A New Mexico county's approval of $165 billion of industrial revenue bonds and other measures for a massive data center project has spurred litigation.
Lawsuits were filed this month in state court claiming the Doña Ana County Board of Commissioners failed to follow local and state law when it
Nonprofit organization Empowerment Congress of Doña Ana County and local residents are seeking a court order invalidating the board's adoption of the ordinances from the Third Judicial District Court in Las Cruces. The plaintiffs also filed a
"The board considered an application that failed to provide a clear and detailed picture of Project Jupiter's impacts to Doña Ana County and its residents, yet the board nonetheless pushed this project onto our communities," Kacey Hovden, a staff attorney with the New Mexico Environmental Law Center, who is representing the plaintiffs, said in a statement.
Another lawsuit, filed by a county resident, challenges the board's bond approval before the project had gone through the planning and zoning commission,
The county and BorderPlex Digital Assets, the data center's developer, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The taxable IRBs issued by Doña Ana County for the construction and equipping of four data centers, along with micro-grid power generation and battery storage facilities, were to be privately placed with recently created companies involved in the development. The debt issuance acts as a conduit to provide the project with a variety of tax breaks
With IRBs totaling up to $165 billion, the Doña Ana County development drew attention amid a continued nationwide stampede of proposed data centers, including projects in other states with similar bond-linked tax-break programs that gained approval for $10 billion or more of bonds.
Residents in New Mexico's second-most-populous county raised environmental concerns, including the project's impact on scarce water resources, ahead of the bonds' approval on Sept. 19.
