A section of the Silver City newspaper residents typically gloss over contained some big news Aug. 27.
A legal notice in the Silver City Daily Press informed more eagle-eyed readers of Site Layer 1, LLC’s plans to build a data center on the rural southern edge of Grant County, near Hachita and Playas.
Residents and environmental nonprofits immediately began organizing, voicing concerns about the data center’s ecological footprint and its secretive process.
“Obviously, transparency is a big issue. The fact that we don’t really know much about this proposal — pretty much all we know is what is in the public notice — is a huge concern to people,” Allyson Siwik, executive director of the Gila Resources Information Project, said in an interview.
The community’s quick response, however, seems to have drawn the attention of state regulators.
“Due to the overwhelming public response to the company’s public notice,” Environment Department Cabinet Secretary James Kenney emailed the potential applicants Friday that “meeting minimum requirements as you have with the air quality permit application notice is insufficient community engagement for a data center project.”
Courtesy Franky DeAngelis
The Grant County project is just the latest data center to be proposed in Southern New Mexico. It comes as State Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard shot down a secret solar-powered data center at Spaceport America on Thursday, and as construction continues at the Santa Teresa site of the massive and controversial Project Jupiter.
“We fit that demographic of rural, remote, not a lot of stuff happening, that data centers seem to be geared towards lately,” said Silver City resident Oly Perez.
The facility could face local legal roadblocks: Grant County Commissioner Nancy Stephens is proposing a one-year data center moratorium, based on Socorro County’s recent ordinance, which she told The New Mexican she hopes to place it on the commission’s Sept. 24 agenda. A couple of other counties, including Sierra and Santa Fe, have passed similar moratoriums this year.
The public notice provided scant information, listing pollutants and noting that Site Layer 1 planned to submit an air quality permit application to the state Environment Department by Oct. 1.
“There hadn’t been, as far as we know, any discussions with local politicians, and there certainly haven’t been any public announcements,” said Todd Schulke, co-founder and senior staff member of the Center for Biological Diversity. “It came out of the blue.”
In his Friday email, Kenney urged developers to provide “the names and dates of the elected and government officials, as well as community leaders, who you met with prior to filing this notice. Please share all community presentations as well.”
Kenney also instructed the applicants to “significantly bolster their local community engagement efforts going into the next phase of the permitting process,” Drew Goretzka, a spokesperson for the department, wrote in an email.
Environmental concerns
The company’s address — the only point of contact provided to the public for the project — is an empty floor of an office tower in midtown Manhattan in New York. It is the same address that is listed on the LinkedIn page of the multibillion dollar investment firm Corner Venture Capital.
According to the public notice, the facility could consume about 2.3 million cubic feet of natural gas every hour — enough gas to power 900 homes for a year. Its annual carbon emissions would be equivalent to those of about 282,600 cars.
“Of specific concern are the greenhouse gas emissions listed in the project’s public notice,” Goretzka wrote. “While NMED does not currently have the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, the level of emissions identified in the public notice is contrary to New Mexico’s climate goals.”
Water use was not addressed in the notice, but Siwik estimated the data center could use as much as 6,500 acre-feet of water from the Hachita Basin. No application for water rights has been filed with the Office of the State Engineer, Siwik added.
The data center is set to be on Hurt Cattle Co. Ranch, a historic, family-owned operation spanning almost 35 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border toward Hachita. Located on a mix of private, federal and state land, the remote ranch runs parallel to the Alamo Hueco Mountains.
Siwik said the area is prone to dust storms — which could carry any pollution generated toward other communities in the region — and also features “some of the darkest skies in the area. We have in Hidalgo County some astronomy observation facilities that rely on dark sky resources, so that’s an impact.”
The natural gas-powered facility would be adjacent to the Continental Divide Trail as well as the Kinder-Morgan El Paso Natural Gas Pipeline System.
“Is it a coincidence that it’s two miles from the El Paso natural gas pipeline? I don’t think so,” Schulke said.
‘We don’t really know much’
After reading the Aug. 27 public notice, Schulke and Siwik immediately got to researching who was behind the mysterious facility.
Through U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings, they traced similarly named projects — Site Layer 2 in Logan County, Colo., and Site Layer 4 in Platte County, Wyo. — to the same authorizing individual: David Katz, director of legal for Corner Venture Capital.
Site Layer 1 filed with the state on Feb. 5 as a foreign limited liability company originating in Delaware.
Although the public only learned about the data center’s existence on Aug. 27, conversations with developers started over a year ago, Lawrence Hurt of Hurt Cattle Co. said in a phone call Tuesday. He named these developers as Granite Renewables — a company also connected to Site Layers 2 and 4 — but declined to comment further.
Granite Renewables originally reached out to the Environment Department in December, Goretzka said. It is not clear how Corner Venture Capital and Granite Renewables are connected — neither company responded to The New Mexican’s calls and emails.
Blake Marcus, director of operations at Granite Renewables, gave a presentation as “project developer” for Site Layer 4 in Wyoming, and spoke in support of Site Layer 2 in Colorado. His brother, Ian Marcus, is the founder and CEO of Granite Renewables.
And their mother, Julie Marcus, works for SWCA Environmental Consultants, which is listed as a consultant on the Grant County Granite Renewables Project.
Granite Renewables has not submitted an air quality permit application to the state, Goretzka wrote in an email. The department will not know the specifics of the project until that application is submitted.
“The overwhelming feeling is that things are moving too fast without proper evaluation of how it can impact us,” Perez said. “The permit application very clearly stated the standard operating for this is 24-7, 365, 52 weeks a year. So it would be a constant to our environment. … Give us a second just to even evaluate if this is something that we want.”
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.
