One proposal would shield residential and small-business electric customers from data center costs while another would require disclosure of water and energy use

Joshua Bowling, Source New Mexico

This article was originally published by Source New Mexico.

U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez (D-N.M.) on Aug. 25 announced he had co-sponsored two federal bills aimed at data center transparency.

Vasquez signed on as a co-sponsor to the FAIR Data Act, sponsored by Rep. Josh Riley (D-N.Y.), and the Data Center Water and Energy Transparency Act of 2026, sponsored by Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-IL).

The FAIR Data Act would shield residential electric customers and small businesses from shouldering increased energy costs related to large data centers. The Data Center Water and Energy Transparency Act of 2026 would require developers to provide state and local governments that have data centers, or are considering them, with information pertaining to energy and water consumption. Companies that don’t comply would face fines of up to $20,000 per day.

“New Mexico’s water, air and resources belong to us, not to billionaires from coastal states who see an opportunity to extract profit from our land,” Vasquez said in a statement. “I’ve been appalled at the backroom deals, silencing of dissenting voices, shady NDAs and shell companies, and the overall lack of transparency from those who seek to do business in our state.”

NM residents protest pending Project Jupiter air quality permit outside Environment Department

New Mexico residents protested Project Jupiter outside the Environment Department as opponents filed new legal challenges over water wells and the air permit process.

Organ Mountain NewsJoshua Bowling

Vasquez’s announcement came one day after his Congressional colleague U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) sent a letter to several state agencies demanding detailed information about water usage for Project Jupiter, the Oracle and OpenAI data center under construction in southern New Mexico, which lies in the 2nd Congressional District Vasquez represents.

The only direct mention of Project Jupiter in Vasquez’s announcement was a reference to his July condemnation of a security guard’s use of physical force at a Doña Ana County meeting where residents protested against the development.

Earlier this year, Vasquez called on elected officials in a small New Mexico county to adopt a data center moratorium as a Canadian tech CEO sought to build a massive data center and solar array in their community.

Source NM reported that neither Green Data nor its CEO, Jason Bak, had ever successfully built a data center. Yet Bak’s company sought to build on 10,000 acres in partnership with New Mexico Tech, the local university.

County commissioners ultimately adopted the moratorium and New Mexico Tech nixed the deal, in large part because it didn’t have enough contiguous land to host the development.

“New Mexico should absolutely compete for the jobs and technology of the future, but we are not going to sell out our water, our clean air or our way of life to do it,” Vasquez said in his Tuesday statement. “If you want to do business here, you need to be transparent, listen to local residents, and most importantly, prove to New Mexicans that projects will serve, not steal from, our communities.”

Joshua Bowling is a senior reporter for Source New Mexico. He's reported in New Mexico, where he broke stories of lavish spending at Western New Mexico University and more, since 2022.