Project Jupiter debated in raucous community meetings

LAS CRUCES — Developers of a proposed “hyperscale” AI data center opened a series of community meetings around Doña Ana County on Friday to field questions, promote the project and receive public input.

The first two meetings were raucous as a campaign opposing the project has taken form, with community members demanding more details about the developer’s investment in the community and the project’s environmental impacts.

Dozens of people packed La Mesa Community Center, 15 miles south of Las Cruces, on Friday night. On Monday, most of the seats were full at the Doña Ana Community College auditorium on the east side of Las Cruces as hundreds turned out. At times, residents speaking positively of the project were jeered, while a few spoke in support and others suggested the proposal was moving too quickly for the public to have meaningful participation.

Representatives of lead developer BorderPlex Digital Assets and builder Stack Infrastructure, as well as county officials, took the stage at both meetings to respond to questions and make the case for the project.

The clock is ticking toward a Sept. 19 hearing during which Doña Ana County commissioners will vote on a historic $165 billion industrial revenue bond, which would guarantee tax abatements — but not direct capital investment by the county — over 30 years. The developers have said the staggering figure represents anticipated maximum investment over the 30-to 40-year service life of the center.

In February, BorderPlex Digital Assets projected it would spend $5 billion over 10 years to build the campus. It has pledged to employ over 2,500 people over years of construction and 750 permanently in office facilities.

Styled “Project Jupiter,” the center would be built in Santa Teresa, near the border, and consist of four data center structures, offices and a power plant to provide electricity for the campus.

The project has touched a n erve in an agricultural region that sees dwindling water reservoir levels yet is also striving to attract industries to the Santa Teresa region near the border. Data centers powering AI technology require vast supplies of reliable round-the-clock electricity and water for cooling. Project Jupiter is being marketed to undisclosed prospective tenants as a mammoth, state-of-the-art facility for training AI models.

BorderPlex Digital Assets and county officials signaled that the decision was make-or-break as far as building the project here.

“We are trying to encourage businesses to bring in jobs, and that helps grow the entire economy,” assistant county manager Stephen Lopez said in La Mesa. “There’s a really strong chance that without the IRB, the project would not be coming to New Mexico and Doña Ana County.”

Yet he admitted the county had not calculated what losses in tax revenue it would exchange for $300 million in direct payments over three decades by the developer. Engineers with Stack Infrastructure said they did not yet know how much water would be required to fill its closed-loop cooling system, as engineering plans had not been completed. The company has also pledged to explore treating brackish water for its purposes.

A memorandum of understanding the company signed with Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in February allows for natural gas and nuclear-generated electricity to power the facility and still be considered compliant with New Mexico’s statutory carbon-elimination targets.

BorderPlex Digital consultant Jennifer Bradfute said the company was considering trucking in water for the cooling system and said it would rely on natural gas until it could build enough storage capacity to rely on renewable energy sources such as solar or wind. She stated that Project Jupiter would reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2045. In Las Cruces, she insisted “there are no plans” to use nuclear energy — which itself is water-intensive — but did not rule it out. She also acknowledged that early in construction, the project would require electricity from El Paso Electric until it could rely on its microgrid, but not enough to drive up rates.

“They have given a lot of broad answers but not a lot of specifics,” said environmental attorney Katalina Hadfield of Las Cruces. “I appreciate them coming out here, but there are really not a lot of details going on. It’s just a pie-in-the-sky idea, and it makes me hesitate to waive property taxes for an idea.”

Some questioners who were more sympathetic to the project suggested the county take more time before deciding on the IRB, as well as authorization of additional state economic development funds next week. Participants requested more details about local costs, risks in the event of the project’s failure and accountability measures. Some wanted local-hire guarantees.

And a few people who work in construction and tech industries braved heckles and accusations of being paid spokespeople when they stood to defend Project Jupiter as a potential job incubator and economic driver for a rural community. An employee of Meta’s data center in Los Lunas said that development had offered him a career and a middle-class standard of living, as members of the audience shouted at him.

Andrew Mayorga, a New Mexico field representative for the Laborers’ International Union of North America, lamented the hostility prevalent in the Las Cruces auditorium.

”We just want to build. We want to work. We have families, we have mortgages, we have kids,” he said. “I thought New Mexicans stand up for New Mexicans.”