B01003 + data/sites/data_centers.csv
- Alcoa ran a Rockdale aluminum smelter from 1952 to 2014 with capacity of about 1.67 million pounds per day, paired with the Sandow Steam Plant that closed in 2018. Bitdeer, a Bitmain division, now mines bitcoin at the former Alcoa site.Source: sources[0] (Wikipedia: Rockdale, TX)
- Property tax assessments rose 10.1% over three years against a median household income of $66,141 and a median home value of $189,800. The county has a history of absorbing large industrial loads, just not this kind.Source: data/cache/property_tax_yoy.csv (FIPS 48331) + Census ACS 2024 B19013, B25077
- Stargate Milam is on Oncor's ERCOT grid with no published residential rate delta because of retail deregulation. The 1,200 MW announced load is roughly 70% of what the Sandow Steam Plant supplied at its peak, dropped back into the same county on a different timetable.Source: data/cache/utility_rate_yoy.csv (no Oncor residential row) + data/sites/data_centers.csv
Local socioeconomics
- 77.4% of Milam County households own their home and median gross rent is $948. The Stargate Milam campus is landing in a county with one of the higher batch-4 ownership baselines, on a rental stock of about 1,400 units.Source: Census ACS 2023 B25003, B25064 (FIPS 48331)
- 25.6% of Milam residents are Hispanic and 9.6% are Black, making the county more racially diverse than the rural Texas average. The Rockdale-Cameron labor corridor has absorbed migrant farm and industrial workers since the Alcoa era.Source: Census ACS 2023 B03003, B02001 (FIPS 48331)
- 15.8% of Milam residents live in poverty and 6.9% of adults are veterans. The 1.2 GW Stargate campus is moving into a county where one in six residents already lives below the poverty line.Source: Census ACS 2023 B17001, B21001 (FIPS 48331)
- Only 83.1% of Milam households have broadband at home, leaving about 4,300 residents off the network as the largest batch-4 AI campus prepares to energize. 6.5% of workers are in manufacturing, a fraction of what Alcoa employed at peak.Source: Census ACS 2023 B28002, C24050 (FIPS 48331)
Campuses in this county