Socorro County Pauses Data Centers for a Year After Residents Push Back on 10,000-Acre Project

The Socorro County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved a one-year moratorium on new data centers and their supporting infrastructure on June 9, Source NM reports. The vote followed months of opposition to a Canadian developer’s proposal for what it called one of the world’s largest renewable-led data centers, covering up to 10,000 acres with a massive solar array and atmospheric water generators meant to pull moisture from the air instead of draining local aquifers.

The week before the vote, New Mexico Tech’s president said the project, proposed in potential partnership with the university, was halted for now, largely because the school doesn’t own enough contiguous land, though he left the door open to future pitches from Green Data CEO Jason Bak. Source NM reported that Bak and Green Data have never successfully built a data center.

At a New Mexico Tech town hall in May, residents filled the campus auditorium holding signs that read "Big Data, Big Lie" and "NMT = No More Transparency," Source NM reported. Residents worry about large-scale industrial development blotting out the desert landscape, straining the electrical grid and draining aquifers. After the moratorium vote, Socorro resident Jon Hertz told commissioners he supports renewable development, but not projects that "gobble up our local resources for the sheer benefit of billionaires and large cities outside of New Mexico," Source NM reported.

Bak said residents’ skepticism reflects opposition to similar projects across the country. "But we’re not other projects all across the country," he said, Source NM reported. The moratorium also starts the process of forming an advisory committee of experts and residents to recommend regulations in a county that lacks zoning, and resident Michael Hanover urged leaders to stay open to responsible business.

The fight reflects a growing tension in New Mexico, which has pushed to diversify its economy beyond oil and gas. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced a $5 billion BorderPlex Digital campus in Santa Teresa in early 2025, the project now known as Project Jupiter, and Santa Fe County was weighing a data center moratorium of its own. Water is the pressure point: Lujan Grisham declared a statewide drought emergency on May 20, and a Western Resource Advocates estimate cited by Quartz found new data centers in five Interior West states, including New Mexico, could use about 7 billion gallons of water a year by 2035 for on-site cooling alone.

Well-regulated data centers could bring diversification and high-wage jobs. But mishandling them risks repeating an old pattern, with extractive industries delivering short-term gains and long-term costs to rural communities.

Editor’s note: Updated Oct. 31, 2026. This story is now part of Daily Reports, our New Mexico news roundup, and was revised to credit Source NM’s original reporting. Learn how Daily Reports works in our editorial standards.