New Mexico county officials approve process to consider data center moratorium

The Socorro County Board of Commissioners will consider a moratorium on data centers, following a unanimous vote Tuesday.

The vote, which commissioners took with no discussion, followed outcry by New Mexico residents over plans for a 10,000-acre data center. A vote on the actual moratorium, which would likely be temporary, will come after the commission holds public meetings and gathers feedback.

Residents first learned of the proposal in March, when Green Data CEO Jason Bak spoke to the Socorro Electric Cooperative Board of Trustees at a public meeting at which he unveiled plans to build in collaboration with New Mexico Tech the state’s largest data center. He said it would be the largest data center “in the world” that relies on alternative energy sources, including solar and nuclear power.

Since then, more than 1,000 residents have signed an online petition urging the county to adopt a moratorium on such development. Another petition opposing the development garnered more than 4,000 signatures.

“All this growth will do is make a few people rich,” Lemitar resident Allan Sauter said during Tuesday’s meeting, adding that he hoped the project wouldn’t proceed once any approved moratorium expires. “I hope it’s not like a vampire and it comes back again to haunt us.”

Green Data did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

At the March meeting with the electric co-op, as some residents at Tuesday’s meeting recalled, Bak said his company doesn’t “enter into a community unless we’re wanted.”

“If the community says no,” Bak said, “we’re out.”

“I think this proves he should leave,” Socorro County resident Jon Hertz said during Tuesday night’s meeting.

When the meeting began, commissioners modified the evening’s agenda so they could vote on the moratorium before hearing public comment from residents. Several people who addressed the commission from the podium said they had spent all day mulling over how to best urge the commission to vote in favor of the pause on development. Instead, many of them used their allotted public comment to thank the commission for its vote.

“It is so nice to see a county commission actually listen,” David Mooney, a Democratic write-in candidate running against incumbent state Rep. Rebecca Dow (R-Truth or Consequences), said in reference to allegations that Doña Ana County officials rushed their approval of Project Jupiter against the wishes of their constituents.

Cari Powell, a Democrat who’s running for the Socorro County Board of Commissioners, told Source NM after the meeting she thought “it went as well as it could go.”

“I want us to be in control and to be the ones who decide our destiny, not whoever has the most money,” she said. 

Opposition to the project resonated throughout the region. On Monday, a majority of elected leaders in nearby Magdalena passed a resolution opposing the proposed data center and associated solar project. In the resolution, leaders wrote that approving this development could have adverse effects on surrounding communities.

An Albuquerque lawmaker who traveled to the Socorro meeting Tuesday shared that sentiment.

New Mexico Sen. Harold Pope (D-Albuquerque), who is running in his party’s lieutenant governor primary, attended Tuesday’s meeting and thanked the commissioners for voting to advance the moratorium.

“The decisions you make don’t just impact Socorro. They impact our entire state,” Pope said. “When we say yes to development, it’s something that benefits our communities…I fear that this is the new extractive industry.”