The proposed hyperscale AI data center Project Jupiter has sparked controversy across New Mexico since it was first announced in February 2025. The massive endeavour that was approved 4-1 by the Doña Ana Board of County Commissioners in September 2025 is projected to cover 1,400 acres in Santa Teresa and emit more greenhouse gases than Albuquerque and Las Cruces combined, according to Source NM.
Stack and BorderPlex Digital Assets are constructing and developing the project, with an estimated price tag of $165 billion. It is actively under construction, but facing legal obstacles after being denied permission to build the “robust natural gas pipeline” needed for the project by Commissioner of Public Lands Stephanie Garcia Richard and an active investigation by the NM Department of Justice for fraudulent public comment submissions.
The Microgrid Oversight Act (Senate Bill 235), which critics of the project say would have provided key regulations on data centers, died in the House during the 2026 state legislative session.
The bill would have given the Public Regulation Committee control over microgrids, set up a microgrid renewable portfolio standard and prohibited rate increases for electricity consumers, but the passing of a last-minute amendment to House Bill 93 — titled Advanced Grid Technology Plans — created a loophole in the bill that allowed some microgrids to avoid the clean energy requirements of the Energy Transition Act.
The ETA states that “no later than January 1, 2045, zero carbon resources shall supply one hundred percent of all retail sales of electricity in New Mexico.”
Democratic Rep. Micaela Lara Cadena told the Daily Lobo that her peers in the legislature, “in a really dishonest and deceptive way,” amended HB 93 on the Senate floor so that industry is allowed to create their own on-site power for projects like data centers without having to follow the ETA.
“It was our democratic legislature with our democrat governor who rolled out the red carpet with data centers so they could show up, not follow the same rules, make their own power and not be held accountable to any kind of emissions standards or water use in our communities,” Cadena said.
One of Project Jupiter’s main tenants is Oracle — a large tech company that creates cloud infrastructure and enterprise software for other organizations. Despite previously agreeing to an interview, representatives for Oracle reversed their decision and refused to issue any comment for this story.
Oracle has promised massive economic growth for Doña Ana County, intending to give the county around $360 million to improve schools and infrastructure, and $50 million for the area’s water system in lieu of paying property taxes.
“Besides being so harmful to the local community, our people, our emissions, our water, it’s about the ethics of Oracle allowing AI to be used in Trump’s Department of War,” Cadena said.
Oracle and OpenAI, the other major tenant of Project Jupiter, have both entered into agreements with the Department of War, to further their vision of “making the United States military an AI-first fighting force,” according to Oracle’s website.
“That’s why Project Jupiter developers were able to fast track the natural gas pipeline they needed in 2 weeks, which is an unheard of amount of time, because they said it was a matter of national security,” Cadena said.
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Canvassers have been hired to speak to residents across the state, some of whom reported that their names and emails were used without permission to comment in support of the project, including through falsely signing letters to state officials advocating for the approval of the project’s air quality permits, according to Source NM.
If approved, the air quality permit would allow Project Jupiter to use Bloom Energy Fuel Cell technology to power the site, which would be “central to the new energy plan for Project Jupiter and will help minimize impact on local communities,” according to Oracle.
The “minimized impact” Oracle referred to was an alleged 92% reduction in nitrous oxide emissions and an around 30% reduction in carbon emissions, which brings down the total from 14 million tons of CO2 to 10 million tons every year, according to Source NM.
Doña Ana County Commissioner Manuel Sanchez said there were no requirements to meet the ETA as the project was being developed.
“It was part of understanding: you’re not gonna just shut off a large amount of power overnight and make it carbon neutral, you’re gonna have to plan to get there. So we felt that by putting the compliance to ETA by 2045 in place there would be a plan to go renewable and reduce carbon emissions through the way,” Sanchez said.
New Mexicans in Doña Ana County have voiced their concerns over water usage and scarcity, many of them worried that the water demand from Project Jupiter will leave residents and farmers without water.
Project Jupiter purchased existing water rights from a sod farm located west of Sunland Park to fulfill the millions of gallons needed to cool the data center’s hard drives and routers, according to NPR.
Project Jupiter will be using non-potable industrial well water according to Oracle’s website, which claims that water use will remain “below historical levels” and the water will continue to “support local agriculture operations.”
Cadena said that the legal distinction that makes the water non-potable starts with developers Charles and Phyllis Crowder, who acquired huge groundwater and land rights in Santa Teresa in the 1970s.
They split their water ownership into two legal sections, potable utility rights and private agriculture rights which included the sod farm west of Sunland Park. Since then, agricultural water rights held in the sod farm continue to be legally intact property assets that are transferable and remain valid and vested due to the active use of the water for the farm, allowing Oracle to be able to purchase these existing water rights and avoid the New Mexico Office of the State Engineers regulations that prevent new water pumping rights to be issued in the Lower Rio Grande basin.
“When they say it’s non-potable water, that’s a legal system that doesn’t match our practical realities,” Cadena said. “People have their agriculture wells and their residential wells that are maybe 30 miles apart from each other and are pulling from the same aquifer that the sod farm is. They’re just playing games saying that.”
Sanchez says Oracle will have to provide reports of those emissions to NMED just the same as any other power plant would in the state.
“The non-potable water they say they’re using is on a metered well being reported to the state engineers office. Those are big pieces to ensure compliance. As a county, as we’re currently unwinding crew on with the city of Sunland Park, we’ll have to make sure that we see what their water usage is through the water system as well,” Sanchez said.
Cadena, along with Sen. Carrie Hamblen and Reps. Eleanor Chávez and Angelica Rubio have proposed a statewide moratorium on data centers so the state can have time to develop a “framework” to assess developments like Project Jupiter’s impact on the environment, ratepayers and their proposed benefits.
Sanchez said he believes that a moratorium would “make people feel temporarily good,” but that the sentiment around data centers is that people don’t want them at all. Even if they pass guidelines, he doesn’t know that that’s going to “satisfy people in the end,” saying that “unless they’re going to be like Bernalillo County who put guidelines so ridiculous that they are basically saying they don’t want data centers there, people won’t be satisfied.”
Cadena said she wants to “make sure that governments have a chance to catch up with this emerging industry and put the right parameters and protections in place.”
“I am wildly, deeply, infinitely disappointed that they did not take this under careful consideration before passing a tax break worth billions for billionaires,” Cadena said.
Penelope Loyd Sment is a freelance reporter for the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at news@dailylobo.com or on X @DailyLobo
