As Project Jupiter – one of the most notorious data center projects in the country – makes another attempt to get air quality permits, environmental organization Food & Water Watch released a new report making the urgent case for a statewide moratorium on data centers and their development. 

The new report is released alongside new, shocking aerial photos that reveal the scale of Project Jupiter.  

“Seeing Project Jupiter from above allowed me to see in stark detail how large this facility is proposed to be. It is almost unfathomable how large the property is,” said Food & Water Watch Rural Organizing Manager Alexa Reynaud. “It also revealed that Project Jupiter is not “in the middle of nowhere” as the developers want us to believe but instead is being built near homes, schools, parks and more. The AI data center boom is having major impacts on surrounding communities and our environment and we must halt this buildout before it’s too late.”

Project Jupiter is just one example of the impacts that data centers are already having on New Mexico – a problem that will only get worse as more projects get proposed and approved across the state. 

Food & Water Watch’s report outlines how: 

1. Data centers consume a mind-boggling amount of energy with just one hyperscale data center built for AI potentially consuming as much energy as two million households. 
   • Project Jupiter is anticipated to use enough electricity to power over two million homes and release extremely dangerous pollutants into surrounding communities. Further, the facility’s most recent air quality permit notice estimates Project Jupiter’s microgrid would emit 10 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions – equivalent to two million cars’ average annual mileage. 
2. Data centers will pass costs onto ratepayers. 
   • A new proposed power plant intended to power one of Meta’s data center expansion projects is expected to cost $500 million – and El Paso Electric plans to eventually pass those costs onto consumers. 
3. Data centers will threaten New Mexico’s already strained water resources. 
   • By 2028, US data centers could use as many as 720 billion gallons of water annually just to cool servers, enough water for 18.5 million households. Data centers also pose water quality concerns, which threatens to exacerbate years of contamination in the community surrounding Project Jupiter.  

“We are already being affected by Project Jupiter’s construction,” said Jose Saldana, a community member and organizer with Fight Chihuahuan Desert Xtraction who also joined the flyover.“They’re polluting the air by not keeping the dust down. We’re already seeing the property taxes and water bills increase. And we’re not going to be benefiting from any of this. Supposedly the developers are going to give New Mexico residents all of these jobs but we saw very few New Mexico license plates in the parking lots when we flew over. We need help from the people of New Mexico to stop this project.”