Secretive New Mexico Data Center Plan Races Forward Despite Community Pushback

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https://truthout.org/articles/secretive-new-mexico-data-center-plan-races-forward-despite-community-pushback/

Secretive New Mexico Data Center Plan Races Forward Despite Community Pushback

To power the growing demand for AI, New Mexico is gearing up to build a data center with a city-sized carbon footprint.

By Dan Ross , TRUTHOUT
Published December 10, 2025

At the very Southeastern tip of New Mexico bordering Texas and Mexico, a new artificial intelligence (AI) data center is gearing up to be a greenhouse gas and air pollution behemoth, an additional water user in a drought-afflicted region, and a sower of community discontent.

Project Jupiter is one of five sites in the $500 billion Stargate Project, a national pipeline of massive AI systems linked with OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank.

“Health is my biggest concern. I’m worried about the air pollution, the ozone, and the buzzing noise,” local resident José Saldaña Jr., 45, told Truthout. Saldaña has lived in Sunland Park, New Mexico, nearly his entire life, and he’s worried about Project Jupiter’s added environmental footprint in a pollution hotspot. Another big data center is going up in nearby El Paso, Texas. He lives less than two miles from a landfill that emits such an unpleasant smell, he can’t even hang his clothes out to dry.

“I’m just trying to stand up for my community,” Saldaña said of his opposition to the facility. But the project is racing ahead, and has already cleared one important hurdle: financing, including a massive tax break for the data center’s backers.

… more … protest sign: I can’t drink data…

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