The Watch · Take Action
Before New Mexico decides, here’s what you can do.
You don’t need to be a lawyer or an expert. Every step below is something an ordinary resident can do — and each one has already been done by people in Doña Ana County.
- MAR 20The State Land Office denies the pipeline’s state-land crossings.
- MAR 20The same day, a judge refuses to throw out the Open Meetings challenge to the $165B vote — and refuses to pause the ordinances. The challenge to the approval lives; construction has proceeded unstayed ever since.
- MAY 1BLM grants the federal right-of-way — the federal yes against the state’s no.
- JUL 14The State Land Office denies reconsideration — the second no.
- JUL 16NMED orders a public hearing and moves the decision to November 23.
- JUL 24The Ethics Commission suit settles, and the secretive nonprofit that lobbied NMED to approve this permit has to name its funders: all $3,667,000 came from the company applying for it.
- JUL 29The hearing is moved up five weeks — to September 14 — at the applicant's request.
- AUG 5The hearing officer orders the company to answer whether the campus can be built at all without the pipeline the state twice refused.
- AUG 6The motion to move the hearing back is denied. September 14 stands — and so does every deadline in front of it.
- AUG 10He takes the question back: the show-cause order is withdrawn and the motion to dismiss denied as premature — the fuel question will be answered under oath at the hearing instead.
- JUL 21The day the decision was due. No ruling came — and counting.
- AUG 17Written-comment deadline on the notice we harvested — but NMED has since published two later and conflicting dates for the same docket. Treat this as the safe one and file by it.
- AUG 24Technical testimony and prehearing motions due — experts on either side must file their full written evidence, and the lawyers make their last arguments about what the hearing can consider.
- SEP 3Rebuttal deadline — the answers to that evidence, and responses to the motions.
- SEP 14The public hearing — 9 a.m., Sunland Park Multi-Generational Center. Anyone can speak: three minutes, in person or via WebEx, continuing as long as it takes.
- NOV 23The decision deadline — NMED must rule on the permit by this day.
These dates are the ones NMED has ordered — but the schedule itself is being fought over. The hearing was moved up five weeks at the applicant’s request, opponents have asked to move it back, and a separate motion asks the department to dismiss or postpone the application outright because the pipeline that would fuel the campus has been denied. Check before you travel.
The one that matters most: all of them.
Comments moved the date twice. Records requests broke the water story. One reporter kept the record alive. Every action below has already changed something — pick whichever is yours.
Tell NMED what you think
A few honest sentences is real testimony — say who you are, that you’re speaking on the Project Jupiter air-quality permit, and what worries you (water, air, the process). You can also speak at the September 14 hearing — three minutes per person, in person or via WebEx, with Spanish interpretation. Permit writer of record: Julia Kuhn (julia.kuhn@env.nm.gov).One caution on timing: NMED has published two different closing dates for written comment on this docket — September 11 on its website, October 23 on the comment portal — five weeks apart, for the same proceeding. We have asked which one governs and will publish the answer. Until then, file early rather than trusting the later date.
Comment on the YGI permit ↗Serve on the monitoring committee
The county is seating an 11-member citizen committee — two per commission district — with power to write its own bylaws and hold independent information forums on Project Jupiter, with county-funded logistics, Spanish interpretation, and an advising attorney. Applicants must live in their district and hold no financial interest for or against the project. Appointments come by September 4. This is the one door that puts residents inside an oversight structure instead of outside a comment window.
File an interest form — due Aug 31 ↗Contact your county commissioners
The Doña Ana County Commission holds the local levers. Ask them to enforce the agreement they signed and to verify the water numbers publicly — the county already declared the project out of compliance once.
Find your commissioner ↗Ask for the records
New Mexico’s Inspection of Public Records Act lets any person request government documents. Some were withheld under a terrorism exemption — you can still ask, and the Foundation for Open Government shows you how.
How to file a records request ↗Support the reporter
The story survived because one local journalist kept reading the pages after the newspaper folded. Independent reporting is how a news desert grows a witness. Read it, subscribe, pass it on.
Read Haussamen ↗See if your county is next
Doña Ana is one of five named Stargate sites — the same play is running in other counties. Erin Brockovich’s national map shows where data centers are landing near you.
Check the national map ↗Let Project Jupiter be something that connects and unites this community.
Whatever the ruling brings — that part is ours.