The company has been trucking in about 60,000 gallons of water a day to its private city, but that clearly wasn’t going to scale. So SpaceX struck a deal with Brownsville’s utility board to fund a permanent pipeline—running water directly to Starbase while securing lower in-city rates. It’s more efficient, and entirely under SpaceX’s control.
But residents living just outside the facility—about 40 homes not affiliated with SpaceX—recently lost access to their old water supply after the county stopped delivering. SpaceX offered them a solution: sign a waiver and get hooked into the new pipeline. The fine print? You have to agree to evacuate anytime there’s a rocket launch or test. You give up all legal rights to water service. You can’t sue if it fails. And SpaceX can pull the plug at any time, for any reason.
None of this is technically illegal. Starbase became an official city in May, but since SpaceX doesn’t have a certificate to provide retail water, it's not required to serve anyone beyond its borders. In practice, that means the company gets the perks of being a city—without many of the obligations that come with it.
So while the pipeline fixes SpaceX’s internal water problem, it also highlights how much control the company has over the area around it. If you want access to basic utilities near Starbase, you’re agreeing to live by SpaceX’s terms—no matter how extreme they get.