On the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele Dufilho San Antonio is a fast growing, fast moving city with something new happening every day.

That's why each week we go on the record with Randy Beamer and the newsmakers who are driving this change.

Then we gather at the reporters roundtable to talk about the latest news stories with the journalist behind those stories.

Join us now as we go on the record with Randy Beamer.

Hi, everybody.

Thank you for joining us for On the Record.

I'm Randy Beamer, and this week, a lot of news to get to.

We are starting with the Democrats who have left the state trying to break that quorum, trying to stop the Republican redistricting plan.

And joining us from, we'll just say, out of state is San Antonio State Representative Diego Bernal.

Thank you for joining us as we tape this.

You are, you had a bomb threat, at the hotel.

You're okay.

But tell us, what that is like, I guess escalating the, the conflict over the, the redistricting plan.

How do you see that?

Well, look, first we're safe.

Everyone's okay.

It happened, and we're undeterred.

Right.

We're all still here.

I don't think that the language that the governor, that the attorney general, that Senator Cornyn have used about hunting us down is helpful.

A quorum break is something that is recognized in the Texas Constitution.

It is illegal apparatus that is available to reps of both parties.

So that's not helpful.

But at the same time, these are all people falling over themselves to be in favor with Donald Trump.

These are essentially three merchants trying to sell the president new new clothes.

Right.

Like this.

Like the Emperor's new clothes.

But it's three merchants trying to get his attention.

So who's the biggest and the baddest?

And it's all pretty silly, but we don't really.

I don't appreciate it.

It's not helpful.

Is it just to.

Or mainly now to get attention nationally?

In this Republican Democrat fight over how seats.

Because it's been done in the past and it hasn't really worked this kind of thing for Democrats in Texas.

And they have gone to New Mexico or Oklahoma, haven't got as much publicity.

You're in different places, bigger cities, and you're broadening the discussion about redistricting.

Is that what you wanted to do?

It is in large part, I think, that what's important for people to understand is that this is not just Texas.

Texas is a test case, but it's really potentially a national conversation.

We're having a national conversation right now.

What's different about this time is that it's done at the behest of a president for no other reason than to preserve his majority in Congress in the upcoming elections.

There's no other reason to do it.

In fact, they didn't mention it before during the session.

It was just when he called and asked that, they said yes.

But now the other side of that argument is, I heard one of the Republicans say, why did you do it?

Because we can and it is legal.

It is unusual.

But, with all the different hurdles that you're facing, $500 fines a day individually, threat of vacating your seats, things like that.

Is that weighing on you at all?

It is not.

What Republicans are saying, they're doing it because they can.

They're doing it because he told them to.

And they don't know how to say no.

They don't want to do this, but they feel like they have to.

And they feel like they have to, because if they don't, they'll be targets politically and they might lose their seat.

And that is the difference.

Randy.

They will do whatever is asked of them, even something they know is wrong and potentially illegal because of the way they're doing it.

Using, using racial minorities and breaking those communities up and drawing them into separate districts.

So I'm not sure that it is legal.

That being said, they don't want to lose their seat and they're willing to do whatever President Trump asked them to do to keep it.

Whereas me and my colleagues, we're obviously willing to risk our seats to lose our seats in order to defend the people that we care the most about.

That is a stark, drastic difference.

What is.

I'm sorry, what is the effect of the governor saying that he wants to file a lawsuit?

Paxton.

Ken Paxton saying he wants to file a lawsuit.

John Cornyn saying he wants the FBI involved.

Yeah.

That doesn't enter your mind at all.

Or any Democrats there.

It doesn't make what I'm doing any less right.

It doesn't make my position change one bit.

Bullies always try to threaten you.

That's what they do.

Right.

And what's interesting about this is that I think that because of the national conversation has grown and our message is right, and we're pointing out that they're they're using racism, literally.

And I don't throw that word around lately, I really don't, but they're using racism to redraw these lines.

I think that those three individuals know that they're losing this national conversation.

And so now what they're trying to do it do to us is make us disappear.

We're not letting them do what they want.

And so now they want to remove us from office, but not if that go ahead.

If that's not fascism, what is allowing them to be a dictator?

What is long term?

The session is another two weeks that you hold out that long.

Governor calls another special session.

Do you expect you'll do that again, or have you made your point by then?

I think that you take it day by day, and I know that sounds like an elusive answer, but I promise you, it's not.

Every day is different.

Today is already vastly different than yesterday.

We just talked about it.

Yesterday was vastly different than the day prior.

That day was different than the entire session we just had.

So I think we take it a day at a time.

As Richard said, you want to focus on the day in front of you and win that day.

And every day we are focused on winning that day.

And now I'm on one real quick.

Let me get my mom, let me put my mom some props real quick.

My mom has this great phrase that I live by, which is all you can do is all you can do.

And so that's how I approach each day, and that's how we approach each day.

And the fact that by tomorrow, Friday, there could be lawsuits filed.

And again, I'm being repetitive here, but that may or may not sway enough Democrats to come back because it's happened in the past when one of the state senators broke quorum out of 11, came back and and and gave them a quorum.

Sure.

I mean, you do.

I suspect that that will happen.

I do not suspect that will happen.

That you're asking me to predict what's going to happen in the future?

I don't think that will happen no matter what the governor or Ken Paxton does.

I don't think that changes our position.

I think people are prepared to sacrifice for what's right.

And that's what I'm saying, is the difference.

What's what's assumed in the question is that keeping our seats is the most important thing to us, and any threat to that will cause us to move.

And I think what we're trying to explain to you is saving democracy, right.

This is sort of an existential moment we're in where if this domino falls, the country changes drastically overnight because it becomes a tool that can be used and it should not be a tool available.

This kind of redistricting this way should not be done just to keep one person in power.

So do I think that makes people the threat of being arrested or removed.

Do I think it makes enough of us go back?

I really do not, because this is so much bigger than me and my seat.

And trust me, if I lose my seat, you know, if losing an election or losing my seat is the biggest problem in my life, my life's pretty damn good, right?

All right.

That's the problem.

Life's okay.

So we'll be okay.

We'll be all right.

Well, thank you very much for joining us.

State rep. District 123, Diego Bernardo.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

And now to another San Antonio who knows a thing or two about politics.

Been around for a couple of years.

He's also written a new book, Nothing to Do with Politics.

Former county judge Nelson Wolff, thank you for coming in.

Thank you.

We'll get to your book in just a minute.

But first of all, what do you think of the Democrats leaving this state?

They're going to lose here.

You know, all the governor has is calling it a special session and they will lose.

But with this, did it galvanize all Democrat states across the nation if they do this in Texas?

Every one of them is going to do the same thing there and make more Democrat seats.

California.

All in all, I.

Work a little while.

Going away like that is not going to help their cause here.

I don't think they're going to lose here, I think.

But it's galvanized nationally.

Smarter than going to, I guess it was New Mexico once and Oklahoma once where they didn't really get the publicity.

It was just the runaway Democrats didn't speak out.

All right.

Well, we'll get to, they have to get to your book now.

You've written how many books?

That ten, I think ten.

Yeah.

It seems like more than that.

And you're still at 84, getting up and writing every day?

Yes.

Every day.

Now you're writing a book, as I understand it right now.

On being county judge.

You've written one on being the mayor and what's local and also the principles of leadership through local stories.

Why a book on baseball?

I didn't think about baseball when I started writing this.

I followed great mythology, and I, and I was well aware of the nation fails, where the Greeks, the righteous Greeks go to live forever among splendid trees and beautiful flowers and everything they can eat.

Then trace it to the aviation fields of Hoboken, where baseball really got its start.

So we're kind of backed in from Greek mythology, love of nature, and how baseball related to both of those.

It was an amateur sport for the first 26 years of separation.

I do write about Major League Baseball and some of the terrible mistakes I think they've made, right, about women playing, baseball.

It really had impact on a lot of women.

Today.

Fastpitch softball is a tremendous sport.

And now kind of back up to why you have such an affinity, a love for baseball.

You wrote a book years ago about, older men playing baseball.

You played till you were 69.

That's right.

What what's the allure for you?

Well, you know, it started the most magical year was 1953 for me as a young kid, playing Little League baseball and being, batboy for semi-pro team.

I can still give you the lineup of that team today, whatever impact they had on me.

And then the impact of my father growing up with baseball and really, I that I dedicated it to him who taught me the game of life.

On the elation fields of baseball.

You quote him in the book talking about what it means and the metaphor of.

Yes, it's a game unlike any others.

It's a skill game.

You have to use your noggin a little bit in this game.

It's just not about knocking people down and you learn how to compete.

You learn how to play with other players and get that camaraderie that you want to get.

It teaches us almost every lesson in life.

But you're still on your own.

That's right.

You you still are batting.

You still you still have that challenge yourself.

Nobody's going to help you catch that ball.

Nobody's going to help you hit a home run.

So it's an individualistic game and at the same time, a collective game, with your team.

Right.

But from those Elysian Fields, we've come a long way.

Do you think, better or worse, with the speeding up of the game?

Moneyball?

No cap in terms of how much they can spend in the major leagues.

Well, I'm very critical of many decisions that Major League made.

That steroid scandal went on 15 years before they did it.

And they started every record that ever was in baseball, because we had pride in taking our staff all the way back to when the box scores were first started.

I think it's Chadwick that did that, that started that picture.

They had strikes and lockouts.

As we all know, the Astros did a little, shopping around there.

And and so baseball in the major leagues, they've lost a lot of their television audience.

They lost a lot of the audience across the United States.

I think a lot of it had to do with some of the bad decisions they made.

The new Mission Stadium, are you excited about that?

And do you like things like the Savannah bananas and the ball of piano and the concerts and fireworks?

I think it's great.

The Savannah bananas.

They're also good ballplayers.

And, you know, they'll play in a major league stadium and fill it at the highest price.

They charge for a ticket anywhere is 60 bucks.

So it's out of our, you know, a working man's game to go to.

And they make it fun, throughout the game.

But they're professional players.

They're good players.

I just think it's great to see some things in minor league balls down that all the time with, little special events, kids running around the bases, and, so, it's an intimate aspect, but still, you see good baseball.

And what keeps you going at 84?

Writing books?

You'll have another one out.

Why?

It's a way of, I think, communicating, some of the major aspects that have happened in life, communicating some of the spirituality, it's it's something that, gives me a great deal of, enjoyment today.

So you got a few more books in you?

I do, I even got a novel working.

Cool.

Well, you have to come back and we'll talk about that.

Thank you very much.

Former county judge, former everything.

Everything.

Mayor.

It was it was a good stay wrapped in all that stuff.

Yeah.

Thank you very much.

Nelson will enjoy it.

After the flooding up in the hill country and some flooding here in San Antonio, the Texas legislature is set to come up with some solutions, at least to some of the problems.

Here to talk about that and more is Rachel Haynes, policy director of the Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thank you for having me.

Now, even before we get to what happened with the flooding, the legislature this past session took up some water issues that were all about drought.

What did you think of those bills that passed.

The legislature, passed the quote unquote big water bill.

It would have, 20 billion in funds for water supply, new water projects, fixing water infrastructure, wastewater projects over the next 20 years, which is a significant amount that we were really delighted to see.

It's a relative drop in the bucket compared to what money needs to go towards water.

But it is still very encouraging and I think it'll help us face our water supply issues.

And you deal with the Trinity and the Edwards.

How will it help that area, specifically.

These water bills, the funding, the water infrastructure funding will hopefully help ensure that any, maybe aquifer storage and recovery projects are funded, maybe recharge features are funded through the Texas Water Board.

So there's a variety of projects we won't really know until voters vote on it in November, which is something we've been advocating for.

The big water bill isn't a big water bill until we in Texas vote for it for prop four in November.

Well, that was getting water.

After the drought, we were focused on shortage.

And now after the flooding, it's dealing with, I guess planning and sirens and things like that.

What are we looking for out of this special session?

If and when Democrats, come back and they focus on.

Flooding, we have heard that we will see at least three bills come out of the session that will relate to things like emergency response.

So making sure that, emergency management in the state and all of the first responders have plans in place or able to respond that there will be sirens in the Hill country to alert people, that there will be funding for the disaster to help people recover.

We know those three will come out of.

It, but you're also hoping, for land use, I guess limitations or, floodplain issues and things like that.

What would you like to see, come out of that, focus on flooding that will prevent them in a bigger sense.

Yes.

So we I mean, we think the emergency response and the disaster planning is good and we need to do it as a state, but it's not going to stop a lot of what we saw happen in the Hill Country and potentially even in San Antonio back in June, a lot of the issues in, Kirk County were that almost 75% of the people or I think maybe it's closer to two thirds of the people who died died because they were living.

They were sleeping in the floodway.

And so there's the floodway and the floodplain.

The floodway is where the waters will go in a flood.

And so what we are hoping to see is that there won't be people in the future sleeping in the floodway.

So we want to see counties have the authority, if they so choose, to implement higher building standards in the floodway to keep people out of the floodplain and the flood ways, or to raise them up out of the level of where the river would flow.

We want to see, maybe counties have more authority to stop impervious cover in the unincorporated areas, which is where most of the river is in.

The hill country is unincorporated county, and counties don't have really any ability to implement building standards or impervious to how.

Much of that flooding was because of impervious cover near the river, and I guess channelized it more.

I think in the hill country, the Kirk County floods, not a lot of that flood was because of impervious cover that flood a lot of the deaths we saw, because the county wasn't able to enforce standards in the floodway and keep people from living and sleeping in the floodway.

So that's why we want to see counties have the ability to do minimum building standards, flood building standards, impervious cover limits, because that would keep buildings out of the floodway.

But in San Antonio, we do think that a lot of the force of the flood that ripped through so quickly was a cause of upstream development.

And.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

Rachel Haynes, policy director, Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance.

Thanks very much.

Thank you for having me.

On reporters roundtable this week, another story about water making news, the use of water by data centers in the San Antonio area, as well as across Texas.

A big story in the San Antonio Current by Stephanie Cauthen, who joins us today.

Thank you very much for coming in.

I thought this was fascinating.

The data centers and the growth of data centers in in this area and how much water they use.

What were you shocked by this?

Yeah.

So, I found that, the data centers in the San Antonio area used 463 million gallons of water, between 2023 and 2024.

Now, the numbers for Texas are even more, astounding.

So the, Houston Advanced Research Center projects that, by the end of 2025, we will have used 49 billion gallons at Texas data centers.

And to put this in perspective, people all know hundreds of millions of gallons.

Billions of gallons.

What does that amount to percentage wise of what we all use?

Well, I do know that, the percentage by 2030 will will be 6.6% of the total usage statewide.

If we stay on track, with the rate that we are using water at these data centers.

People don't realize, okay, what kind of water is recycled water.

And how much, do they need?

Why do these data centers need so much?

Yeah.

So, they use the water as their cooling method.

So they, they have to cool down the towers at these data centers, because they generate a substantial amount of heat.

You can also use air to cool down these towers.

However, that uses more energy.

And water is typically cheaper than power.

So, they, they opt for the water method, most, most frequently.

And it is, a combination, seemingly of, of potable water and then, reused, treated water.

So but there is an issue with, determining where they get the water from and how they use it, because there's a lack of transparency in this, largely unregulated, market and burgeoning market.

They treat this cooling method, as, as proprietary information.

So and there's not really, regulating entity, keeping track of their water usage and requiring them to file reports, like they have to do for Ercot.

And some of these data centers are being built, I don't want to say in the middle of nowhere, but in the middle of places where there isn't a lot of water available.

Yeah.

And, this corridor between Austin and San Antonio is actually a really hot market for the development of these data centers.

And, if they were to develop every data center that's currently in the works in this area, we would, let's say, like if they were to do it overnight, we would become the second largest market for data centers in the in the entire country after Northern Virginia.

We're talking hundreds of them, right?

Yeah.

And, they're they have a few more in the works for, nearby San Antonio in Medina County around Castroville.

Microsoft data centers, they're investing 1.4 billion into these facilities, nearby.

So.

So, right now we have 54 data centers according to size in the San Antonio area.

And that's only going to increase over the next few years.

And, Stargate, I understand the big data center up is in Abilene.

Yes.

And, they've already started, construction there, and that is going to be the largest data center in the country.

And now what can a local, water system or local authorities do about this if they're concerned that this will use up, let's say, too much of their water and that they will have to find other sources just to keep that going.

Yeah.

So some local water authorities are encouraging these data centers to, reduce their usage.

However, we don't have, you know, a water grid operator, you know, the equivalent of of an Ercot.

We do not have that in Texas.

So, you know, they they are operating largely, you know, without oversight.

So, so the local authorities can just kind of encourage them to use less water or to, you know, reuse more or whatever, however, you know, the, the cooling method, it seems, that it's most frequently through evaporation, which means that millions of gallons of water, are lost, in this process.

And some of the locals and some of the local authorities don't know that this is going to happen until that is already built near there.

Right?

And maybe not even after if they're treating it like proprietary information and no one's really holding them to, being transparent with, with their cooling method and, and how sustainable it is in a drought stricken landscape.

You know, a quarter of our state is under drought conditions.

And, you know, here in San Antonio, we're under stage three water rules, which means we are required to water our lawns only once a week.

And only on a designated day.

I never water my lawn.

I just let it be ugly, but, you know, but, you know, so we're already thinking about personal conservation, but then these major, you know, water users are just running amok, seemingly.

And there's nothing really to be done about it unless the legislature say what?

Act.

Yeah, I think, you know, there needs to be more oversight, more accountability, more transparency.

And, yeah, more regulation.

Right now it's just the Wild West and it's a finite resource.

And there will be more reporting on this, from the San Antonio current.

And Stephanie Knudsen, thank you very much for coming in and explaining all that.

Thank you.

And thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record.

You can see this show again.

You can see any previous shows.

You can also download the podcast at KLRN.org I'm Randy Beamer and we'll see you next time.

On the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele Dufilho