How Data Centers Arrived in El Paso Without Local News Coverage
Diego Mendoza-Moyers, an energy and environment reporter for El Paso Matters, didn't break the story of Meta's data center deal in 2023. Neither did anyone else in the region.
The City of El Paso quietly agreed to let Meta build a facility to train and deploy artificial intelligence models-an $800 million construction project requiring massive power and water supplies. In exchange, Meta received 35 years of tax abatements. The deal came with nondisclosure agreements that kept details from the public until after it was done.
"If I'm not telling a story," Mendoza-Moyers said, "no one else is sometimes." El Paso's journalism infrastructure had been hollowed out over decades. The El Paso Herald Post closed in 1997. The El Paso Times, now owned by Gannett, has shrunk through layoffs and moved printing across the border to Mexico. El Paso Matters, a nonprofit founded in 2019, operates with limited resources.
The Meta deal was not unusual. According to a study by researchers at the University of Mary Washington, at least 25 of 31 data centers built in Virginia used nondisclosure agreements with local governments. "Democracy dies in the dark," the researchers wrote. "But that is exactly where many data center deals are born and live."
A Pattern in News Deserts
El Paso is not alone. Across the Southwest, data center projects have emerged in communities with minimal local news coverage. In nearby Doña Ana County, New Mexico, a massive project called Project Jupiter-initially valued at $5 billion, later sketched at $165 billion-was announced with little public scrutiny.
The initial reporting didn't mention that OpenAI and Oracle stood behind the project. Those companies weren't disclosed in the announcement or in early coverage. Heath Haussamen, an independent journalist in Doña Ana County, said he believes large tech companies intentionally target news deserts. "I think it's a fact that at least some of these big companies look for communities that are news deserts to build projects like these, because it's easier for them when there's less public scrutiny," he said.
Joshua Bowling, a reporter with SourceNM covering Project Jupiter, broke a story about a secretive advertising campaign promoting the project across New Mexico. The ads featured a stock photo model and were placed in major newspapers. Bowling traced the campaign to APCO Worldwide LLC, a firm with a "data center advisory services" division. Neither APCO nor the companies behind the ads disclosed their identities until pressed.
Bowling found that the BorderPlex Digital Assets website even removed its leadership page, making it impossible to see who ran the company. "You have to go on the Internet Archive and find an old version of the website to see who's on it," he said.
The Challenge of Reporting on the Future
Data center stories pose a unique problem: they require reporting on promises about the future when the present remains opaque. Neither Meta's El Paso facility nor Project Jupiter is yet operational. Both projects have changed their terms multiple times.
The job numbers at Project Jupiter shifted downward. Initial promises of 750 full-time and 50 part-time employees within three years later became "at least 800" jobs, according to court filings. Meta promised 50 jobs initially, then raised that to 300. In March 2026, Meta announced its El Paso facility would expand to a $10 billion investment-a sixfold increase from earlier commitments.
Technical jargon creates another barrier. "When you start talking about gigawatts and megawatts and dekatherms, and all of these different units of measure for power, that is, in and of itself, very confusing," Bowling said. Reporters must translate utility-speak and environmental-impact language for readers unfamiliar with the industry.
Water and Power: The Real Story
Environmental concerns dominate data center coverage, but local reporters say the story runs deeper. Meta's El Paso facility plans to use up to 750,000 gallons of water per day. A mid-sized data center typically consumes around 500,000 gallons daily.
Mendoza-Moyers did the math. El Paso Water uses about 110 million gallons per day. Meta's consumption would be less than half a percent of that total. But he also noted that John Balliew, the CEO of El Paso Water, said the city "can't do this a lot. I don't think we could do another one."
The real issue, Mendoza-Moyers argues, isn't just water or emissions. It's corporate power meeting municipal desperation. "These big companies show up, they've got the Yale-educated lawyers and the really expensive law firms, and they just kind of outwit, out-negotiate, these local elected officials," he said.
El Paso has been seeking economic recovery since the North American Free Trade Agreement devastated the garment industry in the 1990s. The city was characterized as the "Number One Job Loser" in 1997. That desperation shapes negotiations. "In El Paso, we're always so desperate for any industry not to pass us over," Mendoza-Moyers said.
What Reporting Requires
Haussamen has been filing public records requests to expose Project Jupiter's terms. He published a timeline of events and disclosed that his wife, Sarah Silva, is a state representative who supports the project. That transparency about his own conflicts is rare among journalists covering data centers.
He found that Project Jupiter hired a Kansas construction company to level the site, importing workers rather than hiring locally-despite promises of local job creation. "Was there really not an El Paso construction company that could have done that?" he asked.
Mendoza-Moyers is now pursuing a master's degree in utility economics and regulation "to know what the hell I'm talking about," as he put it. He publishes detailed breakdowns of consumption statistics and power generation plans. He interviews utility executives and engineers. He scrutinizes what companies promise versus what contracts require.
This level of reporting is resource-intensive. Mendoza-Moyers noted the obvious solution: "If Bill Gates or somebody wanted to give El Paso Matters, like, a hundred million dollars, then we could hire ten reporters. That would be cool."
The Void
Haussamen said his Project Jupiter coverage reached people in ways traditional newsrooms no longer can. Strangers approached him at grocery stores saying his reporting was the only source they found. His articles circulated on Facebook and Instagram. "It was the first time I really thought, Maybe we can build something out of the ashes of what private equity and other big corporations have done to journalism in America," he said.
But one journalist cannot replace a newspaper. Haussamen has started multiple news organizations-a nonprofit, a for-profit-and found it difficult to sustain them. The infrastructure that once covered local government has collapsed, leaving communities vulnerable to deals negotiated in secret.
Mendoza-Moyers worries about whether readers will engage with deeply reported stories. He thinks often of a New York Times quiz asking readers to choose between prose by Cormac McCarthy and text generated by AI. The results were nearly even.
For writers and journalists covering complex topics like data center infrastructure and corporate accountability, understanding how to research and report on these issues matters. AI for Writers and AI Research Courses can help journalists develop skills for investigating and explaining technical subjects to general audiences.
Three years after Meta's deal, El Paso is still learning what it agreed to. The city recently released a climate action plan noting changes to the data center's emissions projections. Officials are holding "listening sessions" with residents. The contract with Meta cannot easily be broken-the cost to exit could exceed a billion dollars.
The story of how a major corporate project arrived in a community with minimal scrutiny is, in itself, the story that should have been told first.
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