EL PASO, Texas (KFOX14/CBS4) — The Amanecer People’s Project, joined by the Office of State Representative Mary González, hosted a town hall on Saturday, March 7, to discuss the rapid industrialization of El Paso County and the regional impacts of data centers.

The town hall was hosted at an El Paso Community College boardroom at 11 a.m.

According to the 2026 Data Center Power Report by Bloom Energy, Texas is projected to account for nearly 30% of the nation’s data center demand by 2028. A data center for Meta, the Oppidan 5MW Data Center and Project Jupiter, just across the stateline, are among three of the data centers in development in the near El Paso area as of early 2026.

El Pasoans attended the town hall to express their concerns about the increase in data center development in the region. Representative Mary González shared many of the same sentiments as the attendees.

“I am for preserving our history, our culture, our agricultural spaces, taking care of our water resources, worrying about people having access to electricity—the data centers come in contrast with a lot of that, so for me as an elected official it is very important for me to say I want to prioritize the people versus prioritize the data centers,” Rep. González said.

When asked how much of the electricty build out is being tied to the data centers, Rep. Gonzales said that it is unknown.

“Here’s the struggle, there is not a lot of transparency in all of these bills,” Rep. González said. “Do we know that all of our utility services are making plans to accommodate data centers? Yes, and that for me is a little bit concerning because that is happening without the inclusion of our community.”

According to a post made by The Amanecer People’s Project, nearly 400 people gathered for the town hall, and they are now demanding for El Paso City Council void the existing 380 agreement with META and pass legislation to prohibit future generative data centers in El Paso.

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