New Mexico Project Jupiter data center faces water and air permit challenges, legal and congressional scrutiny
U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury has requested a public accounting of water sources for the Project Jupiter data center in southern New Mexico, following New Mexico Supreme Court orders that temporarily halted some water use and paused an air quality permit hearing. The project, developed by Yucca Growth Infrastructure and supported by Oracle, faces allegations of state law violations regarding water well approval and premature air quality permitting.
U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury has formally requested that several New Mexico state agencies provide a transparent public accounting of the water sources and permits designated for the Project Jupiter data center, currently under construction in southern New Mexico. This request follows two unanimous New Mexico Supreme Court orders issued Sunday night. One order temporarily ceased some water usage for the data center's construction, while the other paused a pending air quality permit hearing.
The Supreme Court's actions were prompted by allegations from environmental groups. The Center for Biological Diversity claimed the Office of the State Engineer unlawfully approved an emergency well drilling without public notice or hearing. Separately, the clean energy group New Energy Economy argued that the air quality permit hearing was premature, given that the pipeline intended to power the data center's fuel cell system has not yet cleared federal regulatory processes.
Stansbury highlighted significant public outrage regarding the project's approval without adequate community information, emphasizing concerns about water viability, land use, and taxpayer dollars, particularly in the context of the Rio Grande's depletion and New Mexico's compliance with the Texas v. New Mexico and Colorado water settlement. Oracle, representing Project Jupiter, expressed sorrow for the impact on a local sod farm affected by the water use halt and reiterated its commitment to responsible water stewardship, including closed-loop cooling and a partnership for water conservation in the Rio Grande-Bravo watershed. They also stated confidence in the thoroughness of the NMED's air-permitting process.
Further complicating the process, the hearing officer for Project Jupiter's air quality permit hearing, Max Shepherd, recused himself after attorneys from the New Mexico Environmental Law Center and the Center for Biological Diversity sought his disqualification. This came after Shepherd initially rescheduled the hearing in favor of the developer's timeline, despite earlier reservations about the case's complexity and the NMED's deadline.