The data center building boom is running into local resistance

This story was originally published by the High Country News in partnership with the Puente News Collaborative and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Sunland Park, New Mexico, is not a notably online community. Retirees have settled in mobile homes around the small border town, just over the state line from El Paso. Some don’t own computers—they make their way to the air-conditioned public library when they need to look something up.

Soon, though, their county’s economy could center around the internet. An Austin-based tech company, BorderPlex Digital Assets, plans to build a sprawling campus of data centers just down the road.

The firm’s “Project Jupiter” is the latest in a tidal wave of such projects popping up across the country. Once built, the giant buildings full of computer hardware work 24/7 to power artificial intelligence and web searches for companies like Amazon and Meta. BorderPlex Digital Assets declined to say whether there’s a client lined up to use this campus, but they’re planning to invest up to $165 billion in the effort—a figure that dwarfs spending for most similar projects.

In the meantime, they’re framing Project Jupiter as an industry model of sustainability and economic promise: Developers have pledged tens of millions of dollars towards local infrastructure improvements and said they’ll create 2,500 construction jobs and more than 750 permanent ones.

That would be a big deal for Doña Ana County. Here, where the Rio Grande peels away from the Mexican border, a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line. Sunland Park’s most prominent business is a racetrack and casino complex that looks out on a long string of strip malls leading into the desert below Mount Cristo Rey. To the west, the small town of Santa Teresa—the proposed home for Project Jupiter—has worked for decades to court development around its port of entry to rural Chihuahua. 

Still, like the residents of dozens of other US communities facing the arrival of a data center, many in the county are wary. A large data center can require millions of gallons of drinking water a day to keep its equipment cool, and the industry already accounts for more than 4% of total U.S. electricity consumption in a given year. 

BorderPlex Digital and a partner data center company, STACK Infrastructure, have promised to build their own microgrid and said they’ll use a small fraction of that water, but residents are urging caution.

On a recent morning, about 15 people from Sunland Park met at the library to discuss the proposal, along with organizers from the local nonprofit Empowerment Congress. “I don’t understand much of the technology,” said one attendee, Alma Márquez, in Spanish. “But we have a lot of basic needs here in Sunland Park.” 

The city started as a group of colonias—unplanned settlements that emerged along the border in the 1980s and ’90s when developers sold off plots for low prices, often without ensuring that residents would have basic services. Decades later, people here and in Santa Teresa are still struggling to access clean water.

“This thing that’s coming consumes a lot of power, a lot of water,” Márquez said. “What’s going to happen with us, with that water we need clean?” Looking around the room, she asked, “And why here?”

Santa Teresa has long harbored dreams of becoming a hub for cross-border industry. BorderPlex Digital says its location on the edge of two states and two countries makes it a particularly attractive place to invest. “We firmly believe that the next wave of frontier tech belongs on the American frontier,” the company’s CEO said in a press release.

County officials seem poised to back the project: Last month, they voted to advance the proposal for an industrial revenue bond that would allow BorderPlex Digital to avoid paying property taxes on Project Jupiter for 30 years. In lieu of taxes, the company is pledging $300 million in payments to the county over that period.

But the county’s colonia residents aren’t convinced. And as a final vote on the deal approaches, they’re joining a growing number of communities around the country who see data centers as a threat, not a boon.

The proposed site for Project Jupiter is a flat stretch of scrub along the highway just north of the port of entry. Its closest neighbors include a set of industrial parks built to complement the maquiladoras across the border, and a new solar plant with thousands of panels pointing skyward.

As data centers proliferate, many are landing in rural or exurban areas like this, where open space abounds. And local leaders are often eager to welcome them. When Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham first announced a partnership with BorderPlex Digital in February, she called it an opportunity to “position New Mexico as a leader in digital infrastructure.” In the same press release, Davin Lopez, president of the Mesilla Valley Economic Development Alliance, wrote that Project Jupiter is “precisely the type of development we’ve been working to attract—one that leverages innovation to strengthen our position as a key player in global trade.”

In the earliest phases of the AI boom, such developments were often quietly approved, with limited public input or outcry. But that’s changing. Data Center Watch, an industry research firm, has counted $64 billion of data center projects that have been delayed or paused amid local opposition in just two years. 

Protests started in Virginia, now the data center capital of the world. But as the industry moves west, it’s facing increasing backlash in states from Texas to Oregon to California. In Cascade Locks, Oregon, voters recalled two local officials for supporting a $100 million data center. In Mesa, Arizona, the city government just passed new regulations restricting data center construction. The California legislature is currently considering multiple bills focused on the developments’ energy use.

As Data Center Watch notes, opposition cuts across party lines, with frustrated neighbors criticizing everything from tax breaks and rising utility costs to noise pollution and decreasing property values. In the arid Borderlands, water use tops the list of concerns. This summer, when Amazon attempted to quietly push through a massive data center near Tucson, hundreds of people showed up to city council meetings, bearing pamphlets that said, “Protect our water future.”

In Doña Ana County, the opposition has been led by colonia residents focused on an already too-dry present. In early 2024, after residents reported slimy water coming from their taps, a state investigation found dozens of violations by the local water utility—including evidence that it had been bypassing arsenic treatment for over a year, selling contaminated water to more than 19,000 customers.

The county has since ended its relationship with the utility, and the state has sued the organization over a decade of mismanagement. But residents cite continued issues with their water: yellow discoloration, sediment in the stream, taps that barely drip despite escalating bills.

At the community meeting in Sunland Park, Joe Anthony Martinez, 76, pointed to scars on his neck, where a surgeon removed skin cancer that he believes was caused by the water. Unwilling to trust the tap, he and his wife have spent years paying for filtered water. Now, as the county and city work towards establishing a new utility system, they worry that even if the water improves, it will go to the data center.

“We don’t want any of that,” Martinez said in Spanish. “What we want is quality water.”

As concerns about data centers’ resource use gain traction, the industry is working quickly to demonstrate its environmental consciousness. BorderPlex Digital says its campus will minimize water use by employing a cooling system that recycles water, rather than the more traditional system that evaporates it. A company spokesperson said in an email that their partner firm, STACK, currently operates data centers in Oregon using the same technology.

“The closed-loop cooling system requires only a one-time fill up and will therefore limit ongoing water use to domestic needs of employees (similar to an office building with 750 employees),” he wrote. The water source for the project is still being determined, he added, but the company is considering “non-potable or brackish wells (where suitable and approved), reclaimed water from the wastewater treatment facility or trucked water from alternate sources.”

In a public meeting this past week, developers reportedly said the initial fill would require about 10 million gallons of water, and that the system would use 7.2 million gallons annually. Daily water use for the campus would average around 20,000 gallons a day, capped at 60,000. 

Daisy Maldonado, the director of Empowerment Congress, remains skeptical. “I want scientific reports about how a closed-loop system works and what is the level of water evaporation and recharge needed every year,” she said. “I don’t want a PowerPoint presentation that just says, ‘Don’t worry, we’re not going to use that much water.’ And I think the community deserves to know.”

In late August, Doña Ana’s commissioners voted 4-1 to advance the bond proposal for the project, setting a September 19 date for a final vote. Commissioners tried to alleviate residents’ concerns.

“One of the things that we insist on as part of this discussion is that…this data center is not going to have a negative impact on the water situation down in Santa Teresa and in Sunland Park,” County Commissioner Shannon Reynolds said, according to El Paso Matters. “If it does, then I promise you, we will be on top of it.”

In the weeks since, however, local tensions around the project have risen. On September 5, Reynolds posted the names of dozens of people who submitted public comments in opposition to the project on Facebook.

In a press release, the New Mexico Environmental Law Center called the post “an act of intimidation intended to deter participation and silence community members exercising their right to participate in public and government processes.” Reynolds did not respond to a request for comment, but said on Facebook that he was naming the residents to thank them publicly.

Ahead of the September 19 hearing, BorderPlex Digital has hosted a series of community meetings around the county for residents to learn more about the project, and launched a website outlining their pitch.

Empowerment Congress organizers and colonia residents, meanwhile, are using this time to push the county to ask more questions about the kinds of development it seeks. Driving down McNutt Road, the main thoroughfare through Sunland Park, Maldonado pointed out more than a dozen cannabis dispensaries. A total of 43 have filled vacant storefronts and warehouses in the city since New Mexico legalized the drug in 2021, catering to customers from across the state line.

“You know how many grocery stores are in the city of Sunland Park, in Santa Teresa?” she asked. “It might be one. For a community of almost 20,000 people.” 

She sighed. 

“So how is New Mexico taking care of its residents? They’re failing the people in Sunland Park, in Santa Teresa, because all they can see is the dollar signs.”