AI data centers wanting to call Bernaillo County home will have to show they can be good neighbors after Commissioners Tuesday approved a resolution placing restrictions on centers that might be built in the county in the future.
The legislation, sponsored by Commissioner Eric Olivas, makes the installations responsible for their own electricity and water usage and requires “living wage” pay floors for workers at the sites as well as minimum payments to the county.
“Residents are raising good questions about several data centers currently being constructed in New Mexico,” Olivas said in a news release. “They have expressed concern about water usage, energy consumption, lack of community involvement and environmental and health concerns from pollution.”
During debate on the bills, Olivas said the financial demands are to help offset rising costs to the community caused by data centers. Olivas noted that New Mexico’s largest utilities have recently asked regulators for rate increases.
“We have a large population of fixed-income seniors and working families struggling to make ends meet,” he said. “We face rising costs for rent, groceries and medical services. We cannot ask our community to subsidize costs for multi-million-dollar companies.”
At the moment, Meta (the owner of Facebook) has an AI data center campus in Los Lunas, and Intel Corp.’s Rio Rancho plant makes chips that power AI, though several other data center projects are in various stages of development across New Mexico, including Project Jupiter for Oracle and others in Santa Teresa, Project Zenith in Roswell and a Meta expansion.
The resolution includes guidelines that establish certain obligations for a project owner who seeks economic development incentives such as industrial revenue bonds that are often used to lower taxes on wages and construction costs to incentivize businesses to choose a certain community over others. Those include prioritizing New Mexicans when hiring a construction workforce and electricity supplied by private renewal microgrid or public grid regulated by the Energy Transition Act.
In addition, a center must pay all permanent employees at least 120% of the area median salary, and a plant must fully offset its water needs through conservation or in-stream flow improvements and provide a water reclamation and water reuse plan.
“Companies that seek to feed from the public by using public funds to benefit private interests enjoy a special privilege and must be held to a high standard,” Olivas said.
He called the Meta plant a model, saying that company is operating on fully renewable energy at its own expense and reusing all of its water. Olivas said 85% of workers employed there are from New Mexico.
Commissioners had deferred adoption of the resolution until Olivas could meet with the office of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.
Michelle Lujan Grisham has authorized state legislators to debate Senate Bill 235, which would establish regulations for data centers and how they get their energy.
Opponents of the Bernalillo County resolution have called it too restrictive and likely to discourage investment.
In Dona Ana County, where the county had no specific planning requirements for data centers, Commissioners recently approved plans for the Sunland Park project over community concerns regarding air quality from proposed methane-powered power plants needed to supply the site’s huge energy needs.
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