NM Supreme Court pauses Project Jupiter air permit - Algernon D’Ammassa, Albuquerque Journal
In a unanimous order issued Sunday night, the New Mexico Supreme Court granted a temporary stay that pauses proceedings on a crucial permit for the hyperscale data center under construction in Santa Teresa, known as Project Jupiter.
The five justices granted the stay as they consider a petition filed by Santa Fe-based New Energy Economy, a clean energy advocacy organization, arguing that the New Mexico Environment Department cannot proceed with a public hearing into the data center’s air quality permit application because it has not established the project’s fuel source.
In a brief order, the court granted a stay of the administrative proceedings until further order and stated that any replies ordered by the court would be filed no later than Sept. 2.
The order, filed at 8:21 p.m. Sunday, fell on the eve of the Environment Department’s deadline to produce the permit’s full administrative record and for challengers to submit their technical testimony.
New Energy Economy Executive Director Mariel Nanasi called the order “an extraordinary and necessary intervention” in a statement late Sunday night.
Representatives for developers Oracle Corp. and Yucca Growth Infrastructure were not immediately available for comment.
The public hearing, set to open Sept. 14, was to be an evidentiary proceeding before an independent hearing examiner considering the air quality permit application for an on-site microgrid power generating facility that would supply the data center with energy through a methane-powered fuel cell system. The application was filed by Yucca Growth Infrastructure.
Whether the hearing proceeds on Sept. 14, or at all, is unclear. The temporary stay is to allow the state Supreme Court time to review New Energy Economy’s petition and the threshold issue it raises. The justices are not being asked to decide for or against issuing the permit.
New Energy Economy argued that the application is not ripe for a hearingdue to setbacks in establishing a route for a pipeline that would supply 400 million cubic feet of natural gas per day from El Paso across 18 miles of private, federal and state trust land.
However, the New Mexico State Land Office has twice turned down requests by pipeline builder Energy Transfer to route the gas through state land. Public Lands Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard wrote to the applicant in July that the requested business lease and payments for rights-of-way would bring “minimal revenue” to the land trust, while “the burden that the project will impose on New Mexico’s water and other natural resources, and on the surrounding community, is extreme.”
In filings with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Energy Transfer recently indicated the pipeline may not be ready for service until 2027. It has not yet announced whether it would seek a legal challenge to the State Land Office’s decision or re-draw the pipeline route.
New Energy Economy argued that the hearing should be dismissed until an application establishing the microgrid’s fuel source was on record.
On Aug. 15, hearing examiner Max Shepherd orderedYucca Growth to submit a response to NEE’s motion for dismissal of the application, only to reverse himself five days later and order that the question be addressed during the hearing instead.
Last week, the Center for Biological Diversity and the New Mexico Environmental Law Center jointly filed a petition with the NMED seeking to disqualify Shepherd as hearing examiner. The organizations complained that Shepherd’s handling of the pre-hearing procedures and what it called “arbitrary and inconsistent rulings” — including an abrupt decision to move the hearing up by a month — had sabotaged a fair hearing process.
The data center began construction last September over 1,400 acres of land on vacant land three miles north of the Santa Teresa Port of Entry. The complex of data centers and office facilities is intended to house AI training technology for Oracle Corp. and OpenAI.
As of June 30, builders reportedspending $144.5 million on preliminary work for the microgrid, bringing it to 10% completion.
“The public was being railroaded through a process designed to move at extraordinary speed while opponents were denied the tools necessary to test the Applicant’s claims,” Nanasi said in her written statement. “That sequence of events raises grave questions about political pressure and whether this process was being driven toward a predetermined result instead of a search for the truth.”
This is a breaking story and will be updated on the Albuquerque Journal website.
Federal officials announce water cuts as Colorado River supplies continue to plunge - By Dorany Pineda and Wufei Yu, Associated Press
Federal officials announced sharp water cuts for the next two years on Friday for three Western states that rely on the imperiled Colorado River.
Under the Bureau of Reclamation's plan, California, Nevada and Arizona will collectively reduce water use by 1.25 million acre-feet (about 1.54 billion cubic meters) annually during that period, with the possibility of larger cuts depending on conditions.
Arizona will see the biggest cuts, while states upstream — Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico — do not face any for now.
Meanwhile neighboring Mexico will reduce its intake by 250,000 acre-feet (about 310 million cubic meters) under a U.S.-Mexico treaty.
"We've been in this 26-year prolonged drought period," said Andrea Travnicek, the Interior Department's assistant secretary for water and science. "We continue to see a prolonged drought in our future. So continuing to work together as a whole within the basin is going to be extremely important."
The current rules governing the use of the river's water are set to expire in October, and the seven states have been unable to reach a consensus on sharing it over the long term.
Last winter saw the worst snowpack on record for the Colorado River Basin, adding more stress on farmers, industry, wildlife and hydropower producers, as well as tens of millions of people who rely on the waterway, including in dozens of Native American tribes and in two Mexican states.
Years of overuse combined with drought and rising temperatures due to climate change have depleted the country's two largest reservoirs, which are both fed by the Colorado. Lake Mead recently plummeted to its lowest level since it began filling nine decades ago, and Lake Powell did the same about a week later. Their combined storage is the lowest it has been in nearly seven decades.
Negotiators in Arizona thanked California and Nevada for their collaboration on sharing the cuts.
"For 2027 and 2028, the reductions that are now memorialized here will provide substantial stability for folks," said Tom Buschatzke, Arizona Department of Water Resources director. "We'll continue to negotiate and figure out how we're going to operate over a longer-term period, which is what we all want."
JB Hamby, California's chief Colorado River negotiator, said the plan brings "some badly needed near-term certainty at a moment of extraordinary risk," though he called it "a bridge, not a permanent solution."
Officials in Nevada applauded their collaboration with Arizona and California and said a seven-state consensus remains their preferred path for the river.
In Southern Nevada, Kyle Roerink, senior adviser at the conservation group Great Basin Water Network, said efforts to build a new airport and shopping malls and some public land sales have not progressed, reflecting the dire hydrology inked in the federal documents. Further cuts could slow real estate development in metro Las Vegas, he said.
"When the Hoover Dam, a symbol of American fortitude and American power, drops and loses its shine, it can be scary," Roerink said. "But it can also pose itself as a great opportunity for us to prepare for the next hundred years in a meaningful way."
BernCo hires consultant to chart path for jail healthcare switch - Matthew Reisen, Albuquerque Journal
A single provider contract. In-house medical services. A combination of both.
Those are some of the options on the table as Bernalillo County tries to chart a new path to provide healthcare at the state’s largest jail after the University of New Mexico Hospital decided not to renew its contract.
And time is of the essence.
In October, service model options will be offered to the Bernalillo County Commission, which will vote on which one is chosen for the July 2027 transition.
To help the effort, County Manager Cindy Chavez said they have hired the Texas-based consulting firm, J. Allen and Associates - Correctional Healthcare Management LLC. Chavez did not disclose how much the consultants are being paid, saying it's still being finalized.
The clock started ticking July 16, when UNMH “gave a one-year notice to conclude medical, dental and behavioral health services” at the Metropolitan Detention Center, according to the county.
During the last County Commission meeting, Chavez said commissioners had already signaled to her that they would say “no” to contracting out medical services, which went awry with past for-profit providers. UNMH came on board in July 2023, as the facility grappled with rising inmate deaths and substandard care while providers Centurion and Corizon bowed out.
Since 2020, 49 people have died at the jail or died after falling ill at the jail. Of those, 24 deaths occurred after UNMH took over. Advocates pointed to improvements after UNMH came in, such as getting more inmates on medically assisted detox, but federal audits found UNMH was not adhering to constitutional healthcare standards outlined in a 2017 settlement agreement.
“We have a really talented group of people who are providing services today … everybody in the organization is pulling together because we know how important this is, and there's a lot of momentum and I would actually say optimism for the future,” Chavez said. “We understand that we have an obligation to provide the highest quality service for anybody who's in our custodial care. We understand that, we're taking it very seriously.”
Aside from the service model options, Chavez said there are some big decisions to be made “sooner than later,” including choosing an electronic health record system, which currently belongs to UNM.
She said they are aiming to apply for Medicaid coverage for inmates — to offset costs — and have to decide how to manage that, either internally or through a third-party. And, in order to be able to apply for Medicaid, MDC has to have a pharmacy “up and running” first.
For a time leading to the transition, she said, MDC may have two pharmacies in the facility, including UNMH, as the new pharmacy gets Drug Enforcement Administration licensure.
“There are lots of these types of questions that we need to be able to answer in pretty short order,” Chavez said. “Because either we need to find a contract partner or we need to build that capacity.”
Prior to presenting service model options to the commission, she said they will present options to the Detention Facility Advisory Board, Addiction Treatment Advisory Board and Behavioral Health Advisory Board, where the public can hear options and have input.
When the news broke that UNMH would no longer be the medical provider at MDC, it was announced as a mutual decision. In the last commission meeting, Chavez told commissioners they learned of UNM’s decision in late June.
Chavez said UNMH came to the county “because they had an interest in ending the contract.”
“And we were supportive of that because, candidly, they jumped in when no one else would, and I really want to say this, that we are so grateful to them,” she said. “Providing services in a jail is incredibly difficult and we want to both thank them and support their transition out — this is a really important partnership between the county and the university — and I have truly nothing but gratitude and respect for UNMH, and want to continue that partnership to whatever extent is appropriate in the future.”
Drought conditions worsen across New Mexico, West - Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
Record-breaking July temperatures have left nearly 95% of New Mexico in some degree of drought, according to a new outlook from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and “isolated” monsoon rains failed to provide meaningful relief to water supply challenges across the West.
The outlook, released Thursday, monitored the status of major reservoirs across the Colorado River and Rio Grande basins, noting that many have reached historic lows, including Lake Mead and Lake Powell.
New Mexico’s Elephant Butte Reservoir remains at 1.4% of its capacity, prompting state officials earlier this month to close the lake’s main boat ramp due to safety concerns.
Conditions will improve through November, officials said Thursday. While an uptick in monsoon rains will not “fully eliminate drought and its impacts,” forecasters predict a 90% chance of a “very strong” event triggered by a strengthening El Niño, potentially creating wetter conditions across the Intermountain West this fall.
NOAA’s previous outlook in early July was more optimisticabout the potential for significant monsoon rains across the region this summer. But the forecast released Thursday noted that New Mexico instead experienced its second-warmest July on record, and the eastern part of the state “continued to dry out” without receiving any significant precipitation.
The administration’s drought map shows that 3% of New Mexico is in “severe drought,” namely Albuquerque, Santa Fe and parts of the northeastern corner of the state. About one-third of the state, predominantly in northern New Mexico, is suffering from “extreme drought,” the map shows.
The outlook notes that conditions are unlikely to improve over the next two weeks, with all but the northern and western edges of New Mexico facing 100% probabilities of above-average temperatures.
New Mexico governor appoints 2 new district court judges - Source New Mexico staff
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Thursday announced her appointments of two new district court judges: Maria Montoya Chavez as a judge on the Second Judicial District Court and Kirsten Louise Dick for the Thirteenth Judicial District Court.
Montoya Chavez, whose appointment starts Sept. 28, has practiced law in the state for more than 25 years, and fills a new judgeship the state Legislature created, with her term running until the next general election after one year of service, at which point she will run for election for a full term.
She previously served as chair of the Family Law Section of the State Bar of New Mexico and has a law degree from St. Mary’s University School of Law in Texas and a bachelor’s degree in criminology from the University of New Mexico, according to a news release.
Dick, who currently serves as a hearing officer and special commissioner for the Second Judicial District Court, fills a vacancy left by Cheryl Hein Johnston.
Her term begins Sept. 12, and she will also run in the next general election after one year of service for a full term.
She holds a law degree from UNM and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Denver.
She previously served as Second Judicial Court’s Children’s Court managing attorney, as a rules attorney for the New Mexico Supreme Court’s Clerk of Court’s Office and as a judicial law clerk and assistant attorney in the chambers of Justice Barbara J. Vigil.
