By Lorien House
El Paso Matters
June 17, 2026
All over the United States, people are protesting new data centers because of obvious harms: energy consumption, water use and contamination, waste (including vast quantities of e-waste), air, light and noise pollution.
But people also are upset because of lack of transparency, and the coercive way these projects are forced on communities. Project Jupiter, the massive Oracle/OpenAI data center planned in Doña Ana County, followed the usual secretive agenda. The New Mexico Environmental Law Center has already brought two lawsuits against the county related to the project’s blatant lack of transparency. …