The Battle of Socorro, New Mexico and the Uprising Against AI Data Centers

If there is any place on the map that captures the depth of the global revolt over AI data centers, it might well be little Socorro County, New Mexico. Located astride the Rio Grande and almost smack dab in the center of New Mexico, at first glance, rural Socorro County seems an unlikely center for the rebellion.

But at a May town hall, matters of environment and climate change, gaping economic inequality and creeping oligarchy, local land use, legacies of the nuclear weapons age and space exploration, democratic governance and transparency, and then some all boiled over in a lively, memorable meeting fit for the history books.

The occasion was Canadian company Green Data’s proposal, in possible partnership with Socorro-based New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (better known as New Mexico Tech), to build a massive data center on 10,000-plus acres of land owned by the public university. Last January, unbeknownst to locals, the New Mexico Tech administration signed a letter of intent with Green Data to explore a possible deal.

In Spanish, Socorro means “help,” and in a fitting display of wordplay, data center opponents outside New Mexico Tech’s Macey Conference Center on May 19 distributed buttons and t-shirts with the words “S.O.S. Socorro.”

Interviewed inside the Macey Center as locals waited for the town hall to commence, resident Beaumont Chrismer immediately raised the water question that is unnerving Socorro and New Mexico, as drought emergencies are declared and supply restrictions implemented. Consequently, residents of Socorro County and across the Southwest are increasingly alarmed at the prospect of a hyperscale data center moving into their neighborhood. The facilities require water-often lots of it-to cool their systems.

“Water is life in the Southwest, as you know, and stocks of water have been continuously depleting due to drought,” Chrismer said.

James Boswell, who lives south of the village of San Antonio, described the Rio Grande near his home as “bone dry, just nothing but a sand box.”

Other reasons against siting a local data center voiced by speakers at the town hall included intrusions on sacred indigenous and historic Chicano lands, noise pollution, and health hazards from stirring up depleted uranium contamination originating from previous tests conducted by

“I’m very concerned about the dust that accumulated from the testing of depleted uranium in the area,” former Socorro resident Damacio Lopez said. Data center construction activities could result in exposures to workers and others, he contended. Lopez works with Veterans for Peace and is co-chair of the Uranium Weapons Working Group.

Victor Savedra urged officials to “respect our people who live on this land grant.”

Other attendees brought up the possibility of electronic interference from a data center to the National Science Foundation and National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Very Large Array (VLA), one of the world’s leading astronomical radio observatories, which consists of 27 radio antennas set in a Y-shaped field configuration about 50 miles west of Socorro.

Grower Cari Powell, who’s now the Democratic candidate for the Socorro County District 1 Commission seat, held aloft a big poster with a painting of a mushroom cloud accompanied by the words “Don’t Sacrifice Us Again,” in allusion to the first atomic bomb test that was conducted by the U.S. government about 40 miles to the southeast of Socorro in July 1945. Decades later, New Mexico is still witness to the generations of downwinders affected by the cancer-causing radiation fallout from the blast

The town hall was attended by about 200 people, while others connected online. Days prior to the meeting, New Mexico’s Alumni Association delivered a scathing statement opposing the proposed data center to their alma mater’s Board of Regents. As of June 5, a petition opposing a Socorro County data center had attracted 4,665 signatures on Change.org. According to the 2020 census, Socorro County had a population of 16,505 people.

As the town hall proceeded, farmers and ranchers, rednecks and longhairs, techies and townies all took a stand against a data center in their county.

On the defensive, New Mexico Tech President Michael Jackson (no relation to the King of Pop) insisted that he was performing his “due diligence” as the school’s leader by looking out for the financial health of New Mexico Tech at a time when the (Democratic-dominated) New Mexico State Legislature was telling the state’s institutions of higher learning that they must become more “self-sufficient” and “entrepreneurial,” and contribute to the Land of Enchantment’s economic development.

A partnership with Green Data was one opportunity for needed revenue that should be considered, Jackson asserted.  Despite a study that concluded New Mexico Tech was underfunded to the tune of $7 million, New Mexico’s lawmakers had failed to fund the gap, according to the university leader. Pending a lengthy consultation process with stakeholders and university officials, no contracts had been signed or a decision reached to move forward with the data center, Jackson insisted.

In attendance at the town hall, Green Data CEO Jason Bak attempted to convince locals that Green Data could operate in an environmentally friendly, technologically innovative and sustainable manner.

Until now, Green Data hasn’t developed a data center, but its chief executives count previous experience in varied corners of high tech, renewable energy and venture capital.  The company’s website lists the senior leadership team alongside Bak as Christy Swearingen (Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle), Simon Lee (Sapience Capital Partners, Infotech Venture Partners, Baker Capital and Equinix, among others), Jake Millan (Tesla), and Marina Ondarza (Google, Quantum Switch).

 For his part, Bak served a 17-year stint as CEO and Chairman of Finavera Renewables and Solar Alliance, according to the website.

“I understand where you are coming from. There’s a sign there that says ‘Big Data, Big Lie’,” Bak said, referring to a placard held by an attendee.  “You’re not wrong, you’re not wrong. And I think the opportunity here is to do something different, and that’s our intent.”

But the handwriting was on the wall. On June 2, New Mexico Tech President Michael Jackson announced that the Green Data project had been relegated to a long shelf, though he held out the possibility of a future data center deal.

“During the initial phase of this process, we identified several material considerations that led (New Mexico Tech and Green Data) to mutually conclude that proceeding under the current framework is not the right path at this time,” Jackson said in a statement.

Not letting their guard down, one group of residents quickly announced the formation of a non-profit organization to defend against any future data center and advocate for water protection and other issues dear to the heart of a rural community.

Photo: Kent Paterson.

The Specter of Project Jupiter/Stargate  

A noteworthy feature of the showdown in Socorro was mention of the giant Project Jupiter/Stargate data center currently under construction about two-and-a-half hours to the south in the U.S-Mexico border community of Santa Teresa, New Mexico. Instead of the model for AI and economic development, Project Jupiter/Stargate developers promoted in the lead-up to the groundbreaking last year, the Santa Teresa example is increasingly viewed as something to avoid, as was voiced at the Socorro town hall.

Greenlighted by the Doña Ana County Commission amid robust public opposition last September, the hyperscale AI data center under development for Oracle and OpenAI was vigorously pitched by developers and supporters, including the New Mexico Economic Development Department, as a boon to local jobs and tax revenues. Boosters even framed it as a game-changer for a perpetually struggling and poor county.

While the construction phase of the project has provided jobs to many out-of-state contractors and workers, controversy continues to swirl around anticipated water usage and still ungranted state air quality permits for the energy sources needed to power the big complex. Recently, “wanted” posters of the four county commissioners who approved tax incentives for Project Jupiter/Stargate were spotted on the New Mexico State University campus in Las Cruces

A lawsuit filed by the New Mexico Environmental Law Center (NMELC) in New Mexico State District Court seeks to void the ordinances approved by the Doña Ana County Commission last year that facilitated the Santa Teresa development.

Daisy Maldonado, a leading critic of Project Jupiter/Stargate, won the June 2 Democratic primary for a Doña Ana County Commission seat.

Sustained public opposition to two upcoming data centers in neighboring El Paso, Texas, is likewise a big story in the borderland. One facility is for Meta, while the second one- still in a planning phase- involves an expected partnership between the U.S. Department of Defense and the Carlyle Group to build a data center for the U.S. Army at Ft. Bliss.

Like the Project Jupiter/Stargate battle, El Paso activists oppose the data centers because of strains on water resources in a drought-stricken region as well as the new air pollutant emissions from fossil fuel-powered plants needed to keep the data centers buzzing. Together with neighboring Ciudad Juárez, a hop, skip and a jump across the US-Mexico border, El Paso and Doña Ana County form the binational Paso del Norte region, which already ranks as one of the most polluted airsheds in North America.

Following weeks of public meetings and grassroots organizing by groups, including the Sembrando Esperanza Coalition and the Amanecer Peoples Project, the El Paso City Council voted unanimously on May 26 to not actively recruit, pursue, or incentivize future hyperscale data centers. Additionally, future hyperscale tax centers are now barred from receiving tax abatements, rebates, permit fee waivers, public financing assistance, economic development grants, or similar economic development tools, according to the measure.

However, efforts to halt the Meta data center, which has a legal agreement with the City of El Paso and is fast under construction, face an uphill battle.

Far Reaching Movements Sweep the Globe

Uprisings against heat-generating data centers come on the heels of last year’s report by the World Meteorological Organization that rated the period between 2015 and 2025 as the hottest 11 years on the planet, prompting UN General-Secretary António Guterres to warn of a state of climate emergency. “Planet Earth is being pushed beyond its limits,” Guterres said. Every key climate indicator is flashing red.”  As a weather-altering El Niño system develops in the Pacific Ocean, predictions abound of an even hotter year in store for 2026.

Socorro, New Mexico and the binational Paso del Norte are two fronts in an escalating fight over rapidly expanding data centers that stretches from coast-to-coast in the U.S. and across oceans to several continents. The NMELC noted that grassroots community and labor activism around data centers has sprouted up in North America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America.

According to the environmental law advocates, the burgeoning global activism spells “something the AI industry would prefer not to acknowledge-that AI is neither an unstoppable force nor beyond democratic contestation, and that people across every continent are willing to challenge its supposed inevitability.”

U.S. battles unfolding at the local, state and federal levels range from campaigns for construction moratoria or outright bans on data centers to zoning restrictions and prohibitions on public tax support for private developers. In the June 2 California primary election, voters in Monterey Park, California, overwhelmingly passed a ban on data centers in their community.

On June 3, New Year state lawmakers passed a one-year data center moratorium; it remains to be seen if Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul vetoes the bill, as Maine Governor Janet Mills did with a similar measure earlier this year.

“Modern hyperscale data centers are a new and unregulated industrial sector,” Bridge Rauch, environmental justice organizer for the Clean Air Coalition of Western New York, was quoted in Inside Climate News. Time is needed to “develop and pass local and state regulations,” Rauch added.

Though grassroots opposition to data centers is gaining traction across the nation, pushback is also growing from pro-industry forces.

In the U.S. Congress, meanwhile, Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have proposed legislation enacting a national moratorium on data center construction until environmental, consumer and community safeguards are established.

Further, Sanders advocates that the U.S. government take a 50 percent ownership stake in the big AI companies as well as create a sovereign wealth fund that would distribute the profits of AI to the citizenry at large.

“Artificial intelligence will almost certainly be the most transformational technology in the history of the world. It will profoundly affect the life of every man, woman and child in our country,” Sanders wrote.  “It will bring — and is already bringing — unimaginable changes to our economy, our democracy, our emotional well-being, our environment and how we educate and raise our children…”

Taken together and viewed in a historical lens, the new grassroots movements sprouting up in response to date centers and AI are as potentially consequential as the labor movements of yore that rose up during an earlier industrial revolution and, while much unfinished business is left over from that epoch, gained the eight hour day, restrictions on child labor, safety regulations, social security and pensions, and steps toward gender and racial equity and empowerment.

Stay tuned to more developments in an issue that’s defining the future of the Southwest, the United States and the world.