Proposed data center stirs public opposition

Officials from Borderplex Digital Assets and STACK, two of the major players in a proposed data center in Santa Teresa, held multiple community meetings around the county and were met with opposition.

The proposed data center has been dubbed Project Jupiter and has received strong backlash from residents over concerns of water usage, electricity use, and the lack of property taxes that the data center will be paying to the county.

The meetings took place in La Mesa, Las Cruces, Hatch, and Sunland Park. During the Las Cruces meeting at Dona Ana Community College, security got involved when an argument broke out between two people in the crowd. 

Borderplex officials said the company will invest $165 billion in the project and create 2,500 construction jobs and 750 permanent jobs that are expected to pay between $75,000 to $100,000 a year. They said the company also plans to pay the county $300 million over the course of 30 years in lieu of taxes that they say will go to improving water infrastructure in the area and support educational institutions. The data center will be used to train AI models according to the team at the meetings. 

In response to concerns over water and electricity, the people behind Project Jupiter said that the data center will use a closed loop cooling system so the data center will need a one time deposit of water and they will reuse that water. Water usage on a day to day basis for the employees that work there is expected to be about the same as an office building with the same number of employees. 

The data center will also operate a “micro-grid” that will produce its own electricity, the company officials said. They said they plan to initially use natural gas for power but have also looked into other sources like geothermal energy since, by law, they have to be carbon neutral by 2045. 

Local resident Vince Gutschick told the Bulletin he is concerned about the timing and the scale of the operation. On September 19, the Doña Ana Board of County Commissioners votes on approving the project.

“Why are we given 11 days to see what’s going on? The vote is on September 19. This is so important. Why were we not told much, much earlier?” Gutschick asked.

Residents asked this question at many of the meetings. Project Jupiter officials said that the Governor put out a memorandum of understanding on a data center in the early part of this year and that company officials were under a non-disclosure agreement that they described as “very common” for projects like this one.

“This is the statutory process for an industrial revenue bond so we are following the timeline in the New Mexico statute for that process,” consultant for Boarderplex Jennifer Brandfute said during the Las Cruces meeting. 

Other complaints that were launched at the meetings include people's concerns that the county is giving too big of a tax break to Borderplex. In response to this, the company said that this is a competitive process, and company officials are still looking at other states like Wyoming as possible locations.

“Every state that is being considered right now has something similar to the IRB. They may not be called an IRB but they have some sort of tax incentive so that is one thing that ultimately the AI company, the tenant, is really interested in seeing is New Mexico being competitive,” Brandfute said. 

The vote for approving the project will go in front of the Doña Ana Board of County Commissioners on September 19.