El Paso Climate Debate Sharpens Around Meta Data Center

Public comment at Tuesday’s El Paso City Council meeting turned repeatedly to the proposed Meta data center, with speakers tying the project to water use, electricity demand, tax incentives and the city’s pending Climate Action Plan.

Speaker after speaker urged the city to revisit its agreement with Meta and raised broader concerns about how El Paso should evaluate large, resource-intensive tech projects. In one of the more detailed comments, resident John Lanahan criticized the project’s water use, power demand and incentive package, saying the facility would use “up to 1.5 million gallons of potable water per day,” had received “an 80 percent property tax abatement for 35 years” and “only promises to create 100 permanent jobs.”

City materials, however, indicate the project could use more water than Lanahan said, while being tied to fewer permanent jobs than he cited. The city’s data center resource page shows the project’s Tier III average water use is 1.5 million gallons per day, with a maximum permitted use of 2.5 million gallons per day at full build-out. The city also says the agreement is tied to at least 50 permanent jobs after completion, along with temporary construction employment during development.

Opposition to the project surfaced as a major organizing issue. Ana Fuentes, director of Amanecer People’s Project, told council her group had spent months researching data center impacts and holding public information meetings across the city. She said more than 3,500 people had emailed council asking to break the Meta deal, stop new generative data centers in El Paso and push the Public Service Board to do the same.

“It is shocking how deeply unpopular this project is,” said Fuentes. “This is a unifying issue unlike anything that we’ve ever worked on and it’s the same story all across the state and the country.”

The discussion also showed how closely the data center issue is now linked to El Paso’s climate policy. Multiple speakers framed the proposed Meta data center as a test of whether El Paso’s development decisions will align with the city’s pending Climate Action Plan and its broader environmental goals.

Council reaction suggested the public pushback is being heard, though the discussion on Tuesday centered more on process than on any immediate reconsideration of the Meta agreement. City Rep. Josh Acevedo gave the clearest indication that the issue has become politically salient, saying, “My constituents will not stop talking about data centers and all the concerns, and I share their concerns, and I’m worried about what happens around that.”

Acevedo proposed tying the city’s forthcoming data center policy framework more explicitly to the Climate Action Plan, with biannual updates on incentive agreements, construction bids, infrastructure projects, utility agreements and industry partnerships.

Staff said the data center policy framework was already being incorporated into the Climate Action Plan and told council that issues such as air, water, noise and other resource concerns would be part of that work. Staff also pointed to six public meetings beginning March 23 as the next phase of community input, underscoring that the city’s immediate response in this meeting was to route the issue through policy development and public engagement.