By Sherry Robinson
All She Wrote
© 2026 New Mexico News Services

Can we have a rational discussion of data centers?

I was hoping this could happen in Socorro, where New Mexico Tech has agreed to consider participating in Green Data Center. Who better to look at the proposal than a place full of scientists and engineers?

What we’ve heard instead is so much hysteria that Congressman Gabe Vasquez urged Socorro County officials to approve a one-year moratorium on the project.

Data centers have become flashpoints all over the country. Nobody wants one because of their potential impacts, and yet they “power modern life—from telehealth and digital classrooms to banking, air travel, financial transactions, and online shopping,” said an official of The Data Center Coalition. “This infrastructure is not optional; it is foundational.”

The industry knows it has a bad track record and must do better. And if you listen through all the shouting, you might have heard companies make offers, besides jobs, that could greatly benefit the state.

Green Data, a Canadian company, wants to build a 10,000-acre data center and solar array in partnership with New Mexico Tech. CEO Jason Bak has said it would be the world’s largest “renewable-led” data center. Bak unveiled the project in March. Concerns soon erupted over water, energy demands and the environment.

Recently, locals packed Tech’s Macey Center for a town hall in which opponents repeatedly booed Jason Bak and Tech President Michael Jackson. For his part, Jackson tried to explain that all he did was agree to explore the proposal, according to El Defensor Chieftain, the local newspaper. The process could take a year and would examine all those issues already raised and a few more.

Bak candidly acknowledged public concerns and said he wants to create a “cleaner and smarter” data center than what the industry has built so far, and it involves 10 gigawatts of solar plus storage. Green Data would create water with atmospheric water generation; if that succeeds in Socorro it could become a global model and position Socorro as a center for commercialization.

OK, the idea of literally pulling water from desert air threw me, and it needs study, but such a concept is in Tech’s wheelhouse. It’s the kind of big idea that characterizes some of these data center proposals. In Las Cruces the developers of Project Jupiter abandoned natural-gas power in favor of costly fuel cells and promised to use non-potable water from a sod farm. In Gallup Teraplex Data Centers offered to run on wastewater. We shouldn’t dismiss these ideas without study, and we should keep an open mind.

Here’s another important statement from Bak: “I think it’s up to us to convey more information.”

Bingo!

These are massive projects, and they seemed to come out of nowhere with too little effort to communicate. It scares people.

I don’t think the developers are trying to deceive anybody, but there’s a lot of engineer-think here. Engineers, bless them, are wired to tinker and cogitate and calculate and try stuff until they solve a problem. But they’re not the best communicators.

I learned this the hard way as an electric utility spokesperson assigned to a promising geothermal project that crashed on poor communications and public opposition. The engineers believed they had a good project and didn’t need to explain it.

Project Jupiter is also guilty of poor communication, made worse with a dark-money campaign by something called Elevate New Mexico. Colorful mailers pushed recipients to contact county officials in support of the project, according to Source New Mexico. It backfired.

Lately, Project Jupiter developers have stepped out with real communications, reports independent journalist Heath Haussamen, who has bird-dogged the project from the beginning (see haussamen.com). Recently, they answered every single one of his questions, and he had many. That type of response goes a long way toward reassuring doubters.

In his reporting, Heath discloses that he is married to Rep. Sarah Silva, a Las Cruces Democrat who supports the project because it could raise economic boats in southern New Mexico. They must have some interesting conversations at the dinner table. Another supporter is fellow Democratic Rep. Nathan Small, who married Silva and Haussamen. I’ve long considered Silva and Small among the Legislature’s most sensible people on this and other issues. The two are pushing Project Jupiter to be greener and more transparent.

And that, I think, is the right move. These data centers will be built somewhere because it’s economic suicide to not build them, but we have some leverage.

Ask yourselves if you want your kids and grandkids to find jobs in New Mexico or keep leaving the state. If we want them here, we will figure out how to make data centers work, for the companies and for us.