Meta’s El Paso Data Center Will Use More Power Than the City + Southern New Mexico | Vince Perez

A $10 billion Meta facility. About 50 jobs. Up to 1.5 million gallons of water a day. More electricity than El Paso and southern New Mexico combined. Rep. Vince Perez connects two fights heading into the 90th Texas Legislature: property taxes and the data-center boom on the border. On taxes, he argues homestead exemptions and compression treat symptoms of a broken system — a 31-million-person state funded mainly by property and sales taxes — and uses a blunt example: if Elon Musk lived in your house, he would owe Texas the same property tax you do. On data centers: • Meta’s $10B El Paso project • OpenAI / Stargate just across the New Mexico line • Power and water strain in the desert • Tax incentives vs. almost no permanent jobs • Why residents are being asked to conserve while facilities are not Full interview on Texas Talks. Guest: State Rep. Vince Perez (HD 77 – El Paso) Follow: @VinceMPerez #Texas #DataCenters #PropertyTaxes #ElPaso #txlege #TexasTalks 🎧 Listen to Texas Talks Podcast: Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/texas-talks/id1724266544 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0gyiMe2gCmDsqXfbOp5tS4 Subscribe to our newsletter: https://thetexasdispatch.com/newsletter/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=bio&utm_campaign=capture 📱 Follow on Social Media X: @Texas_Dispatch Instagram: thetexasdispatch LinkedIn: The Texas Dispatch TikTok: texas_talks_podcast Find more at The Texas Dispatch Your source for state news, policy, and investigative journalism. https://thetexasdispatch.com/