DAVID FOLKENFLIK, HOST:
One of the largest data centers in the country is rising from the scrub desert of southern New Mexico. Most of the officials in Dona Ana County are agog at the jobs and the investment the megaproject has promised to bring. But many locals are asking, can chile and pecan farming coexist with Project Jupiter? John Burnett reports.
JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: The scale of Project Jupiter befuddles the brain. At 1,400 acres, it could swallow New York's Central Park. The nearly 2 1/2 gigawatts of electricity it plans to generate could power more than half of New Mexico. And if they reach $165 billion in investment capital, that's enough for 40 Artemis moon shots. Where did these clever comparisons come from? AI, of course. But as they might say down in Dona Ana County, you can't water pecans with data.
EDDIE ESTRADA: I have a little plot of land out here. Grow some pecans.
BURNETT: Eddie Estrada raises pecans, pistachios and sheep when he's not at his job at the state capitol.
E ESTRADA: Well, I had 28 trees, but due to the water shortage, many of them died.
BURNETT: Today, the Lower Rio Grande is a river of sand most of the year. A searing drought, low snowpack and climate change mean that Estrada has to keep drilling his well deeper as the water table drops. Data centers typically require a lot of water to cool their server farms around the clock, and Project Jupiter is six miles from his property near the New Mexico-Texas border.
E ESTRADA: But being that we're in drought and then to allow a project like this to use that much water, the fear is that we're going to run out. And not only for us that live here, but the farmers.
BURNETT: Project Jupiter's tenants will be global tech giants Oracle and OpenAI. What sets it apart from most of the 3,000 new data centers being planned or built in the U.S. is its gargantuan size, the fact that it will generate its own electricity, and its remote location smack dab in the Chihuahuan Desert. With neighbors souring on data centers across the U.S., Jupiter has mounted a charm offensive.
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: Have you seen what's happening in Dona Ana County? Project Jupiter's a better kind of data center.
BURNETT: Jupiter's developers say they've bought existing water rights to cool its acres of hard drives and routers. New Mexico state engineer Elizabeth Anderson says it will not be a water hog.
ELIZABETH ANDERSON: 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 going to be taking water away from farmers.
BURNETT: No one is sure how much groundwater the hyperscale data center will need. The numbers keep changing. One newspaper report said it would need a million gallons a day. Then Oracle announced a switch from natural gas turbines to fuel cells. They use far less water and have lower emissions. Now Oracle says the data center and fuel cells together will use about 11 million gallons of non-potable water, which will be recycled. But lots of folks remain skeptical, chiefly because of the way the venture - the biggest in state history - was presented by the Dona Ana County Commissioners last fall. State representative Micaela Lara Cadena, whose district is in the county, attended that meeting.
MICAELA LARA CADENA: I, like so many of the constituents I represent, were very surprised to see that our county commission here in Dona Ana was taking a $165 billion vote on a proposal that we knew about for less than a month.
BURNETT: The commissioners were voting on whether to issue industrial revenue bonds that would save the project billions in local property taxes.
CADENA: At least delay this vote by a month. Give us more time to get some answers to these really critical questions. They said, if you don't vote yes today, we're going somewhere else. And our county commission bowed to that pressure.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Commissioner Gameros?
GLORIA GAMEROS: Yes.
BURNETT: One by one, four of the five commissioners voted yes.
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UNIDENTIFIED COMMISSIONER: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Sellout.
UNIDENTIFIED COMMISSIONER: The motion does carry.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Recall.
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: Recall. Recall. Recall.
BURNETT: Then all hell broke loose.
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UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: Recall.
UNIDENTIFIED COMMISSIONER: Thank you.
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: Do recall.
BURNETT: Today, nine months later, popular resistance to Project Jupiter seems to have grown. The lone commissioner who voted no is Susana Chaparro. We talk over tostadas compuestas at her unofficial office - a booth at Nopalito Cafe.
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BURNETT: Chapparo is still seeking answers. How much water will they actually use? How big will the permanent workforce be? And will the AI bubble burst and leave the county with a giant empty warehouse?
SUSANA CHAPARRO: 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.
BURNETT: Just then, a woman sitting in the booth behind us, who'd overheard our interview, stands up and chimes in. She gives her name as Ruby Estrada and says she's an environmental consultant.
RUBY ESTRADA: Well, this is a desert, and not a lot of water comes our way. So the idea of a data center is just kind of wild, and it really makes me think that people are not listening to the land itself.
BURNETT: Dona Ana County does need investment with low incomes, high unemployment and 1 in 4 children experiencing poverty. What's more, 40 colonias along the border need paved roads, sewers and public transportation. Project Jupiter is promising to create hundreds of high-tech jobs, and in lieu of taxes, the developers have pledged $410 million for schools and local infrastructure and $12 million annually to the county budget.
MANNY SANCHEZ: We've never had that type of money here in Dona Ana County.
BURNETT: Manny Sanchez, chairman of the county commission, thinks the data center will be transformative.
SANCHEZ: This isn't, by any means, going to completely, like, fund us for everything, but it's going to allow us to be able to start doing more for our residents in ways that we have never done before.
BURNETT: There's a new twist to the Project Jupiter saga. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court approved a sweeping settlement that requires New Mexico to buy up water rights and retire 9,200 acres of irrigated farmland. That will leave more water in the Lower Rio Grande for Texas, which sued. So is this the right time to welcome a major new water user? Edward Ogaz grows 500 acres of chiles down here and is president of the New Mexico Chile Association.
EDWARD OGAZ: I've got to say, it's not going to really affect us in the long run. And if they've done their permitting process, I think it works. I think it's good for Dona Ana County.
BURNETT: But another big grower, who asked that we not use his name, told me, we're taking land out of production, yet we can give them all the water they want? I have a hard time with that.
For NPR News, I'm John Burnett in southern New Mexico. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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