Doña Ana County commissioners voted this week to send another notice of violation to developers behind Project Jupiter — the massive and controversial data center in Santa Teresa — for missing a deadline to submit a report on jobs at the site.
Oracle, STACK Infrastructure and Bloom Energy have yet to submit a quarterly report due Oct. 31 tracking their compliance with commitments to prioritize Doña Ana County workers.
“The job report is just one of those operational things. … We know when they have to be [submitted],” County Commission Chair Manny Sanchez said in an interview Thursday. “It would be an easy thing to follow through on, and so that’s part of where my frustration comes from.”
The failure to meet the Oct. 31 deadline for the jobs report violates the community benefits agreement established in the county’s decision in September 2025 to issue developers $165 billion in industrial revenue bonds.
The violation letter, approved by a unanimous vote Tuesday after an executive session, will mark the county’s second notification to the developers about a possible breach of their bond agreement.
The first was on Oct. 28, when county officials sent companies involved in Project Jupiter a letter regarding their plan to connect to the El Paso Electric grid for backup power and to offset customers’ utility costs associated with the deal. The industrial revenue bonds agreement requires Project Jupiter to be powered with electricity generated on site, using a system that is not connected to the grid. Since there was not yet a signed agreement with El Paso Electric, county officials defined the proposal as a “potential breach.”
“Announcements of plans to connect the Project Jupiter site to the El Paso Electric utility grid run counter to the stated intent in the IRBs and related documents for the Project to be self-powered through a micro-grid, and announcements of green energy projects somewhere else in New Mexico as some type of offset for emissions here does not reduce environmental impact within the County,” the letter states.
The delayed jobs report would be only the second the developers have submitted to the county. The first, posted on the county website Aug. 14, also was overdue and raised concern among the project’s opponents. It did not include demographic information about construction workers breaking ground at the site — important numbers for a data center that pledges economic impact and jobs for locals.
STACK Infrastructure has since made the job numbers available. A statement provided Thursday by spokesperson Nikki Wheeler said out of 5,000 workers at the site in October, 1,652 were New Mexico residents and 756 were from Doña Ana County.
STACK said the numbers have been submitted to the county, but commissioners maintain they have not received the report.
“STACK takes its commitments to Doña Ana County seriously. We value our ongoing dialogue with state and local officials regarding the quarterly jobs reporting requirements and appreciate the continued engagement,” the company said in a statement. “We remain focused on working collaboratively with the county and delivering meaningful economic benefits to the community.”
STACK did not respond toThe New Mexican’s questions about why the numbers were delayed.
Sanchez — emphasizing commissioners haven’t received official communication from Project Jupiter developers — said he had heard the delay stemmed from a discrepancy between the job statistics STACK had provided to the county versus those submitted to the state government.
The notice of the breach provides a “paper trail” in case the county decides to penalize the developers, Sanchez said. The letter notifying them of the violation is not yet available, as county officials had not yet finalized it, he added.
If the developers do not remedy the situation, the county could work with the state to withhold some of their tax breaks until they comply, Sanchez said. Ultimately, violations of the county deal could trigger a termination of the industrial revenue bond agreement.
“We’ll just see what happens, and if there’s any additional steps we need to take, but for us, it’s really important to show the public that we are holding them to account and to the requirements of the IRBs,” Sanchez said.
Julia Gentin is a reporter for The Las Cruces New Mexican, The Santa Fe New Mexican and Searchlight New Mexico through a partnership with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. She covers the Southern New Mexico region. Learn more about Report for America at reportforamerica.org.
