In arid New Mexico, a massive data center campus promises jobs, but residents fear it will drain their most precious resource: water.
Editor’s Note: This story is a collaboration between High Country News and Puente News Collaborative, a bilingual nonprofit newsroom, convener, and funder dedicated to high-quality, fact-based news and information from the U.S.-Mexico border. A version of the story originally appeared in High Country News on September 12 and has since been updated.
Words by
- Annie Rosenthal
Images by
- Alberto Silva Fernandez
Sunland Park, New Mexico, is not a notably online community. Retirees have settled in mobile homes around the small border town, just over the state line from El Paso. Some don’t own computers — they make their way to the air-conditioned public library when they need to look something up.
Soon, though, the local economy could center around the internet: County officials have approved up to $165 billion in industrial revenue bonds to help developers build a sprawling data center campus just down the road…