To the editor

Weighing in on Project Jupiter

I am concerned about the Project Jupiter data center, as I know many are. They are advertising heavily and have begun to canvas neighborhoods. I

had one stop by today to reassure me that they will have an independent source of power so I shouldn't have concerns about my utility bill, and they won't touch ground water, they'll be using recycled "sewer" water.

But what they couldn't answer for me was my concerns about the noise, light and air pollution, all complaints that people who live around these centers have expressed. I'm sure they chose New Mexico because land and utilities are cheaper and they're building out in the desert where few live.

But our desert isn't Mars. It is a fragile ecosystem, where water in our aquifers is precious, and temperatures regularly rise well over 100. I don't know who thought it was a good idea to come to the desert and build a center that generates a massive amount of heat, but I have to question the ability to cool them in the dead of summer with only with recycled water.

Now, they are proposing 1,500 permanent jobs, which sounds good. Now, there are currently over 4,000 data centers in the U.S., a number which frankly astonished me. It's almost half of all centers worldwide. The seminal point is that NONE of them have jobs anywhere close to that number. The largest hyperscale data centers, massive facilities with thousands of servers supporting AI and cloud computing, only have 50-200 permanent on-site employees. Some highly automated ones get by with less than 50.

So, 1,500 jobs? Dubious at best, complete fabrication at worst. It's increasingly difficult to see exactly what benefit Project Jupiter actually brings to Dona Ana that would outweigh the obvious downside. Follow the money, I guess.

CC Cirillo

Las Cruces