Delivering For You

Data centers are not new, but the massive hyperscale facilities being built today are unlike anything communities have dealt with before. 

Driven by the explosive growth of artificial intelligence and cloud computing, technology companies are racing to build enormous facilities that can consume staggering amounts of electricity and water—often with little meaningful input from the communities that will have to live with the environmental and financial consequences. 

Companies like Meta stand to make billions of dollars from the AI boom, while families and local communities are left to shoulder the costs of new power infrastructure, higher utility bills, depleted water resources, pollution, and increased strain on our electric grid. 

In places like El Paso, where our desert environment means water is scarce and extreme heat is already worsening, allowing private corporations to consume enormous amounts of our limited resources for their own profit is not sustainable or fair. Communities should never be forced to sacrifice their water, their air, their environment, or their financial security so that Big Tech can build bigger and faster. 

Data centers should not get a blank check. Companies must be required to pay their fair share, fully account for their impact, be transparent, protect the environment, and give communities a choice of whether or not to have them in their communities long before construction even begins.

Communities like ours deserve a whole-of-government approach at all levels to address legitimate and urgent concerns:

Here is some of the legislation I have co-sponsored so far:

• The AI Data Center Site Selection Transparency Act
  • This bill would set requirements for new AI data centers, requiring that developers publicly disclose the location 180 days in advance, disclose impacts on energy and water, and restricting NDA agreements with public entities on data centers deals.
• The Power for the People Act
  • This bill ensures data centers are fully paying for their energy costs and associated infrastructure, creates a system to manage data center interconnection to the grid, and provides resources to improve accurate data center load forecasting.
• The Energy Bills Relief Act
  • This bill reinstates 2022 tax credits for home and system-wide energy improvements and ensures that facilities like data centers are paying for their own energy costs.
• Lowering Utility Bills Act
  • This bill would amend the Federal Power Act and the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 to require investor-owned electric utilities and gas utilities and transmission providers to, when establishing or calculating a return on equity, establish or calculate the return on equity at the lowest return on equity in an established range of reasonabl.eness, and for other purposes.
    
• Ratepayer Bill of Rights Act
  • This bill requires public disclosure of electricity and water use, infrastructure costs, rate impacts, public financial assistance, and related commitments associated with large data centers, and for other purposes.
    
• Responsible Data Center Siting Act
  • This bill directs the Secretary of Energy to establish best practices for the siting of data centers.

Since I learned the White House pushed for a data center at Fort Bliss and that other entities have proposed their own construction in El Paso, here is what I have done:

• On March 26th, I sent a letter to Meta requesting that they hold a public listening session to answer the community’s questions on how the data center will impact El Paso. Their lack of community engagement is unacceptable.
• On April 27th, I sent a follow-up letter to Meta on my request.
• Throughout March and April, I urged Fort Bliss to hold a listening session for the community which they agreed to.
• On May 6th, I sent a letter to the Public Utility Commission expressing concern about El Paso Electric’s application to service the Meta Data Center.
• On May 9th, I sent a letter to the Public Service Board urging them to ensure that any data centers in El Paso do not result in worsening water conditions.
• On June 4th, I offered an amendment to the House Appropriations Committee markup of the Fiscal Year 2027 to prohibit the use of federal funds to implement a policy proposed by President Trump that would clear the way for construction to begin on data centers without local input. This amendment was rejected by Republicans.