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Diego Mendoza-Moyers: Another major data center project is coming to El Paso.
It feels like déjà vu to say that, since just a few weeks ago, I wrote several stories and did a couple of podcasts about a completely separate, massive data center coming to Doña Ana County just next door to El Paso called Project Jupiter. That one is a $165 billion investment by OpenAI and Oracle that elected officials across the state line approved last month.
This time, it’s Meta. The parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp that’s valued at $1.8 trillion is developing a 1,000-plus-acre site in Northeast El Paso that it bought from the city a couple of years ago. It’s not a new project; Meta, using a front company, bought the land and secured tax incentives as well as a water supply agreement for this data center project back in late 2023.
Last week, Meta announced the project publicly for the first time at a glitzy event at the Plaza Hotel and said it would spend $1.5 billion to build this data center that will employ 100 full-time workers. In exchange for making the investment, the city and county agreed to an incentive deal that gives Meta an 80% break on its city and county property taxes for decades.
There’s a huge gap between how El Paso’s elected officials like Mayor Renard Johnson and County Judge Ricardo Samaniego have lauded this project, and how average El Pasoans view this tech giant coming to El Paso to build another node in its system of artificial intelligence technology.
The public’s concerns about data centers hoovering up our water and electricity resources are widespread. And many El Pasoans wonder why the city and county governments needed to grant tax breaks to Meta, a trillion-dollar giant with tens of billions of dollars on hand. To be clear, I asked to interview representatives of the city’s economic development department so they could share their views about why this is a good and beneficial deal for El Pasoans. They declined.
So, how much water will Meta consume, and will it affect the availability of water for El Pasoans? What about electricity? And are we seeing the early stages of a data center building boom in the borderland?
In just a moment, El Paso Matters Assistant Editor Pablo Villa and I will talk through this Meta data center project and try to answer those questions.
First, this El Paso Matters Podcast episode is sponsored by Tawney, Acosta and Chaparro, truck crash and injury attorneys. Their team of local, seasoned trial attorneys are ready to help if you’ve been injured in a crash.
Now, onto our conversation.
Pablo, thanks for joining me.
Pablo Villa: Hey, Diego, thank you very much for having me. So, it feels like same time next month, right? In our last episode, we talked about Project Jupiter. That’s the $165 billion data center campus that’s just across the state line over in Doña Ana County. And that, in many ways, is reshaping how we think about energy and infrastructure and the borderland’s role in this burgeoning field of artificial intelligence, right?
But this time around, we’re talking about sort of the same thing just on the other side of the Franklin Mountains, right? Over there in Northeast El Paso, construction is going to get underway pretty soon on another massive data center project that you’ve been paying attention to. This one is led by Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Meta plans to invest, and you’ve alluded to this already, but Meta plans to invest about $1.5 billion to build another data center that’s on a 1,000-acre site over there in Northeast El Paso between Stan Roberts Senior Avenue, right? That’s the street that runs east-west from U.S. 54 out to Dyer, and then the New Mexico state line, right? So somewhere in that sliver of land up there. And that facility expected to employ about 100 people. And about close to 2,000 during the construction phase, right?
And, so, during this episode, we’re going to explore why El Paso was chosen, what the environmental trade-offs look like, and how this project fits into the region’s, again, growing role as a hub for data infrastructure. So, thanks for having me again.
Diego: Thanks for joining me.
Pablo: Yeah. And, so, let’s start with the big picture, if you would. So, what does this Meta project mean for El Paso, and how does it compare with the one we talked about last time in New Mexico?
Diego: Yeah. So, I mean, the headline is just a much smaller investment, if you could call $1.5 billion a smaller investment compared to the $165 billion Project Jupiter. But again, that’s a separate project. And this Meta one has been in the works for a while. It kind of flew under the radar.
It was back in 2023 when this was kind of negotiated. They bought the land from the city. They secured a water supply agreement from El Paso Water, Meta did. They also got tax incentives approved by the county and city governments. And, at the time, they were operating under this name Wurldwide LLC, kind of a front company. But we all kind of knew it was Meta. But, I think that this AI boom and kind of the hype around it wasn’t as frenzied at the time in 2023. And, so, it flew under the radar a little bit. We kind of knew about it. We didn’t think too much about the implications of the water and electricity usage.
READ MORE: Meta to build $1.5 billion data center in Northeast El Paso
So, it’s interesting that now – and I’ve had other people mention that, too, who work for the government say, “Hey, this kind of flew under our radar as well at the time. And, so, now, it’s two years later. We’ve seen this really big spending boom by companies to build data centers here and elsewhere. And, so, that’s kind of the framing here. So, Meta announced it publicly for the first time. Like I said, they were kind of operating under a front company. And, so, now last week, they held this event at the Plaza Hotel and kind of publicly announced the project.
And initially, they were committing to invest $800 million. This is about two years ago. And they upped that to $1.5 billion, I think, recognizing “Hey, we, Meta, our business, demands – we need to invest more in data centers and our artificial intelligence infrastructure, so we’re upping the investment.” And, so, that’s kind of how it came together. It was kind of under the radar, and then now, boom, all of a sudden, Meta’s involved, one of the biggest companies in the world, and they’re increasing their investment. And initially, I think their commitments in the tax incentives are to create 50 jobs, but they said it’d be 100, so for whatever that’s worth.
Construction begins on a Meta data center, located between Stan Roberts Sr. Ave. and State Line Road in Northeast El Paso, Oct. 13, 2025. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
Pablo: OK, and we’ll get into the details of some of those things in a minute here. But obviously, as you mentioned, Meta sort of recalibrated how it’s going to approach this. I think that’s just a really good example of the quick evolution of these things as they’re happening.
Another big impact that these data centers are going to have are on the environment, right? There’s some environmental considerations that need to be made, and water usage is probably the chief one, right? And, so, that’s been a major concern for residents both in El Paso and southern New Mexico with both of these data centers. Meta is going to install this closed-loop cooling system, right, which involves a set amount of water. Can you tell us a little bit about the potential impact on local water resources with regards to the Meta center?
Diego: Yeah, so, we don’t – the closed-loop system, we don’t have a ton of information about. But the basic idea is that you sort of fill it up one time with water, and then it kind of circulates the water to cool the equipment, and then it kind of transfers the heat out, and then it just stays in a closed loop, and it doesn’t require constant usage. Most of the data centers, at least kind of the ones that have been built, the last five or 10 years, a lot of them used evaporative cooling, which is much more water-intensive. And, so, that’s when you hear about data centers using millions of gallons a day. And it’s kind of this older technology.
And now the new data centers, especially in dry areas like El Paso, are using this closed-loop technology. So that’s kind of the – that’s what they say, right? But, then, Meta has this deal with El Paso Water that, in the initial phase – and they’re going to build this campus out over time – but initially, once they get it going, I believe the average daily usage permitted is 750,000 gallons a day, which is pretty significant. And then, at full buildout, it’s 1.5 million gallons that Meta is permitted to consume a day or to purchase from El Paso Water.
And for perspective, the Marathon Petroleum refinery, which is one of the big industrial operators in the city, one of the biggest customers of El Paso Water, they use 1.1 million gallons (per day). So, 1.1 million for the refinery versus potentially up to 1.5 million daily for Meta’s data center. So, it’s a lot. And I think, and I mean, if you put it in perspective, like I think supporters of Meta could say, “Well, it’s manageable. El Paso Water supplies 110 million gallons of water per day on average. They could supply up to 160 million gallons. And, so, one-and-a-half million, (is a) relatively small percentage, right?” That’s what supporters of the project would say.
The other thing, too, is that Meta, they say “We’re not really going to use that much water.” And they’re, in my interview with Meta, they were vague about that. But the bottom line was like, “That’s kind of what we’re allowed to use, but our actual numbers will be less than that.” And the way it’s been explained to me is it’s sort of like an insurance policy. Like, if it gets extremely hot, if it’s 120 degrees or 115 degrees, then we might need to draw more water for cooling. But, most days of the year, we’re not going to use that much. So, that’s really the situation with water: they’re permitted to use, in some people’s eyes, kind of an alarming amount of water, but they say that it won’t actually hit that much and that’s just the maximum allowable usage.
Pablo: OK, so that’s the water side of things. Now, there’s a whole other side that involves power, right? And, so, how much electricity is going to be required to operate the site? And what steps has El Paso Electric taken to ensure that us, as local ratepayers, won’t have to subsidize Meta’s energy costs?
Diego: Yeah. And, so, I mean, this is something you hear about in El Paso and all over the country when it comes to data centers. And our system’s a little bit different, but there’s lots of articles from national outlets about data centers show up someplace and the electricity prices rise. And, so, it’s a big concern.
For one, I mean, El Paso Electric has said that this Meta data center will be its biggest single customer. So, it’s going to require hundreds of megawatts of electricity capacity, which is enough to power tens of thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands, of homes just for this one data center.
The electricity stuff has been a little bit muddled and kind of hard to figure out because Meta told me in an interview, “We’re going to use renewable energy to power this facility.” But, then, El Paso Electric said that, basically, for the first phase, they’re just going to kind of use the resources El Paso Electric already has. So, natural gas power plants and solar farms to power this. And then, once the campus is fully built out – shout out to El Paso Times and Vic Kolenc got this nugget out of El Paso Electric. He said that – or El Paso Electric told him – that they’re going to, basically, pay to build a natural gas power plant to sort of supply the facility down the line when it gets bigger.
So, that’s different than what I understood from Meta about this is going to be renewable energy. And El Paso Electric has said previously to the Public Utility Commission of Texas that they thought that it would be like, two solar farms would supply it. So, that’s kind of a new thing I need to dig into more is whether or not they’ll build a natural gas power plant to supply that.
And El Paso Electric has been very careful to say that, basically, Meta is paying for everything. All of the stuff El Paso Electric has to build to serve this, whether it’s a power plant, whether it’s, new poles and wires and substations or whatever, just like, stuff to deliver electricity to this data center. They say that Meta is paying for every penny of it. And I know there’s a lot of skepticism about that. El Paso Electric says, “Well, we did this very detailed study to determine how much it would cost to provide electricity to this data center. And so that’s how we’re figuring out how much it’s going to cost.”
And El Paso Electric developed a special rate just for Meta so that all of the money El Paso Electric is spending to serve the facility, they’re getting back from Meta. So, they’ve been very careful to say, like – because there’s a concern, and the Public Utility Commission raised this. They said before they approved this rate for Meta, they said, “Well, there’s a possibility that you’re building all this stuff. How do we know you’re not just charging every customer for that and giving Meta the sweetheart deal,” right?
And, so, El Paso Electric within the next couple of years will have to submit evidence in some form that shows or proves that El Paso Electric customers broadly aren’t paying for all this infrastructure to serve Meta. And, so, there is that safeguard in place, but I think the concerns will persist, right? That, “Oh, Meta’s just paying a fraction of what it costs to serve them, and we’re all paying higher bills to fund it.” I think that’s a concern people have.
Pablo: Yeah. And, by the way, in the background, El Paso Electric is gearing up for a rate case later this year, right? So, there’s that.
Diego: Yeah. Just to mention that, I mean, they’ve been pursuing that for over a year, and so I don’t think that’s related to Meta at all, but it’s not a good look, right? I mean, I think early next year, all our rates could go up $10, $15, $20 per month on average. And, so, I don’t think it’s directly related to Meta, but it’s a bad look for sure.
Pablo: Yeah, perception, right? So, that’s interesting.
You touched a little earlier on the economic incentives that are at stake here. So, the city and county granted Meta these long-term tax incentives, right? And they look a little different from either end, but the city also pledged to kick in, what, a $12.5 million for road improvements out there? So, what are supporters and critics saying about whether this deal benefits the community in the long run?
Diego: Yeah, so the – the tax incentives are, I think, one of the parts that I understand the kind of concern and skepticism from residents the most. If you talk to – as far as the water and power – like, El Paso Electric, they want more data centers. It’s a big customer, more money, steady, reliable, big user. El Paso Water says, “Hey, we can meet the demands. Like, we’ve planned for so long. We’ve got the water resources. Like we can meet this.”
So, from that perspective, the experts there say, “Hey, we’re fine as far as electricity and water.” But when it comes to tax incentives, that’s something that I’ve heard more from people like, “Why are we giving tax incentives to this trillion-dollar-plus company, right?” And the other thing is like Meta, when I interviewed them, I asked, “Why El Paso? Why’d you guys decide this?” It was supposedly this – many communities that were looking at this, a competitive process about where they were going to locate this data center. And they said that we found a great location with access to infrastructure and energy. That was a quote from Meta.
So, in my mind, in the minds of others, it’s like the most important thing for a data center is having utilities available, electricity, water, as well as land. And the tax incentives, like I don’t know. I mean, you’re foregoing much of the benefit, right? I think it’s an 80% abatement for the city and county taxes, right? I think the city’s deal is 35 years and I think the county’s is 15 years. So, it’s many years of Meta just paying a slim share of the taxes that it would typically pay to the city and county. And that’s a lot of foregone revenue for the city and county.
Of course, they would say, “Well, there’s nothing there now and so we’re getting something.” And also supporters of Meta point out that Meta’s not getting a tax break on the taxes it has to pay, for example, the Ysleta school district, El Paso Community College, the hospital taxes that fund University Medical Center. So, those entities will get the full tax benefit of this one and a half billion dollar investment. So, that’s a plus.
And I think the overarching picture in the minds of the economic development people at the city and county is like, “We want to attract more private enterprise here, more commercial operations to pay taxes. And ideally in the long run, maybe reduce the burden that residential taxpayers have to pay” – homeowners like yourself. I’m not personally a homeowner, but I know the property taxes are something you hear people say are too high all the time.
And, so, the thinking is like, over time, if we have more businesses and commercial entities paying taxes, then that’s less of the share that residents have to pay. But on the flip side, like, okay, that’s not – that wouldn’t happen for decades, right? Because they’re not going to pay most of their property taxes for decades. So, it’s kind of this trade-off.
And, again, I mean, like I said at the top, I invited the city’s economic development people to talk with me about it, about their perspective on why this is a good deal. And they declined. And I think just – this is total speculation – I think there’s a … the public does not perceive this project very positively. And, so, maybe they just kind of – the deal’s signed and done, and so they don’t need to address it publicly that much. Maybe that’s their perspective.
And I’ll add, too, on the incentives, the other part of it, it’s not just the tax abatement. The city is giving $12.5 million dollars, basically reimbursing Meta for improving the roads around their data center. And that $12.5 million is coming out of this fund. El Paso Electric paid the city $80 million back in 2020, I believe, basically in exchange for the city approving the acquisition of the utility by this JP Morgan-owned fund when they kind of took El Paso Electric private.
So, it’s this $80 million fund that’s very flexible and the city can use it for different things. And the biggest chunk that they’ve – the biggest single expenditure so far is this $12.5 million for Meta. So, I mean, is that a good deal? People can decide for themselves. But it’s quite a bit of money out the door to bring Meta here in exchange for just 100 jobs.
I’ve heard a lot of critiques. I’ve gotten a lot of emails and messages about people suggesting that it’s not really the best deal for the city. Again, I kind of get the bigger picture. It’s a huge investment. You want to bring entities like Meta here to boost the tax base. But I think whether or not they needed to give away that much, I think, is a fair question.
Pablo: Certainly. And, I mean, when it comes to the potential for regional growth and workforce development, we talked a little bit about the number of jobs. But, what does Meta’s arrival mean for not just Northeast El Paso, but El Paso as a whole? I mean, in terms of jobs, infrastructure and the potential for other tech-related investments to follow.
Diego: Yeah. So, number one, I mean, obviously, like we said, there’s 100 direct jobs who work at the data center. Fine, you know, whatever. I think it’s 1,800 jobs during construction. So, that’s great for the contractors, right? And the construction companies. I think the expectation is for roughly a three-year construction period, maybe a little bit more.
And, so, that’s a few years of good – a lot of money going to the construction companies and jobs there. So, that’s a positive. And I guess beyond that, there’s always the multipliers economists talk about, where, if you have so many jobs, then that supports jobs at restaurants or whatever, other businesses that people work at some place and they go spend money elsewhere, whatever.
Kind of bigger picture is like, OK, are we going to become kind of a data center hub, right? And I’ll just point to, it’s not only Project Jupiter over across the state line. It’s not just Meta. There are other data centers here as well that are much smaller, but there are some, like I believe the Taiwanese firm Wiwynn is developing one in Socorro, and there’s this Oppidan company that’s developing some smaller ones. And, so, there’s numerous data centers. And then also the city of El Paso gave incentives worth, I believe, $875,000 to a startup company called Ferveret that’s based out of California that makes a liquid cooling solution or technology for data centers. And they’re bringing them here to this kind of innovation hub that the city’s developing at the airport. Which is just one deal. But I think it points to maybe more opportunities or sort of expansion in the data center industry generally in the El Paso area.
And we could be kind of in the early stages of that. We’ll see, maybe. We’ve seen other things kind of flame out as far as economic development opportunities. But, I think that maybe data centers could be one where it’s sort of this, we have an industry here around not only building, but also servicing data centers. That could be a potential path forward from an economic development perspective.
Construction begins on a Meta data center, located between Stan Roberts Sr. Ave. and State Line Road in Northeast El Paso, Oct. 13, 2025. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
Pablo: OK. So, one of the things that officials have floated is the potential for community partnerships, right, with the development of this data center. And Meta has pledged to work with the nonprofit Dig Deep, right, to expand water access in the colonias, right? We have several of those in the surrounding area. How significant is that commitment and how might it help shape the company’s image locally?
Diego: Yeah. And, so, specifically with the deal with Dig Deep, I don’t think there’s really a lot of specifics that have been made public yet. Dig Deep does good work. There’s a lot of people in the El Paso area broadly in the colonias, whether it’s in the Lower Valley or Chaparral or parts of Doña Ana County. that don’t have sewer or water service. And so this entity, Dig Deep, kind of helps develop that. And El Paso Water does a lot of that too, providing first-time water and sewer service, which a lot of times requires state grants and stuff. So we’ll see.
I’m not sure the details, but I think that could be beneficial. But I think it points to Meta and the Project Jupiter developers, like, they would never acknowledge the big amount of concern and pushback from the residents. But, I think that’s kind of a tacit acknowledgement of, like, “Hey, we need to win people over. We’re coming in here as these big technology titans and requiring a decent amount of water resources and electricity and not a lot of jobs. And, so, we need to kind of do more to improve our image.”
So, we’ll see with the Dig Deep one. Something interesting with Project Jupiter over in Doña Ana County, one of the big things they did to sort of win approval from the county commissioners there was that they said that they would provide $50 million in direct payments to Doña Ana County to improve water infrastructure in Doña Ana County, particularly in Sunland Park, which has dealt with bad water quality issues for a long time.
So, to me, that was very significant. But so, for Project Jupiter, we’re a month plus since that was approved. And I’ve reached out to Sunland Park in Doña Ana County, “Hey, any updates on that $50 million?” And no word so far. It’s still early, right? To be fair. But that’s where it’s going to be up to us to sort of check on this stuff. And is there a follow through? Were these commitments fulfilled as far as the charitable donations and funding commitments for important infrastructure issues? It’s easy to say that in a press release to kind of get people excited, but is the follow through there? I think it will be. But it’s something we have to keep on them about for sure.
Pablo: You’ll definitely be on that for sure.
So, looking ahead a little bit, I mean, between Meta’s project here in Northeast and Project Jupiter across the way in New Mexico, and you mentioned a couple others that are in the works in the lower valley. I mean, is this region, is the El Paso Las Cruces region sort of on track to become this new data center hub or corridor for the AI economy? And, if so, what are going to be the biggest challenges towards sustaining that kind of growth?
Diego: Yeah, I think this is a really big question that’s emerged in my mind in the last couple of months. Because data centers have existed for decades, but I think we’re really seeing this rapid boom in spending and all these technology giants are spending like tens and tens of billions of dollars in a huge race, as fast as possible, let’s build as many as we can. Project Jupiter is part of this bigger Stargate initiative to spend like $500 billion on data centers, and that’s here in our area, right?
And also, I mean, some of the supporters of the Meta project, for example, have kind of alluded to there could be a clustering effect, and you have one data center here, and so maybe the, I don’t know, the construction companies get good at building them, or the HVAC companies get good at servicing them, or whatever. Like, there could be some kind of impact from that that follows on these data centers that we’re seeing built now.
And then also, like I mentioned, I mean, there’s the Ferveret company. Maybe there are these other startups that we try to bring here. “Hey, you can get opportunities to work and implement your technology at some of the data centers that exist here.”
Of course, there’s a big mismatch between the dollar size of the investment, which is huge, and then the jobs numbers. So, do we really want to pin our future economic development on these projects that don’t create a ton of jobs? I worked in San Antonio for several years, and the Toyota factory is the economic development crown jewel there, where they build the Tundra trucks, and it’s thousands and thousands of jobs. And then there’s the suppliers next to it. They’re thousands of jobs. So, by comparison, data centers seem to yield less as far as jobs numbers and stuff.
And then of course, there’s the resource questions. I mean, there’s a limit at some point to the water El Paso Water can supply. And, I mean, El Paso Water, to their credit, they’re doing a lot as far as expanding the desalination plant. They’re building this new drinking water facility in the Lower Valley, a new drinking water plant. They were talking recently about accelerating plans to import water from Dell City. So, El Paso Water is really thinking about expanding supply and making sure we have enough water. And they’re also expanding the Upper Valley water treatment plant as well. But even so, there’s still going to be a limit to the amount of data centers that we can host here and service.
Same thing with El Paso Electric. I mean, I suppose they could just build a power plant for every single one, but I mean, that’s a costly and complex process for them to undertake. So, it’s an interesting question that I think has emerged, and we’ve seen some stuff not pan out from an economic development perspective. We thought we were going to get all this funding from the government for aerospace, and there’s other stuff like that. And, so, maybe this is the new path ahead. But I would be a little bit skeptical about becoming this big hub and that just transforming El Paso’s economy. I’m not sure that that’s the best path forward, but we’ll see.
Pablo: OK, so nebulous in some ways. But one thing that is for sure is that Meta is coming, and so is Project Jupiter. And I know you’re going to be the man that keeps everyone abreast of all the developments in that. So, I encourage all our listeners to head to elpasomatters.org online or follow us on social media to make sure to get the latest from you, Diego. So, thank you very much for all the work you do, and if there’s nothing else you got, I think we can call it.
Diego: Sounds good. We’ll leave it there, Pablo. Appreciate your time and for asking me some questions.
Pablo: Alright, thank you, Diego.
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