Doña Ana County pursues desalination plant following Project Jupiter vote

LAS CRUCES — Doña Ana County commissioners on Tuesday authorized County Manager Scott Andrews to seek state funding for a proposed desalination plant in the Santa Teresa Industrial Park.

The county will apply for up to $25 million from New Mexico’s Strategic Water Supply program, established by the state Legislature earlier this year and administered by the state Environment Department, to support the project with $15 million in matching dollars the county plans to allocate from Project Jupiter gross receipts tax rebates.

”We’ve been talking about trying to find a way to fund a desalination plant for over two years,” Commissioner Shannon Reynolds said during Tuesday’s public meeting. “The only reason Project Jupiter is mentioned (in the resolution) is simply because there’s additional funding that wasn’t available to us before that.”

Project Jupiter is a proposed complex of four data centers, a power generation facility and business offices being developed by BorderPlex Digital Assets and Stack Infrastructure in the industrial area near the southern border. The project is being funded in part through $165 billion in industrial revenue bonds and other tax incentives, with the county agreeing to direct payments instead of regular property and gross receipts taxes. The data center’s tenant is to be Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, with OpenAI as its primary client.

The county has previously issued a request for information seeking input from private companies on developing a desalination plant.

In a separate resolution, commissioners authorized Andrews to apply for $10 million from the same fund to fund research into brackish water sources from the Mesilla Basin and Mount Riley aquifers “to determine the commercial viability of brackish water withdrawal and treatment to meet the regional water needs of the County,” with an additional $5 million in matching funds also generated from Project Jupiter.

Researchers at New Mexico State University, New Mexico Tech and the Office of the State Engineer have identified a vast supply of mostly brackish water within the Mesilla Basin, which crosses beneath the U.S.-Mexico border.

The research is seen as crucial for the region in light of climate change, federal litigation regarding interstate use of Rio Grande water, and growth in the City of Sunland Park and the unincorporated Santa Teresa area.

Further complicating water planning is the pending dissolution of the Camino Real Regional Utility Authority, the water utility jointly formed by the county and the City of Sunland Park. The county voted to exit the compact in May, and CRRUA is set to be absorbed into a new city utility department.

A draft grant application provided to the commissioners ahead of Tuesday’s meeting estimates the total cost of the plant at $75 million, aiming to provide steady potable water supply for the Santa Teresa area and address “long-standing water security issues that have constrained economic development and limited reliable water access in one of the County’s most strategically important growth corridors.”

That estimate, appearing in a document still prominently marked “draft,” is considerably lower than NMSU’s 2023 projection that a desalination plant producing 5 million gallons per day would cost $115.5 million.

The project, styled as the Santa Teresa Aquifer Resilience program, would use reverse osmosis technology to remove salts and other solids, producing 4 million gallons per day, and might incorporate treatment and recycling of wastewater as well, increasing the output by an additional 1.5 million gallons per day.

The draft application anticipates construction to begin in 2028 or 2029, following site selection, environmental reviews and other preliminary processes. Separately, the county has reported that its RFI has led to discussions with private entities behind four submissions regarding the desalination project.

The two resolutions were approved unanimously by the commissioners.

NMSU also entered into a $30,000 contract with BorderPlex Digital Assets back in February for “advisory work and counseling” pertaining to a desalination pilot project in which the developer said it would collaborate with EPCOR USA.

Other Project Jupiter votes

Also on Tuesday, commissioners addressed an alleged Open Meetings Act violation at the Sept. 19 meeting where they debated Project Jupiter, retroactively clarifying the resolution to add more specificity to what was discussed when commissioners entered closed session during the meeting.

Interim county attorney Cari Neill said the county believed commissioners “substantially” complied with the law’s requirements for going into closed session, but she recommended adjusting the motion and annotating the meeting minutes in response to at least one complaint that the closed meeting motion had been too vague as to its subject matter.

Commissioners also approved an ordinance agreeing to reduced building permit fees for Project Jupiter, with the developer agreeing to pay the county a total of $4.5 million over four years and approving a project participation agreement that includes clawback provisions if the developer does not meet its investment and employment targets. The vote was 4-1, with Commissioner Susana Chaparro voting no, without comment.