DOÑA ANA COUNTY — The Doña Ana County Commission authorized $165 billion in industrial revenue bonds for Project Jupiter, a data center under construction in southern New Mexico, following a four-to-one vote in September. State representatives and one county commissioner raised objections regarding transparency and water resources.

Project Jupiter is a data center facility spanning 1,400 acres, with Oracle and OpenAI scheduled as its primary tenants. Developers of the project acquired existing water rights from a sod farm located west of Sunland Park, New Mexico. New Mexico State Engineer Elizabeth Anderson said, "What's happening with Project Jupiter is they're just taking a water right that exists, and using it for something else, having a data center. And it's not gonna be taking water away from farmers."

State Representative Micaela Lara Cadena said that commissioners had less than 30 days to review the bond proposal before the vote. Cadena said, "I, like so many of the constituents I represent, were very surprised to see that our county commission here in Doña Ana was taking a $165 billion vote on a proposal that we knew about for less than a month." She also claimed developers presented an ultimatum to the commission, stating, "They said, 'If you don't vote yes today we're going somewhere else.' And our county commission bowed to that pressure."

Commissioner Susana Chaparro cast the singular dissenting vote against the bond authorization. Chaparro said, "Most of us got excited about this huge data center coming in with all this money that was going to be thrown around without really thinking: what is it going to look like in one year? What is it gonna look like in three, five, 20, 30 years? I don't think that was thought out."

Developers initially estimated a daily water requirement of one million gallons. They later changed the facility's power generation method from natural-gas turbines to fuel cells. The updated operational plan now estimates the facility will use 11 million gallons of non-potable water within closed-loop recycling systems.

Doña Ana County has a 25% child poverty rate and maintains 40 informal border settlements that lack paved roads, sewer infrastructure, and public transit. The facility site is located approximately six miles from the New Mexico-Texas border. Industrial revenue bonds are designed to grant tax abatements to commercial entities without creating municipal debt.