What the record shows about alternatives

Under the consent decree the United States Supreme Court entered on May 26, 2026, New Mexico must achieve 18,200 acre-feet a year of reduced groundwater depletion in the Lower Rio Grande within ten years — mainly by buying water rights from willing sellers and permanently retiring them.

The water right supplying Project Jupiter’s construction is 2,400 acre-feet a year, in that same basin.

What the record does establish is that the state is doing both things at once, in one basin: paying to retire depletions to satisfy a federal decree, and permitting a new industrial depletion inside the same decree area.

New Mexico has a program for producing new water instead of drawing more fresh groundwater. The Strategic Water Supply Program rests on NMED’s own feasibility study, which names the Mesilla basin — the basin under Santa Teresa — among the places brackish desalination is feasible. It carries a $40 million appropriation, a further $35 million from the 2026 session, and a stated goal of 100,000 acre-feet by 2028.

Environment Secretary James Kenney’s stated purpose for the program is to “unlock new water sources statewide” while “preserving freshwater resources.” His department is also the department deciding the air permit for this campus.

The developer studied it too. On February 25, 2025 — the same day BorderPlex signed its memorandum of understanding with the Governor — BorderPlex paid New Mexico State University $30,000 for a desalination advisory agreement under the codename “Project Nucleus,” naming Dr. Pei Xu, the university’s brackish-water and potable-reuse specialist.

In May 2026 the state announced $13 million in desalination contracts: $3.7 million to Indewater for a mobile pilot with NMSU, $9.1 million to WSP to study brackish supplies in the Middle Rio Grande Basin, and technology testing at a cattle operation near Lake Arthur in the southeast. The state projects a shortfall of more than 244 billion gallons within fifty years.

None of those awards names a project in the Mesilla basin, and none names Santa Teresa. The basin the state’s own study identified for new water is the basin the campus is drawing fresh water from, under an emergency authorization the Attorney General now argues was unlawful.

This page does not claim desalination would have been cheaper, faster, or chosen. It is not simple. Brackish treatment at Mesilla carries PFAS, arsenic, uranium and radium questions and a brine-disposal problem, all of which are in this record. What is established is narrower: the alternative was studied by the state, paid for by the developer, and is being funded elsewhere.

The $165 billion figure is a ceiling on appraised value eligible for abatement over thirty years. It is not cash, not a grant, and not a spending commitment. What the county granted is a full property-tax abatement, against a Payment in Lieu of Taxes.

The fourth row is new, and it is the closest comparison this record has. In September 2026, 60 Minutes obtained the pitch Amazon Web Services made to Hood County, Texas: up to 90% in property tax rebates for 30 years. Commissioner Dave Eagle — one of five on the commissioners court — put it plainly, “This is not giving 90% of it back to them,” and voted against it. Amazon says it evaluated Hood County and “ultimately decided to not build” there. The project moved to the adjacent county, which granted the rebate.

Same instrument, same thirty-year term, ten points lower — and an elected official in the next state refused it on the record. Of the four structures on this page, Doña Ana County’s is the most generous.

Against that, the county receives a Payment in Lieu of Taxes of $12 million a year — $360 million nominal, a present value of roughly $165 to $200 million. It is the only recurring county revenue from the deal.

The number that would settle whether this was a good trade has never been published: the present value of the taxes forgone, set beside the present value of the PILOT. Not by the county, not by the developer, not by anyone. A reader cannot evaluate the bargain because one side of it has never been stated.

A second New Mexico county is now doing the same arithmetic, on different terms. On September 24 Lea County agreed to consider more than $134 billion in industrial revenue bonds for a Google campus near Hobbs. What the companies told commissioners: a 2-gigawatt solar field built three miles away by Google’s partner Excelsior Energy Capital; all new generation costs covered by the companies; a one-time cooling fill of 9.6 million gallons and about 42,000 gallons a day of municipal water once staffed; and treated effluent, not city water, for the roughly million gallons a day of construction. Lea County’s own data-center rules require any project taking bonds or a PILOT to structure its payments to benefit every school and hospital district in the county.

This is not an alternative to Project Jupiter and this page does not offer it as one. It is a proposal, not an approval: the commissioners voted to consider the bonds, not to issue them, and every figure above is the companies’ own. It is here because it is the nearest thing this record has to a control case — the same state, the same instrument, the same scale of bond, and a power source that does not burn gas.

Caveat on this section’s sourcing, stated plainly: the abatement mechanics, the PILOT schedule and the typical-structure comparison are this record’s reading of the ordinance package, and the underlying entries do not cite a retrievable public document. Anyone relying on them should read the executed ordinances. If they differ, this page will say so.

In March 2025 the campus was announced as a $5 billion investment supporting about 1,000 jobs. By the September 2025 county vote it was $165 billion and 1,500 jobs. Thirty-three times the capital, one and a half times the jobs — the project’s own announcements, measuring its own capital intensity.

And 1,500 is not the enforceable figure. The floor written into the agreements is 750 permanent positions, 50 part-time, and about 2,500 construction jobs. The 1,500 that continues to appear in company materials is a projection, not a commitment.

What has actually been delivered, presented by the developers to county commissioners in July 2026 and not independently audited: nearly 700 New Mexicans employed in ongoing construction, nearly 2,800 construction workers to date, and $734 million in contracts with New Mexico suppliers. Twenty-five scholarships were awarded in August 2026 through a fund Oracle established.

The developers’ own annual report to the county, read from the county’s posted copy rather than from coverage of it, says the same thing in its own words. Dated July 31, 2026 and posted August 15, signed by Oracle’s director of tax planning: “The IRB agreements require the creation of 775 long-term jobs” — the 750 full-time and 50 part-time, with part-time counted at half — and “Oracle estimates that 1,500 long-term jobs will actually be created.” Through June 30: zero full-time, zero part-time, 2,105 construction jobs as the average on site, 2,473 at peak, 5,969 workers having participated. Nine Doña Ana County firms awarded contracts, $355,967,691 in value. It contains no count of how many workers on the site are from the county or the state.

The $4.7 billion figure the company now uses has a term built into it. The table behind it, in the deck Oracle presented to commissioners on July 28, counts construction-period effects over 3 years, operating-period tax and economic activity over 17 years, and the bond agreement’s school and infrastructure payments over 30. Asked what “long-term” meant, the presenters told commissioners Oracle’s duration “is about 17.9 years” and STACK’s “at least … 25 to 30”; on September 8 Oracle’s presenter put it plainly — “contractually, Oracle’s obligated to our provider STACK for 17.9, but our intent is to renew.” The abatement runs thirty years whoever occupies the buildings.

And the same table carries a footnote: “These projections assume the air permit and pipeline are timely approved, as originally planned.” Those are the two approvals Oracle’s September 24 force majeure notice treats as delays it needs protection against.

That an alternative would have been chosen. Nobody offered the county a desalination campus, and no record shows one was refused.

That desalination is easy or cheap. The contamination and brine questions are real, and this record carries them.

That the delivered benefits are not benefits. Construction wages are real wages, supplier contracts are real revenue, and the scholarships went to real students.

What it does establish is that a comparison was available and was never made in public — and that the one figure needed to make it has never been published by anyone who has it.