The Watch · Corrections
What we got wrong.
A watch that never admits error is just another press release. When this site publishes something wrong, the correction runs here and at the top of the page that carried it — not quietly, and not at the bottom.
This log covers corrections to what the site published. Research notes revised before publication are not corrections, and listing them would bury the ones that matter. If you find an error — in a number, a name, a date, or a characterization — write to the reporting line and it will be checked against the source.
Report an error ↗AUG 12, 2026
A correction we published was itself wrong — the retraction
- What the site said
- The entry directly below this one said the two most-circulated emissions figures — ten million tons of greenhouse gas a year and 124.01 tons of VOC — described the WITHDRAWN East and West applications and should not be attached to the current permit. The Air page carried the same caveat prominently.
- What is correct
- Both figures are in the current application's own summary tables. The 648-page NMED Universal Air Quality Application for the YGI Microgrid states, in Table 2-P, 10,144,115 tons of CO2-equivalent a year — and 124.01 tons per year of VOC, a figure that exceeds the 100-ton threshold at which a source inside a nonattainment area would be major for VOC. The opponents who cited these numbers were quoting the live document accurately, and this site's provenance caveat wronged their accuracy. Both figures are now carried at primary-source tier, and the Air page has been rebuilt from the application itself.
- How it was caught
- The full application was obtained and read — all 648 pages — rather than relying on secondhand descriptions of it. A correction of a correction runs under the same rule as everything else here: at the top, in full, with the superseded entry left intact below so the record of the error survives its repair.
AUG 12, 2026
SUPERSEDED by the entry above · Two big emissions numbers describe a permit that no longer exists
- What the site said
- The figures circulating widely in this record and elsewhere — ten million tons of greenhouse gas a year, and 124.01 tons of volatile organic compounds — were carried as though they described the permit now before the state.
- What is correct
- They describe the WITHDRAWN East and West applications, from an opponent's April 2026 letter about those filings. They should not be attached to the current application and no longer are. What is actually known about the current permit's greenhouse gases is a range: press accounts near 10.1 million tons, an independent scaling of the manufacturer's published rates at roughly 7.3 to 9.0 million, and no figure yet quoted from the application itself. The Air page states the range and says why.
- How it was caught
- A provenance check on the two most-repeated numbers in the air story. They had a real source — just not the document everyone was attaching them to.
AUG 12, 2026
Two lawsuits, told as one — and a stay that was denied
- What the site said
- The record described a single Open Meetings Act suit, dated February 6, 2026, seeking to void the two ordinances.
- What is correct
- There are two distinct suits over the same September 19 meeting. The first — the one seeking to void the ordinances — was filed October 17, 2025. The second, a different legal theory, was filed February 6, 2026. And on March 20, 2026 the judge both denied the county's motion to dismiss and denied the plaintiffs' motion to stay the ordinances. Both halves matter: the challenge to the approval's validity is alive, and construction has proceeded unstayed since March.
- How it was caught
- A docket check while integrating new research. The denial of the stay is the half we had never recorded, and it cuts against the project's opponents — which is exactly why it belongs here.
AUG 12, 2026
The Supreme Court decree — verified, and narrowed
- What the site said
- The timeline carried an entry, badged unverified, saying the Court required New Mexico to “retire 18,200 acre-feet per year of groundwater pumping” “between Caballo Reservoir and the Texas state line.”
- What is correct
- The decree is real and the figure is right: the Court entered it on May 26, 2026, and New Mexico must achieve 18,200 acre-feet a year of depletion reduction within ten years. Three things were imprecise. It is a negotiated consent decree the Court entered, not a ruling imposed on the parties. The obligation is a reduction in depletions, achieved mainly by buying and permanently retiring rights from willing sellers — not a ban on pumping. And “Caballo Reservoir to the state line” is a journalist's description; the operative documents say the Lower Rio Grande, below Elephant Butte, measured against the Effective El Paso Index.
- How it was caught
- The entry was published carrying a to-verify badge precisely so it could be checked, and then it was — against the Court's own order list and the State Engineer's program documents. The corrected version is narrower and, because the decree turns out to say nothing at all about new industrial users, sharper.
AUG 12, 2026
A senator's page carried an unverifiable figure — and material that didn't belong
- What the site said
- The dossier for a state senator said he received "$30k+" from the developer's lobbyists, without itemization — and included decades-old workplace allegations with no connection to this project.
- What is correct
- The allegations have been removed entirely: their disposition is unknown, they concern a 2006 role unrelated to energy policy, and placing them beside a documented legislative record invites the whole record to be dismissed as a smear. The contribution figure is now itemized on the page — $32,400 across seven CFIS-recorded contributions on a single day — with the sequence stated plainly: the money came nine months AFTER the amendment became law. The page also now records the exculpatory finding: no direct contributions from the project's companies appear in his filings.
- How it was caught
- An independent researcher tried to verify the bare figure, could not, and downgraded it to an allegation. That is a right-of-response event that happened without anyone filing a response — and it was treated exactly as seriously.
AUG 12, 2026
A timestamp we could not find again — retracted
- What the site said
- Research notes behind the HB 93 record dated the floor amendment March 19, 2025, and attached a "10:43 p.m." timestamp to a committee substitute.
- What is correct
- The amendment document is headed March 20, 2025. No document bearing the 10:43 p.m. timestamp could be located on a second, independent pass; it has been retracted. The verified chain is the Fiscal Impact Report's own designation, and the substitute is dated February 10, 2025.
- How it was caught
- A second research pass went looking for the document behind the timestamp and could not find it. A detail that cannot be re-found does not stay in the record — however small, and however well it fit.
AUG 12, 2026
The million-gallon figure — where it actually comes from
- What the site said
- Pages compared the ~1,000,000-gallon-per-day estimate against the county's 20,000-gallon cap as though they measured the same thing, and treated the estimate as a settled state figure.
- What is correct
- The cap governs potable water only — the word "potable" was added to the agreement after the commission vote — while the estimate spans all uses, so the two numbers are not directly comparable. And the estimate's provenance is now stated: it originated with the State Engineer's office from what its spokeswoman described as an informal conversation with a Project Jupiter attorney. It remains the state agency's working number; it is not a metered measurement. The claim's verification tier was lowered accordingly.
- How it was caught
- Both refinements came out of a primary-source research pass — including against this site's own claims. The comparison would have been corrected in public by the applicant sooner or later; better that the record corrected itself first.
AUG 12, 2026
The hearing date was stale for two weeks
- What the site said
- The countdown and every page naming a date said the air-permit hearing would be held October 19, with filing deadlines running from September 28 through October 12.
- What is correct
- NMED moved the hearing to September 14 in an amended scheduling order filed July 29, pulling every deadline forward — technical testimony and prehearing motions to August 24, rebuttal to September 3. The decision deadline is unchanged at November 23.
- How it was caught
- Caught by a reader, thirteen days after the order was filed. For those thirteen days this site told people a filing deadline was six weeks later than it actually was. The clock is now built to roll through the whole schedule, and the Take Action page says plainly that the schedule is being fought over.
JUL 8, 2026
A connection we could not verify
- What the site said
- An entry connected an attorney, as a lobbying client of a registered lobbyist for the developer, to the 2026 governor's race.
- What is correct
- The connection has been removed entirely, along with the person's dossier. It rested on a single self-reported client roster that the Watch could never independently read, and the named party disputed it.
- How it was caught
- The person wrote to the reporting line and asked to be removed. One unverifiable source against a direct denial does not meet this record's standard. The correction on the affected entries does not name her — naming her would defeat the removal she asked for.
APR 2026
“Blocked” overstated what happened to the pipeline
- What the site said
- Earlier language described the Green Chile pipeline as blocked or denied by federal regulators.
- What is correct
- FERC did not deny the pipeline. Its staff filed a protest over a missing state historic-preservation sign-off, and the certificate remained pending; the denial that did happen came from the State Land Office, on the state-trust-land crossings. BLM later granted the federal right-of-way.
- How it was caught
- Caught in a source review against the FERC docket and the Land Office letters. The distinction matters: one agency said no to a segment, another said yes, and the federal review stayed open.
Anyone named in the Watch holds a standing right of reply, and responses are published word for word. The point of this page is not that the record is perfect. It is that the record is checkable — including against itself.