By Sarah Silva
I am writing to invite the developers of Project Jupiter to abandon their plans, pack their things, and leave Doña Ana County for good.
I’m serious. As an early supporter of this project because of the jobs and infrastructure it promised, I’m fed up with the dishonesty, broken promises and threats.
The final straw for me is Oracle’s recent suggestion that it may try to connect Project Jupiter to the El Paso Electric grid. A company official first suggested this publicly in June and spun it as a good thing for us. (It is not).
Then, last month at a meeting of the Doña Ana County Board of Commissioners, Oracle Executive Vice President Mahesh Thiagarajan was asked what would happen if the state rejected Project Jupiter’s proposal to power its data centers with fuel cells. I’ve formally opposed that plan because it would emit more than 10 million tons of greenhouse gases every year. That is too much.
Thiagarajan said the grid was the only other option. When one county commissioner pushed back, Thiagarajan said there is no other way to power the data centers. If neither was acceptable, he suggested the developers might abandon the project.
That came days after I met with Thiagarajan and asked him to come up with a new power plan that includes renewable energy. He agreed to consider it. Instead of getting back to me, he delivered his ultimatum to the county commission.
Connecting to the grid would break a promise that Oracle and Stack Infrastructure, the primary developers of Project Jupiter, promote on the project’s website: “Powered by its own independent energy system, Project Jupiter will protect local ratepayers,” the pledge states.
I believe connecting to the grid would also violate Project Jupiter’s legal agreements with the county. To protect you from paying higher utility rates, county commissioners included language requiring Project Jupiter to “power itself with an onsite microgrid” instead of connecting to El Paso Electric’s system so that it “will not impact existing customers’ power reliability or costs.”
Connecting to our grid creates the unacceptable risk that you will end up paying for the electricity to run data centers for billionaires.
The federal government’s recent recklessness, driven by those same wealthy people, has led to you paying more for all sorts of things, from food to health care to gasoline. Democrats in the New Mexico Legislature have worked to keep necessities affordable. I have successfully carried legislation that uses state money to fill holes in funding for SNAP and health insurance.
I will fight any proposal by these companies that creates the possibility you’ll pay for their electricity.
At a town hall hosted by four state senators earlier this month, I listened to so many folks express frustration with Oracle’s broken promises, anger at the secretive process that led to Project Jupiter’s approval, and fear about the future these data centers could create for our community. I was asked how we can stop Project Jupiter.
The truth is, when I first learned about Project Jupiter along with the rest of you last fall, the governor’s administration had already ensured it was going to be built. I didn’t see a way to stop it.
So, I tried to make the deal better for us. The benefits they promised back then included $50 million for water and wastewater infrastructure for Southern Doña Ana County, $1.5 million for a public safety facility in Chaparral, and lots of jobs.
Now, even employment numbers are in question. The insufficient jobs report Oracle submitted last month – which excludes data they promised – is a disservice to the people of Doña Ana County and an insult to those of us who have tried to work with the developers.
I still don’t see a way to kill Project Jupiter. There is no government body that can vote to stop it. A denial of any aspect – like Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard’s refusal to allow a natural gas pipeline through state land – forces the developers to find a different, and perhaps more expensive, way to proceed.
It delays the project, but doesn’t stop it.
But perhaps Oracle’s threat to abandon the project presents an opportunity. I believe we should follow Land Commissioner Garcia Richard’s lead and make building Project Jupiter as difficult as possible. That’s the only option we have left to create a different reality than the one the developers are trying to force on us.
They can improve the deal. Or they can leave. Here are some ways I will join my colleagues in taking steps to protect our community:
Reps. Micaela Lara Cadena and Angelica Rubio, along with Sen. Carrie Hamblen, are proposing a temporary moratorium on future data centers. I prefer we enact strict rules in the next session, but if we need more time to come up with them, I will support a moratorium to buy time.
Corporate lobbyists snuck a bill past us last year that allows independent power plants like the one Project Jupiter proposes with little oversight. Sen. Jeff Steinborn proposes to restore oversight and require them to comply with our renewable energy rules. I will support his legislation.
Sen. Steinborn and I will also try again in the upcoming session to pass legislation that forces lobbyists to disclose what bills they’re trying to pass or defeat. We can’t stop Oracle from sneaking harmful legislation past us if we don’t know what they’re working on.
Finally, Sen. Joe Cervantes mentioned at the town hall earlier this month the possibility of taxing data centers. I’m drafting legislation to tax artificial intelligence data centers, which I plan to introduce in next year’s session. I’m glad the senator is also looking into this possibility and hope to have him as an ally.
We must hold Project Jupiter to its legal commitments and demand more from the developers. We should also force any future data centers to be better neighbors than Project Jupiter has turned out to be.
I will do everything in my power to make that happen.
Sarah Silva, a Democrat, represents District 53 in the New Mexico House of Representatives, which includes Chaparral, the east side of Las Cruces and White Sands Missile Range. Reach her at sarah.silva@nmlegis.gov.
The post Opinion: New Mexico lawmaker who backed Project Jupiter now says developers should leave appeared first on El Paso Matters.
Read: Read More