New Mexico county adopts data center moratorium as residents protest Spaceport proposal

The Sierra County Commission met in Truth or Consequences Tuesday to vote on a resolution opposing the development of large-scale data centers within the confines of the county. By the end of the roughly three-hour meeting, commissioners had amended the item into an 18-month moratorium on data centers.

During Tuesday’s meeting, Commissioner Sandy Jones cited the recent push for a statewide moratorium from several Democrat state lawmakers and proposed amending the proposed resolution to a county-level moratorium. If the state Legislature takes up the issue, it will be under a new governor as Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is term-limited and leaving office at the end of the year. 

The proposed resolution would have sent letters expressing concern over data centers’ water and environmental impacts to state leaders, including Lujan Grisham, the New Mexico Environment Department and the New Mexico Economic Development Department. Jones argued that a moratorium of their own would be a stronger action.

“I’m kind of convinced that the state Legislature is going to look at this pretty hard,” Jones told his fellow commissioners. “If we fire our shot now and significantly let the state Legislature know that we are concerned here, it carries a bit more weight than just a letter to six people who’ll be out of office in six or seven months.”

This week’s vote in Sierra County, which follows similar approvals in Santa Fe and Socorro counties, came as residents scrutinized a proposal from a Canadian company to build a data center and solar array at Spaceport America. In a statement Tuesday, Spaceport spokesperson Charlie Hurley said leaders at Spaceport were not in talks with other data center developers and had not signed a lease, construction agreement or development agreement with Green Data.

The Spaceport resides on state trust land. A spokesperson for the State Land Office told Source NM that its leaders are reviewing the newly approved moratorium and will need to have discussions with county and Spaceport leaders to determine how it affects the Green Data proposal.

A Canadian developer’s New Mexico data center pitch may be dying. It wouldn’t be the first time

The same data center company was behind another proposal to build a data center and solar array on 10,000 acres in Socorro in partnership with the local university, New Mexico Tech. Green Data CEO Jason Bak, who has a background in renewable energy, pitched it as a sustainable development that would draw its energy from the sun and use “atmospheric water generation” technology to pull the necessary water from the moisture in the air.

New Mexico Tech paused the development, in part because it lacked adequate land for the project, in June but left the door open to future proposals from Green Data.

Source NM previously reported that neither Green Data nor its CEO, Jason Bak, have previously built a data center. Bak did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Sierra County residents, who have dubbed their anti-data center effort “Project Consequences,” packed the room in Truth or Consequences Tuesday. After the surprise amendment led to the passage of a moratorium, Monticello resident Sulome Anderson called the vote “a victory for ordinary people under extraordinary circumstances.”

“This wasn’t about saying ‘no’ to technology; it was about saying ‘yes’ to our water, our families and the Sierra County way of life,” she said in a statement.