Text and Photos by Kent Paterson
Since last summer, the hyperscale AI data center under construction in Santa Teresa has been promoted under different names and by varied corporate structures. What began as Project Jupiter was later revealed to be part of Project Stargate, the $500 billion national AI data center expansion rolled out by OpenAI, Oracle, Softbank and President Trump, whose names were not mentioned as associates in public meetings sponsored by Project Jupiter promoters in the lead up to a key Doña Ana County Commission vote September 19 that facilitated the data center.
More recently, signs that read Project Miner appeared at the entrance to the Santa Teresa construction site, located about 3.6 miles from Santa Teresa’s residential section and right off NM Highway 136 close to the international port of entry. The construction project is headed by Clayco, Inc. of St. Louis, Missouri, and involves Kiewit Corporation.
On September 18, 2025, the day before the Doña Ana County Commission voted in favor of tax exemptions to land Project Jupiter/Stargate, Clayco and Kiewit submitted to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) a notice of intent for a construction stormwater permit at the Santa Teresa site. According to the applicants, 600 acres would be disturbed, with the period of construction stretching from October 1, 2025 to December 31, 2027.
Along with the application, Clayco/Kiewit sent EPA an August 2025 Endangered Species Habitat Assessment prepared by aci environmental services, an environmental consulting firm with offices in Austin and the Denver area.
The assessment found no threatened or endangered species present on the planned construction site. Nonetheless, the passage in the vicinity of endangered Mexican gray wolves has been noted in recent years. The assessment sizes the construction project area in question as 789 acres.
Common animals living in this stretch of the Chihuahuan Desert include rabbits, coyotes, gray foxes, peccaries, skunks, roadrunners and quail, among others.
After a 14-day review period, EPA issued the solicited permit to the builders effective October 2, 2025. The permit is contained in EPA records as NPDES ID NMR1007GT.
https://permitsearch.epa.gov/epermit-search/ui/search
Among other regulatory requirements, the data center operators must obtain air quality permits from the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED). After months of back-and-forth between NMED and data center promoters, developers submitted two air quality permit applications November 14 to NMED seeking authorization for two energy microgrids that will utilize natural gas to power the data center.
The lengthy permit applications, together constituting hundreds of pages, were submitted by Trinity Consultants on behalf of Austin-based Acoma LLC, an outfit which lists the same street address as Borderplex Digital Assets, the original promoters of the Santa Teresa data center and whose leaders include former New Mexico Economic Development Cabinet Secretary Alicia Keyes and El Paso-Juarez businessman Miguel Fernandez, among others. The application lists Acoma LLC as the operator of the microgrids and Doña Ana County as the owner.
Obtained from NMED under the New Mexico Inspection of Public Records Act, the air permit applications contain information about estimated emissions, power capacities and more. Information is redacted about the specific model of turbines the developers plan to use in the microgrids, which are described as year-round, 24-7 operations.
Two letters from Trinity Consultants and signed by Principal Consultant Jesse Lovegreen, one for each microgrid and both dated November 14, request that NMED “maintain the confidentiality of specific air turbine models” identified in the applications for 60 days from the date of submission so business transactions aren’t adversely affected and “confidential business information” covered by New Mexico law is protected.
In payment of a state fee, a $500 Western Union money order accompanied each application. The applications contained evidence of bilingual Spanish-English public notifications of the permit applications that were posted or mailed in November to various persons and entities in Doña Ana and El Paso counties, including local governments and nearby property owners. A relevant public service announcement was aired on local country radio station 96.3 KHEY (IHeartMedia) and a notice published in the Las Cruces Sun News (Gannett).
Estimates of air pollutants that will be produced by the microgrids that were printed on the public notices have garnered increasing public attention, especially the estimate that more than 14 million tons of greenhouse gases could be emitted every year. A December 5 story in Source New Mexico compared that number to the emissions of the New Mexico cities of Las Cruces and Albuquerque.
The applications, however, did not mention notices sent to neighbors in Ciudad Juárez and San Jerónimo, the border development just across the international line from Santa Teresa that hosts the huge Foxconn electronics plant which employs thousands of Mexican workers.
Data center construction proceeds on a site overlooking parts of Santa Teresa, the West Side and Upper Valley of El Paso, the city of Sunland Park and the adjacent Ciudad Juárez colonia of Anapra, all of which form part of a multistate and binational air basin already suffering chronic, severe air pollution.
Scientifically and politically, researchers and policymakers in both the U.S. and Mexico have recognized the existence of binational airsheds, expressed in accords like the 1983 La Paz environmental agreement between the two nations, the U.S-Mexico Border 2025 environmental program and the Joint Advisory Committee for the Improvement of Air Quality in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, El Paso, Texas and Doña Ana County, New Mexico, more commonly known as the JAC.
Founded in 1996, the JAC is made up of Mexican and U.S. members representing government, academia and civil society. Per binational agreement, the group meets quarterly, issuing reports on the state of air quality in the Paso del Norte region and making recommendations to policy makers on how to improve the health of a shared airshed.
A hybrid JAC meeting conducted from the New Mexico Border Authority in Santa Teresa is scheduled to begin at 11 am on Thursday, December 11. The data center and common airshed are not on the official agenda, but a public comment section is part of the meeting.
https://www.cccjac.org/92nd-meeting.html
As for the data center’s microgrid applications, a NMED spokesperson said agency staff are still in the process of reviewing the submissions. Stay tuned.