The $50 million that Project Jupiter’s developers committed for water infrastructure improvements in Sunland Park and Santa Teresa could begin flowing to Doña Ana County early next year after the county sought help from the state of New Mexico to track and account for the funds.
When Doña Ana County commissioners approved a large tax break for Project Jupiter in September 2025, a key part of the deal was that Oracle and other companies developing the data center campus would give the county $50 million to improve infrastructure such as pipes, tanks and water treatment plants, and to explore desalinating brackish groundwater to create a new supply of water. The county has said it will allocate $10 million of that to the city of Sunland Park through a grant program.
As of April – the last month that tax receipts were reported to the state – $25 million has accrued toward the water infrastructure fund, according to New Mexico state officials. But the state and Doña Ana County are still figuring out how to direct the funding into the county’s hands.
“We are currently working with the New Mexico Economic Development Department and other project partners to clarify the Gross Receipts Tax collection and distribution process associated with Project Jupiter,” Doña Ana County officials told El Paso Matters in a statement.
“Because the discussions are still underway regarding the specific mechanics of GRT collection, revenue sharing, or expenditure of those funds, we do not have any information to provide at this time.”
The $50 million commitment is not a direct cash outlay from Oracle. Instead, the county awarded Project Jupiter a 50% break on gross receipts taxes – essentially, a tax on revenue for businesses that works much like a sales tax on goods and services that’s passed on to the customer.
When a contractor working at Project Jupiter bills the developers for work done – such as for construction or earth work, for example – the gross receipts tax is part of the bill. Developers would then send the tax owed to the state before the state would remit half of that amount back to the developers as part of the tax break agreement.
Project Jupiter’s developers – which include Oracle, STACK Infrastructure and other companies – agreed to dedicate the first $50 million they receive through that tax break to water and wastewater improvements in southern Doña Ana County.
It’s a complex arrangement called gross receipts tax-sharing and Project Jupiter is only the second development in New Mexico to use the tax break program, which state lawmakers created in 2021. It applies only to projects exceeding $350 million in investment. The first was Intel’s $3.5 billion manufacturing expansion in Sandoval County north of Albuquerque.
The New Mexico Taxation and Revenue Department collects the taxes and is working with the state Economic Development Department to identify receipts connected to Project Jupiter. Once the state completes that accounting, the money can be transferred to Doña Ana County for water projects.
The reason Doña Ana County hasn’t received any of those dollars yet – more than 10 months since the tax break deal was approved – is that the state government has been trying to separate Project Jupiter’s tax share from the Intel project. The state’s economic development department initially received the money as a single distribution that did not specify how much belonged to each project. So, state tax officials have been developing county-level reports to make the distinction.
“Because of the speed at which they’re moving, we were hoping to get it before the end of the year,” Doña Ana County Commissioner Manny Sanchez said.
More likely, he said, is that cash for water projects becomes available sometime in the first few months of 2027.
“We’re going to use this to invest in the community in ways we have never done,” Sanchez told El Paso Matters.
For its part, the city government of Sunland Park said it’s aware of the $10 million allocation.
“At this time, however, the City has not entered into any formal agreement, funding commitment, or executed a memorandum of understanding regarding these funds,” Yasmine Al-Harbi, a spokesperson for Sunland Park, said in an email. She added that the town has no information on when the funds will become available.
“The city appreciates the county’s efforts to pursue additional infrastructure investments for southern Doña Ana County and looks forward to future discussions as more information becomes available,” Al-Harbi said.
What would $50 million fund?
Sanchez cited numerous projects to which the county could direct funding.
In the Santa Teresa area near the now-defunct country club, virtually all of the fire hydrants are inoperable, so replacing them is one priority, Sanchez said. At the Santa Teresa Industrial Park, some businesses near the end of the development’s water line receive heavy sediment in their water because it’s not a looped system, he said.
And in Sunland Park, piping that delivers water to homes is old and dilapidated and needs to be replaced.
Al-Harbi of Sunland Park said that, if the town and Doña Ana County make a formal agreement to disburse the $10 million, the city would “evaluate eligible water and wastewater infrastructure projects based on identified community needs, regulatory requirements, and long-term system resiliency” and focus on investing in aging infrastructure, water reliability and expanding wastewater capacity.
To Sanchez, the biggest opportunity is having funds to drill exploratory wells to evaluate the viability of a brackish water desalination plant similar to the Kay Bailey Hutchison desalination plant operated by El Paso Water near El Paso International Airport.
“What we have been discussing was the potential of us doing the desalination plan between, I believe, 6 million to 8 million gallons of water,” Sanchez said. “That way, we can increase the amount of water available to the residents down south.”
It would still be far smaller than El Paso’s desalination plant, which can produce up to 27.5 million gallons of fresh water per day.
But the Camino Real Regional Utility Authority, or CRRUA, for perspective, supplied an average of about 2.8 million gallons of water per day last year. So, a desalination plant capable of producing 6 million to 8 million gallons per day would more than double the capacity of the utility’s current average daily deliveries.
The first step would be exploratory wells to determine how much brackish groundwater is available and what treatment it would require. County commissioners have long discussed exploring desalination, but any eventual spending plan would require a public vote by the Doña Ana County Commission after the funds become available to the county.
Sanchez said Doña Ana County is also considering ways to make the $40 million under its control last longer instead of spending it down one project at a time.
One early idea is to place much of the money in a separate account resembling a quasi-trust fund, then use the balance as a reserve to support borrowing for larger water projects. The county could also invest the money and use the earnings to help make debt payments or pay for projects over time, which potentially could generate tens of millions of dollars over decades while preserving the $40 million principal.
The county could also use the funds as a local match for state or federal grants.
“Can we take the $40 million and look at creating somewhat of a trust fund?” Sanchez said. “There’s just some different ideas we’re tossing around on how we can maximize the amount of money so we can bring the biggest change to the area.”
Legacy of water problems in southern Doña Ana County
The money would arrive as Sunland Park and the county now confront the results of years of inadequate investment and water quality problems within the area’s water system operated by CRRUA, which provides water and wastewater service to roughly 22,000 people in Sunland Park and Santa Teresa.
CRRUA is not connected to El Paso Water’s system, which is much larger and more sophisticated but doesn’t extend past the Texas-New Mexico stateline.
CRRUA in recent years has violated drinking-water standards for arsenic and has struggled with aging equipment and water rates that did not generate enough revenue to keep pace with the costs to operate the system.
In late 2023, many CRRUA customers experienced slimy, undrinkable water flowing from their taps after failures at a treatment plant threw off the pH of the water supply. The former director of CRRUA, Brent Westmoreland, retired shortly after the incident.
“A failure of the pH sensors and a failure by CRRUA operations staff to recognize that failure led to an unknown amount of caustic soda to be injected into the water system,” read a report published by the New Mexico Environment Department in early 2024.
CRRUA increased water and wastewater rates by 38% early this year, or an increase of about $19 per month for the average customer.
Following a series of failures and mismanagement at the utility, Doña Ana County and Sunland Park are now splitting up CRRUA, which since its inception had been jointly managed by the city and county. Doña Ana County plans to operate the portions of the utility that serve Santa Teresa and areas outside Sunland Park. The city of Sunland Park is establishing its own municipal water utility.
“The CRRUA method just wasn’t working for us,” Sanchez said.
To be sure, CRRUA under new management has met water quality standards over the past 18 months, though the system still has several outstanding administrative reporting violations.
For now, CRRUA is continuing to operate while the two governments work through the split-up of the utility that could take years in part because a push by Sunland Park to annex land north of the town has raised questions about where exactly Sunland Park’s new utility would provide service.
For Sanchez, the opportunity to address water problems that long predate the highly controversial Project Jupiter data center weighed heavily in his vote to support a tax break agreement that enabled the project.
“Nobody had the type of funds that we were looking for to help us,” Sanchez said. “And now, all of a sudden, this could really be a reality for us.”
The post Project Jupiter committed to give $50 million for water infrastructure. But when? appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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