The desert is being bid out, one gigawatt at a time.
Every data center project in the region — contested, planned, and past — with the water, power, and subsidy facts on the record, and the tools to keep them there.
Tracked
— projects · ~16 GW of proposed demandFrom a 5 MW Kmart retrofit in Raton to a 7 GW gas-and-nuclear campus in Lea County
Where
Santa Teresa → El Paso → statewideThe Doña Ana / El Paso corridor alone carries ~6.5 GW of projected new demand across three campuses
The pattern
Gas turbines + desert aquifers + decades of tax abatementMarketed as “water neutral,” “self-contained,” and “the biggest taxpayer” — the record below tests each claim
Core message
A press release is not a permit. “Water neutral” is not a water budget. A land option is not a project. A feasibility study is not consent. For every claim, ask for the enforceable document, the underlying data, the named decision-maker, and the consequence for noncompliance.
Key dates
Decision windows open now
Sep 14 2026
NMED public hearing on Project Jupiter’s air-quality permits (gas turbines) — moved up from October at the developers’ request.
Nov 23 2026
NMED deadline to decide Project Jupiter’s air permit applications — the permit drew 7,000+ public comments.
Jan 2027
New Mexico legislative session — Reps. Micaela Lara Cadena (D-Mesilla) and Angelica Rubio (D-Las Cruces) say they will file a statewide data center moratorium bill.
Moratorium & rules tracker
Who has hit pause
Socorro County1-year moratorium on data centers & related energy infrastructure — unanimous, after months of resident opposition
Adopted · Jun 2026
City of El PasoData center policy framework — not a ban, but a higher bar for building inside city limits
Adopted · Jul 2026
City of RatonMoratorium on data center licenses/zoning — vote postponed pending legal review of the Atterix MOU
Postponed · Jun 2026
State of New MexicoStatewide moratorium bill promised for the January 2027 session; Republican legislators are pushing back
Announced · Aug 2026
Doña Ana CountyU.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez has publicly called on the county to adopt its own data center moratorium
Live fights with open permits, open dockets, or open council votes. These are the ones where showing up still changes the outcome.
Planned & announced
Announced, optioned, or rumored — mostly pre-permit. The best time to get the paper trail started is before the deal is signed.
Past — beaten, built, or operating
How earlier fights ended, and the operating baseline the new gigawatt campuses are measured against.
The linked city — Eagle Mountain, Utah
Outside the borderland, but connected: the Utah boomtown whose data-center playbook — and the two city managers who ran it — traveled to Las Cruces. Tracked in Private Eye: Island Boyz.
What this is — and is not
A resident’s directory for lawful, on-the-record oversight of every data center project in the region — one consistent file per project.
Not affiliated with any developer, utility, or agency — and not legal advice.
The three biggest fights each have a full field companion (question bank, notecard builder, answer tracker, records templates): Project Jupiter, Project Seafox, and Project Bliss.
Facts current as of August 12, 2026, compiled from the cited public reporting and records in each project file. Figures like water use and megawatts are the maximums disclosed so far — send a records request before treating any of them as final.