Doña Ana County officials approve $165 billion dat | RSS.com
Diego Mendoza-Moyers: The data center building boom has officially reached El Paso. Leaders in Doña Ana County next door to El Paso last week approved an incentive deal enabling a $165 billion data center campus and power generation facility that a collection of companies will develop in New Mexico just north of the Santa Teresa Port of Entry.
I’m Diego Mendoza-Moyers, a reporter with El Paso Matters, and I’ve been following this controversial data center proposal out in Santa Teresa, which could have a long-lasting impact on our region. It’s created more fervor and pushback from locals than almost any other project in recent memory.
In just a minute, we’ll go to my conversation with Pablo Villa, assistant Editor at El Paso Matters, where we talk about the recent vote and different aspects of Project Jupiter. But, Pablo and I spoke before we learned that the tech giants OpenAI and Oracle are the companies behind this data center campus. Which makes sense, given the project’s massive cost. But, just keep in mind our conversation happened before we learned those details.
Project Jupiter will require 2,500 workers during construction and then will employ 750 full-time workers after it’s built – the kind of figures that really could impact our region’s economy. And while it’s by far the biggest investment, Project Jupiter isn’t the only data center in El Paso.
Hundreds of Doña Ana County residents appear at county commissioners’ meeting with a vote on the proposed Project Jupiter data center on the agenda, Sept. 19, 2025. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
Meta will invest billions to develop a data center in Northeast El Paso, and other companies are building smaller data centers in the Lower Valley and other parts of town. El Paso’s City Council recently approved an incentive package worth almost $900,000 to bring a company here called Ferveret, which makes data center cooling technology. Going forward, economic development in the El Paso region could be centered around building and servicing data centers.
Whether the broad region of far West Texas and Southern New Mexico has the water and electricity resources to support a wave of data centers isn’t totally certain. Meta and Project Jupiter’s developers say their projects will use technology that doesn’t consume a lot of water for cooling or electricity generation.
Now, before we bring in Pablo, I want to mention that this El Paso Matters Podcast episode is sponsored by Tawney, Acosta and Chaparro: truck crash and injury attorneys. Their team of local, seasoned trial attorneys are ready to help if you’ve been injured in a crash.
Pablo, thanks for joining me.
Pablo Villa: Diego, thank you for having me, and it’s always a pleasure to be in the host chair. This is not the hot seat, so, good. But, Diego, before we begin, I want to give you your flowers a little bit. I think you’ve been at the forefront of this project, or the developments in this project as it’s been going along. You’ve even gotten accolades from Sarabeth Berman, the CEO of the American Journalism Project, who has sort of given you your due in terms of you being, sort of, the person who has really given attention to this issue and it certainly deserves it.
As you mentioned, it’s a $165 billion project, probably one of the most significant financial endeavors in this region and possibly the nation and possibly the world, right? So, thank you very much for sharing a little bit more with our readers and with our audience about it. We’ll get right to the questions if you’re OK with that?
Diego: Sure.
Pablo: All right. So, the commissioners’ vote to approve Project Jupiter was described as one of the most consequential economic decisions in Doña Ana County’s history. Can you walk us through why this vote matters so much and what it sets in motion?
Doña Ana Board of County Commissioners Vice Chair Susana Chaparro motions to table the vote on the proposed Project Jupiter data center for 60 days, Sept. 19, 2025. The motion failed when no other commissioner seconded it. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
Diego: Yeah, well, I appreciate you pumping my ego a little bit there. Not that it’s totally necessary. But, yeah, I mean, $165 billion is a really just eye-popping figure when you really think about it. I mean, I think sometimes we hear these billions or millions or whatever, but when you really put it in perspective – I mean, $165 billion, I think the number that we use to put that in context is all of the properties in El Paso County collectively are valued at $95 billion. And, so, in theory, this would exceed the value of the entire, all of the real estate in El Paso County. So, it’s a really huge deal.
And, like I mentioned at the top, I mean, we’re talking 2,500 construction jobs to build it out. And then, after that, 750 full-time workers there, both at the data center and at the power generation facility, which those employment numbers are quite a bit bigger than you see typically associated with data centers. I think Meta, for its facility, that’s a much smaller investment, but I think they’ve only said they’re going to employ like 50 workers. So, 750 is a pretty sizable number of employees, particularly in this region of southern Doña Ana County, not the most economically advantaged part of New Mexico or the Southwest in general. Sunland Park, Santa Teresa, not a ton of opportunity economically in those regions. And, so, I think, the county officials there that approved this project see it as something to really create a base of economic activity to build on and something that’ll be really impactful for decades to come.
The sort of contentious part of it is the water and electricity usage, right? And that’s the first thing everybody says when they think about a data center is: “Well, how much water is it going to consume?” And to Project Jupiter’s credit, right, it seems to be much less water-intensive than other data centers that we hear about using this evaporative technology that can use millions of gallons a day. They’ve committed to using 20,000 gallons on average with kind of a cap on high-use days of 60,000 gallons, which isn’t really that much. And to put it in perspective, the refinery in El Paso uses over 1 million gallons a day, or at least it did last year. So, even 60,000 gallons versus 1.1 million is much less for a big industrial employer.
And then, also on the electricity side, which we’ll get more into, but they’re talking about building a 700-megawatt natural gas, simple cycle gas turbines to power the facility, which 700 megawatts is huge. I think that’s, roughly, enough to power like 150,000 homes, or in that area, just for this one campus. So, a lot of power. The water figures appear to be manageable, and a big economic driver for the county. So, you see why county commissioners, despite a lot of community pushback, went ahead and approved it.
Pablo: You alluded to it already, but water usage is really a big part of the conversation with this data center. Of course, water is definitely a need for places like this because of the cooling aspects that are required for the big servers and all the technology within. I think that conversation’s enhanced because of the history that Sunland and Santa Teresa have with unsafe drinking water, things you’ve reported on before, right? How much of this fight is about the numbers themselves versus a lack of public trust in the local water infrastructure?
Diego: Yeah, I think that’s a good point. I mean, like you said, there has been kind of a legacy of poor drinking water, particularly in southern Doña Ana County and in the community of the Sunland Park and Santa Teresa and water, drinking water at homes with elevated levels of arsenic, which is not safe for human consumption. And then other issues, like I think it was, almost two years ago in late 2023, there were kind of operator failures at some of the treatment plants that are operated by CRRUA, or the Camino Real Regional Utility Authority, the utility just over the state line nearby here. And, so, at this one treatment plant, somehow a bunch of caustic soda got dumped into the water supply. And, so, customers had this like, slimy water and the pH was all off. And, so, it’s the arsenic, it’s this, and then it’s just kind of a general lack of trust as a result in the water system by residents out there, which you totally understand.
And I’ve covered it a little bit and so have other reporters, but that, I think, is kind of a separate issue from the data center, right? Because, the data center says, “Well, look, we’re going to try to use to the extent possible non-potable water” and they’re kind of saying, “Hey, look, we’re not using at a level that’s going to affect the drinking water supply of these communities.”
But the thing is, right, some of the members of the county board of commissioners that just voted on this project, they were also – because Doña Ana County and Sunland Park jointly, at least until recently, oversaw CRRUA. And again, this gets a little confusing, but the point is that the same elected officials that approved this project were also overseeing CRRUA when it was having this disaster of unsafe levels of arsenic in the water and the caustic soda getting dumped in and all these different things.
And, so, if you’re a resident out there, you can understand the lack of trust for the elected officials who – so, we’re supposed to trust you guys to make sure that Project Jupiter isn’t going to take up our drinking water? You were the same ones that were overseeing this utility during a period of really serious failures. And, so, I think that is what drives the lack of trust, I guess, and some of the pushback.
And one of the kind of poignant comments I thought at this meeting last week where they voted on kind of a final approval of whether the project would go forward or not, There was hours of public comment and you had this one resident, the comment kind of stuck with me where he said – we only heard about Project Jupiter August 26th that was approved September 19th, less than four weeks that all this had to come together and a lot of things had to happen. And, so, some of the residents in Santa Teresa and Sunland Park are saying, “You guys worked so quickly,” and they’re saying this to the County Board of Commissioners in Doña Ana, “Man, you guys worked so quickly to approve this project. Why didn’t you work that quickly to improve our water supply?” And of course, there are complexities there and it’s not apples to apples, but that’s the feeling among residents is, “Man, you guys jumped – you did everything this company wanted you to do. Why didn’t you sort of act with that level of urgency with the drinking water?” So, you can understand the lack of trust, I guess, among residents.
An opponent of the proposed Project Jupiter data center cheers for Doña Ana Board of County Commissioners Vice Chair Susana Chaparro after her motion to delay a vote on the center for 60 days, Sept. 19, 2025. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
Pablo: Absolutely. And so you were at that meeting with county commissioners all Friday, right? And it got a little contentious. And I want to ask you about that in a minute. But before we do, on the other – so you have the water concerns on the other end of the conversation, you also have concerns about energy, right, and energy consumption. So, developers say they’ll build their own microgrid, right, with natural gas turbines to power the data centers. What are the environmental and community implications of that plan?
Diego: Yeah, so this is an interesting part of it because they’re saying, look, we’re going to basically have our own – they call it a microgrid that’s basically its own electricity system separate from El Paso Electric’s, the broader grid El Paso Electric operates that serves most homes and businesses in our region. And they’ve actually said – it’s a little bit confusing because El Paso Electric, they said earlier this year they’ve been working for two years with these project developers behind Project Jupiter to build up the electric infrastructure to serve the campus. But, then, it turns out El Paso Electric won’t build any generation for the facility and it won’t even be tied into El Paso Electric’s system. So, that part confused me a little bit. It’s like they’ve been working together for two years, but it won’t tie into the system.
But the broader point is that Project Jupiter’s developers say, “Look, we’re separate from your system, so us building this is not going to affect your electricity prices or make anyone’s electric bills go up or anything like that.” That’s what they say. It’ll be separate, and won’t affect El Paso Electric’s system. And, so, part of that is that, OK, so where’s the power coming from?
Lanham Napier, the chairman of BorderPlex Digital Assets, kind of the main company behind this project. And, just as an aside, it’s a little bit confusing sometimes because it’s like this collection of companies developing Project Jupiter. It’s this BorderPlex Digital Assets company that there’s not a lot of information about it. There’s Stack Infrastructure. There’s, we think, the eventual tenant company is Oracle. So, anyways, it gets a little bit confusing.
But Lanham Napier, the chairman of BorderPlex Digital, kind of the face of the project, he said that this could require up to one gigawatt of power capacity, which is a ton of power. I mean, El Paso Electric’s whole system is 2.8 gigawatts. So, we’re talking one-third of El Paso Electric’s whole system that spans from Hatch to Van Horn just for this one facility. So, that’s a ton of power.
So, they said that they’re going to build initially a 700- to 900-megawatt natural gas power generation facility. Again, like I said, that’s a ton of power somewhere in the neighborhood of enough capacity to power 150,000 homes, give or take. And I’ll point out, El Paso Electric just built the Newman 6 power plant. They brought it into operation at the end of 2023. That was, like, a huge project for them. That was 228 megawatts, so one-third of the size of what they’re proposing to build here. So, we’re talking a lot of electricity.
And they’re saying they’re going to use a simple cycle natural gas turbine, which apparently uses much less water than some of the gas turbines El Paso Electric uses. And I think the trade-off there is that these turbines that Project Jupiter will use potentially produce more carbon dioxide emissions, less water use, maybe a little bit more air pollution, kind of require more fuel to operate. So, yeah, that’s kind of the situation. They’re going to build these turbines.
Another part of it, some of the consultants for BorderPlex Digital Assets have said, in addition to building a lot of natural gas generation capacity, they’re also going to build one of the world’s biggest battery storage arrays, right? Which I thought was interesting. We don’t really have any details about that, but apparently a very large energy storage component, which the reason you’d need that is because eventually you plan to rely on probably solar power, right? Because you have to sort of – you charge the batteries up during the day and then you can run the data center at night with the batteries.
So, we think for now it’ll, at least initially, largely be relying on fossil fuels, on natural gas, and then maybe shift to renewables over time.
Just one other quick note, and we can touch on this again in a minute, but I just want to note, because this is a microgrid, it’s not subject to the New Mexico Energy Transition Act, which is the state law that requires all the big utilities that sell power to customers – they have to supply clean energy at certain milestones. So, currently, I think it’s 40% of the energy they sell to customers has to be from renewables. By 2035, it’s 50% and then 100% by 2045.
But, this amendment that happened in the New Mexico legislative session basically allows this microgrid to skirt that. And, so, that’s kind of why most other electric utilities in New Mexico aren’t really going to be investing a ton of money in new fossil fuel generation capacity. But this microgrid, they can, basically, keep burning fossil fuels until 2045. So just kind of an interesting element and a little last minute amendment to a bill that enabled that. But yeah, that’s the electricity situation. We’re going to be seeing more natural gas turbines out here in southern Doña Ana County.
Pablo: A lot of power at stake here. So, proponents of this project, Lanham Napier included, they refer to this Project Jupiter as a generational opportunity, right, for jobs and investment and infrastructure and those kinds of things. What kind of commitments have developers made and how enforceable are the promises they’re making?
Diego: Yeah, and so this is a big one. Basically, the county’s attorneys and Doña Ana County say, “Look, now that we’ve approved this deal, there are going to be certain enforcement mechanisms,” right? Where, if they don’t hit those job numbers, the 750 full-time jobs once it’s operating, they’ll have to pay more money to the county. They’re supposed to have to report regularly, like on their water consumption and pollution and things like that. We’ll see how that works out in practice.
But, there’s supposed to be very sort of enforceable benchmarks and things around the jobs numbers and around water usage and things like that. So, they will have to, once it’s operating, sort of give some kind of visibility to the public into their operations and sort of the sustainability and things like that.
So, there’s that, but one other thing, too, that became binding in the deal was – we talked about the water issues over there in southern Doña Ana County. To win approval of this, I guess, the developers, Stack Infrastructure particularly, said, “Look, if you guys vote for this, we’ll give $50 million to fix the water infrastructure in Doña Ana County, 10 million of which will go directly to the city of Sunland Park.” And, so, if you’re a county commissioner in Doña Ana, like, where else are you getting that money to invest in the water infrastructure this quickly and directly?
So, that is a, that’s also a binding commitment now. And I think we can get maybe a little bit more into some of the questionable tactics, I guess, by the company to bring this project to fruition. But that was, I thought, a really interesting commitment to – like, a firm concrete dollar figure to, “Hey, we can invest and make significant progress in improving the water situation and wastewater situation too over there.” And that’s not something they’re going to have to live up to, at least if they want to receive the full benefit of this incentive deal they got.
And I’ll just touch on, basically, the big benefit that went to Project Jupiter’s developers is, in exchange for not having to pay property taxes over 30 years – which for a $165 billion investment you’d think the property taxes would be really significant – they don’t have to pay property taxes, but they’re going to pay $360 million over the life of the deal directly to the county. So, that’s also another part of it. And in addition to this $50 million for water and wastewater, they also have to pay $360 million in lieu of taxes. So, those are all some of the binding commitments in addition to the reporting they said they’ll do.
Pablo: OK. You were at the meeting and there was only one county commissioner who voted against the project. That was Susana Chaparro, right? And she cited the reason that she voted against it. She said that there wasn’t an adequate amount of time that the community had to offer input, to learn a little bit more about what was going on and what was at stake. From everything you’ve seen, you know, how valid are her concerns, you know, that this moved too quickly?
Diego: Yeah, I understood where she was coming from. I also understood why the other commissioners wouldn’t reject a $165 billion investment in their county. But, yeah, I got where Susana Chaparro was coming from because there was a kind of sudden nature of this deal, right? Like Doña Ana County commissioners took this kind of preliminary vote on August 26th. Before that, I had never even heard of this.
And this, again, like, we’re talking about a $165 billion investment with a lot of questions around the electricity and water. And I think the companies did a good job answering those questions, but there were huge questions that kind of came up out of nowhere in late August. And then, it’s like, “Oh, and OK, next time we’re going to be back for a final vote, September 19th.” And so, basically, the county had three to four weeks to try to answer all these questions from constituents and set up community meetings and all of this stuff.
And that’s, I think, in a lot of people’s perspective, not really a lot of time to adequately address this. And I think it’s fair to say the community engagement part of it was a formality, right? I mean, I don’t know that there was ever a world in which the commissioners were going to get feedback from the community that urged a majority of them to vote against this. And so I think it was kind of a formality. For example, Border Plex Digital, one of the representatives said they were going to be hosting meetings in Sunland Park twice a week for that time between August 26th and September 19th. And they had one meeting in Sunland Park. So, not six or eight. It was one.
And then another thing, too, like I mentioned in the New Mexico Legislature, there was this bill, House Bill 93, that had kind of this last minute amendment that basically allows for a microgrid to still generate fossil fuels because they’re not considered retail sales, which is kind of like an arcane, Byzantine thing. Like, who cares? But really that was this last minute amendment that enabled this project.
And, so, Susana Chaparro made this comment like, this has all been going on in Santa Fe. We didn’t even know. We weren’t – there wasn’t engagement with local officials or constituents of Las Cruces or Sunland Park or Santa Teresa up until this last minute thing. And then it’s like, man, you guys, ram it through.
And, by the way, when we heard people like the Sunland Park mayor and a lot of people in the community say, “Look, county commissioners, why don’t you guys just hold off, like delay 30, 60 days so we can get more information, feel like our questions are more answered?” And Susana Chaparro at the meeting pushed to do that three times, to table the vote. The project’s developer said, “No, that’ll kill the deal.” Which, I don’t know that that makes sense.
I mean, clearly, the Project Jupiter developers put a ton of time and effort and resources into getting the deal to this point, right, here in Doña Ana County. And, so, the idea that a 30-day delay would just mean, “Hey, the deal’s off,” I don’t know that was totally accurate or true. But again, the county commissioners don’t want to call the bluff. And so they didn’t, they just went ahead and approved it.
But, yeah, I understood why people felt like this was rushed through. This has been something that’s been negotiated up in the state capitol in Santa Fe for months or years. And we’re only hearing about it now. And we only have this short window to get feedback from the community.
Pablo: Yeah, that limited amount of time that this has been in the works, at least in the eyes of the community. Certainly, you can understand how that leads to concerns, right? And I think that’s what drew so many people out to this meeting that you went to last Friday. And you were there, and it did get tense, it did get a little raucous, you know, in the moments leading up to the vote and also in the aftermath of the meeting, right? Can you tell us a little bit about what happened and what the residents were voicing deep concerns about? And what are the primary issues that drive that opposition? I know you kind of explained it, but can you go a little deeper and tell us a little bit about the meeting itself?
Diego: Yeah, so it was interesting. A big difference between when I went up to Doña Ana County Board of Commissioners meeting August 26th and when I came on September 19th, less than a week ago. I mean, the first time August 26th, there was a crowd there, but it was fine, whatever, public meeting, nothing remarkable.
This time, as soon as you walked into the building, you’re going through metal detectors. There’s dozens of law enforcement officers. And, so, I think they were expecting a very contentious meeting. And, so, it was, I don’t know, four hours or more of public comment.
And, to be fair, there were a lot of people in support of the project there as well. It wasn’t all just people in opposition. It was a lot of laborers and young people and people sort of wanting the economic boost of this project. But there were a lot of people there who felt like, man, there are a lot of unanswered questions around the air pollution this is going to produce, the carbon dioxide, some of the pollutants that contribute to climate change, the water. Like I said, I think the company did a pretty good job answering those questions. But, still, for the community, it felt like, “Man, we’re begging for answers here.”
And, so, that was one thing you heard a lot. And then also, like I alluded to, and what Chaparro said was the lack of transparency and time for community input. And I think there, really, there was a frustration with the thing that I mentioned that like it was all a formality. It really was. All the meetings set up and whatever, that was just, “Hey, great, people, go out and share your voices,” but it’s not going to affect the course of whether this project happens or not. So, I think there was a frustration with that. That was kind of the substance of a lot of the public comment.
But, like I said, I mean, there were lots of people there that were in favor of it. People, several local students from high school saying, “Hey, man, I would love to stay here in my home area of Las Cruces and have a place that I can work and that would pay well.”
So, it was a very intense meeting, a lot of emotions, a lot of shouting and applause and all that kind of stuff. And then at the end, after the county commissioners did approve it, which was at, 5 o’clock or something like that, the meeting started at 9, so it was quite a long day there in the chambers. They finally approved it. And then a lot of the opponents of the project, they stood up and they said, they kind of formed a line or a wall in the middle of the aisle. And they were shouting and several law enforcement officers had to kind of stand between them and the dais.
They were shouting at the county commissioners and calling them “sellouts” and things like that. At one point, they paused the meeting. And, so, one of the county commissioners, Manuel Sanchez, who represents Hatch, he came down to try to talk to some of the protesters or the opponents. And, I mean, they were kind of screaming in his face and shouting and laughing at him and stuff. So, it got very heated. And you understand the emotions. I think some of the opponents feel like, “Man, you guys are really selling out our water resources in exchange for some dollars,” right?
I think if you zoom out, you understand where the county commissioners were coming from. But, again, I think it also stemmed from the lack of – kind of a feeling that like, hey, we’re in a democracy, but do we really have any voice in whether this happens or not? I think there was some frustration about that.
Pablo: Yeah, this is going to significantly impact the lives of residents out there. It’s also going to impact us here, right? I mean, we’re sitting not too far from where the site is going to be. And it’s a $165 billion project just across the state line from here. How do you see Project Jupiter reshaping the economic and political relationship between Southern New Mexico and here in El Paso?
Diego: I guess an interesting point, a guy from the New Mexico Economic Development Department, he kind of went up and spoke about all the benefits and whatever. But one thing he said that caught my attention was that they expect most of the workers and people sort of associated with Project Jupiter to live here in El Paso. And, so, I thought that was kind of interesting. Like, they sort of accounted for that.
And, so, what that could mean for El Paso is, I think the average salaries for the 750 people are between $75,000 and $100,000. And I believe the El Paso metro area median wage is like $60,000. So, an uptick in average wages and more people living here. And I don’t know to what extent workers will come from elsewhere. Will it just be people from here who work there? But, it’s that kind of project where there will be a sizable benefit.
I think if you compare this, the employment numbers here versus a manufacturing plant or – like, San Antonio’s got the Toyota manufacturing plant that employs thousands, right? So, the employment numbers aren’t as big as, relative to the $165 billion investment. It’s not like, “Oh, we’re going to get thousands and thousands of jobs,” but it will be a lot of jobs. And maybe there’s like the multipliers they talk about where, when you have so many jobs, that supports other jobs in restaurants and whatever. So, I think there will be a real economic reverberation. And we’ll have to see how that plays out.
An interesting note is the El Paso businessman and the owner of Flo Networks, this fiber optic cable company, Miguel Fernandez, he’s very much involved in this as well. And, so, I think that there will be a pretty big impact on El Paso, particularly kind of the West side, right, and this area that’s right next to Sunland Park. I think it will have an impact on our economy.
And I’ll just mention, too, like I said at the top, I mean, this isn’t the only data center as well. You know, we have the Meta one, and we’ve got other data centers that are cropping up on the East side and in the Lower Valley. There are much smaller, probably not as many employment numbers, but there are other data centers. There probably will be more. Like I also mentioned, this company Ferveret is going to set up shop at this kind of, I think it’s like the innovation something at the airport, something the city’s doing for economic development, but they’re bringing this company here. They’re going to hire 30 workers and they work on data center cooling technology. So, I could see in a few years more data centers and more companies also that service and work within the data center industry. And I think that could have a really big impact on our economy that we look back on in five or 10 years and really see that play out.
BorderPlex Digital Assets included this rendering of Project Jupiter in a presentation to a legislative committee in New Mexico in July. (BorderPlex Digital Assets)
Pablo: Yeah, we’ll definitely be watching, right? So the vote was Friday. We’re sitting here not quite a week later. According to what you reported, you know, technically county commissioners still have, they have a 30-day period, right, where they can review this whole deal and they could technically decide to walk away, right? As you’ve alluded to, that’s probably not going to happen, right? But what are the key things to watch out for in the weeks ahead as that grace period concludes?
Diego: Yeah, one of the attorneys who works on behalf of Doña Ana County said basically that the county commissioners over there will get more information about the project between the time that they voted for this incentive deal and when it actually closes. And I think it’s a 30-day period. I don’t know that anything’s going to change as far as whether it’s, oh, there’s all of a sudden this about-face and they reject it. I don’t think that’ll happen at all. But maybe we’ll learn a little bit more.
I think what’ll happen is it’ll go ahead and proceed. And I believe they’re talking about the first steps of construction beginning in the fourth quarter this year, which we’re here, the fourth quarter is about to start here in October. So, in the next couple of months, we could see work maybe begin out at, I believe it’s a 1,400 acre site just north of the port of entry out there in the open desert near Santa Teresa. So, I expect to see the work proceed, and I think it’ll go through, towards the end of 2028. So, we could be here, three years from now, and it’ll be this multi-year construction period. And that’s most likely what I expect to see happen.
Kind of an interesting thing that could affect this is I mentioned CRRUA, the water utility over there that’s had all these issues. Well, it’s being split up. Doña Ana County is taking over the assets outside of Sunland Park. So, basically, that serve Santa Teresa industrial park and then the city of Sunland Park is forming its own municipal water utility. And, so, it’s kind of an acrimonious split. I don’t think that – I think Sunland Park and Doña Ana County kind of have some issues over governance and over the water issues. But, the point is there could be some complexities there that affect Project Jupiter in the near term.
There are still a lot of questions about when is this split really going to happen? What will it mean for customers, both commercial and residential? And also like the water supply agreement, CRRUA has agreed to supply water to the campus. So, I don’t know if that just means the county takes over that. Anyways, that’s kind of one of the outstanding questions is sort of what happens as this utility that serves the area is split up? But I’m sure, you know, they’ll figure it out. And, you know, I think we’ll see construction begin here pretty soon.
And I hope we can get information about it. That’s one of my concerns, is that now that this company has won approval, to what extent do they have to share anything until it’s up and running? I don’t know. They weren’t very forthcoming with the media as this process was going on and they were trying to win approval. So, I think we could see construction begin and it might just be a very quiet operation out there that just kind of proceeds and we don’t hear too much about.
Pablo: All right, Diego, you’ve walked us through a very complicated picture that has very significant ramifications for the future of the borderland for many years, right? I’ll cede the floor to you if there’s anything else you want to talk about that we haven’t. But yeah, let us know if there’s anything else going on with this project.
Diego: No, I mean, I appreciate you taking the time to chat with me about it, Pablo. And I just, it’s really interesting. And I think there are these questions about, are we seeing a bubble? We’re seeing this almost mind-boggling amount of investment in data centers around the country. I don’t know that I’ve seen a project bigger than the $165 billion project here just at one site. But I think there’s a lot of questions that will affect the whole country about this build out of AI data centers. Have we gone too far? At what point is too much? Also, how it’ll play out for the companies and whether it’ll be profitable and all that. Are we heading for another dot com bust? I think it’s a possibility, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see, and I’ll just do what I can to kind of get information out of the developers here.
Pablo: All right, Diego, well, thank you for the impactful work that you do. I have no doubt that you’re definitely a big part of the reason that so many people showed up to that meeting last week. And I know you’ll continue to follow this for development. So, I urge all our audience to tune into elpasomatters.org to follow your coverage as well as the rest of our staff. We’re definitely doing impactful work for the region of El Paso.
Diego: Thanks, Pablo.
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