LAS CRUCES — The $165 billion Project Jupiter data center campus will move forward in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, after the Doña Ana Board of County Commissioners on Friday voted 4-1 in favor of issuing industrial revenue bonds that will enable the project development.
Project Jupiter – a collection of four data centers meant for artificial intelligence training – will be among the biggest private investments ever made and could reshape the regional economy around El Paso and Las Cruces.
The vote followed hours of debate at the Doña Ana County Government Center that culminated in a raucous confrontation between opponents of the project and county commissioners, with opponents citing concerns over the site’s power, water usage and seemingly sudden nature of the project. Supporters said the campus would be a generational project that will improve the region’s economy and create promising job opportunities.
“Outside of New Mexico, it feels like we are known for green chile, ‘Breaking Bad’ and the atomic bomb,” said Cole Montgomery, a senior at Centennial High School in Las Cruces who plans to study engineering. “I want us to be known for more. This project and others like it can be our brand.”
As part of the 30-year-deal with the county, Project Jupiter developers say they’ll hire 2,500 workers to build the campus starting late this year through 2028. After that, the site will employ 750 permanent workers to operate the data center and its related power generation facility.
Numerous companies are involved in developing Project Jupiter, mainly Austin-based BorderPlex Digital Assets as well as Stack Infrastructure and a still-unnamed AI tenant company. Austin-based Oracle appears to be the most likely tenant of the massive facility.
District 4 Commissioner Susanna Chaparro was the lone commissioner to vote against issuing the industrial revenue bond package that will enable Project Jupiter. She argued it came together too quickly without enough time for elected officials and residents in the area to fully understand the implications and environmental impacts of the campus.
Now, Doña Ana County will issue the industrial revenue bonds, which BorderPlex Digital will repay. The company will transfer the land where the project will be located – just north of the Santa Teresa Port of Entry – and equipment to the county so that Doña Ana County owns the project. Then, the county will lease it back to the company for a 30-year period. After that, the company’s shareholders will take ownership of the site.
The vote Friday also means commitments in a non-binding memorandum of understanding became enforceable through the lease agreement.
“This has been rushed for me and for the people whom I represent,” Chaparro said.
“All of these things were done in Santa Fe months before we became aware of it,” she said, referring to bills passed in the New Mexico Legislature earlier this year – such as House Bill 93 – that enabled the project and its micro-grid to proceed. “If we believe in real democracy, in moving forward in a transparent way, then we include the community from the beginning so that we know what’s going on, so that we don’t have fear.”
Chaparro tried three different times throughout the meeting to delay the vote so the project’s developers could provide more information, but none of her attempts garnered support from other commissioners. Lanham Napier, chairman of BorderPlex Digital Assets, previously said delaying the vote would kill the project.
After the vote that came following a tense seven-hour meeting, opponents of the project stood and shouted “sellouts” and “recall” at the commissioners while numerous security guards stood between the protestors and the elected officials at the dais.
Much of the opposition some residents have voiced in recent weeks stems from the fact people living in Santa Teresa and Sunland Park for years have lived with low-quality drinking water supplied by CRRUA that has contained unsafe levels of arsenic.
The bad drinking water is the result of operator failures and mismanagement at the utility, according to a report issued by the New Mexico Environment Department, as well as long-running underinvestment in the area’s system of water infrastructure.
“You’re working very fast to pass this (project),” Jesus Baquera, a Sunland Park resident, told commissioners. “How about our drinking water? How come you didn’t work that fast?”
The industrial revenue bond will allow the developers to avoid paying property taxes on the 1,400-acre campus. In exchange, BorderPlex Digital said it will pay the county $360 million over 30 years – $12 million annually.
Stack said this week it would separately give the county $50 million to fund badly needed water and wastewater infrastructure upgrades throughout Doña Ana County. Stack also committed to give $6.9 million for various community investments in the county, such as new Boys and Girls Club facilities.
Of that $50 million, Stack said $10 million will go directly toward the city of Sunland Park, but a spokeswoman for the city said city officials haven’t signed off on any firm agreements.
Since the project was unveiled at a county meeting Aug. 26, the companies behind Project Jupiter have tried to assuage concerns voiced by many residents in El Paso and southern Doña Ana County about the project’s water usage and the electricity generation facility that will rely on natural gas and produce carbon dioxide emissions.
The campus will feature a “closed-loop” system of pipes to cool the computer servers inside the data center buildings, which developers say would require a one-time fill-up before the water is recycled over and over.
Filling up the four data centers would require about 10 million gallons of water over two years. Developers have said the campus’ ongoing consumption would be 7.2 million gallons of water every year that it’s operating.
The project would use a daily average of 20,000 gallons when it’s up and running, with a maximum consumption capped at 60,000 gallons in a day, according to estimates provided by the developers. For comparison, the Camino Real Regional Utility Authority – which will provide water for the data center campus – in March reported producing an average of 2.6 million gallons of water daily from its wells.
Supporters of the project argued those figures are manageable and won’t be an unsustainable drain on the region’s water.
BorderPlex Digital has said it will pay to develop a “micro-grid” to power the campus that’s essentially separate from the main regional power grid and won’t connect to El Paso Electric’s system.
BorderPlex Digital plans to build natural gas-fired turbines with the capacity to generate between 700 and 900 megawatts of electricity initially. The campus will ultimately require one gigawatt – or 1,000 megawatts – of capacity to operate, according to Napier.
Napier said Friday the micro-grid will also use only 20,000 gallons of water daily. That would be markedly less water usage than the natural gas-fired power plants El Paso Electric operates, although a consultant for BorderPlex Digital said the micro-grid natural gas units will use the most advanced emissions-controls available.
“We were just told that the generation will use an additionall 20,000 gallons a day, and I’d like to be confident that that number is correct,” said Allen Downs, a Las Cruces resident. “But, if Jupiter’s generators use water at the same rate as El Paso Electric’s newest gas generators that serve New Mexico, the water usage for generation could be in the ballpark of 2.5 million gallons a day.”
Chris Muirhead, an attorney who serves as Doña Ana County’s bond counsel, said the commissioners have 30 days to gain additional information before the deal closes and could terminate the deal before then. He said commissioners will receive additional information over the next month about the deal between the county and the project’s developers.
Supporters of the project argued the $50 million in funding from Stack Infrastructure, in addition to the $360 million in payments to the county, will help significantly improve water infrastructure in the county. With the deal approved Friday, the commitments by the project’s developers are “binding,” said New Mexico state Rep. Nathan Small.
“There are enforceable community benefit agreements that focus on water, education, transportation and others,” Small said. “There is strong and needed oversight. That is essential. The state will step up to that role, and I know the county is stepping forward into that role. And these are binding documents.”
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