The data center fight in Socorro County, New Mexico
Socorro County has an active data center moratorium on this tracker. Status is derived, not stored — a pause with a documented end date flips to Expired on its own — and the source is right next to the claim.
Status today
1-year moratorium on data centers and related infrastructure on unincorporated county land, adopted unanimously after 2+ months of opposition to the proposed Green Data Center; also began forming an advisory committee to recommend regulations.
Source
read 2026-08-12
An expiry date is the earliest a pause could have ended — extensions are common, so confirm with the clerk before citing it.
Recent news
- Socorro County approves 1-year moratorium on data centers
- Attendees commandeer New Mexico Tech town hall to oppose proposed Socorro data center, solar array
Automated news aggregation, not human-verified — follow each link to the original outlet. Part of the story tracker, 2 headlines archived.
What to do next
- Questions to ask at the hearing — force specific answers onto the record.
- Estimate the impact — electricity, water, and rate pressure for any facility size in New Mexico.
- Model CBA clauses — copy-paste language communities have actually won.
- New Mexico briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts, and every fight in the state.
Elsewhere in New Mexico
- Sierra County — Enactedexpires 2028-01-22
- Santa Fe County — Enacted
As of August 2026 · changes weekly — re-check before citing
Illustrative rather than exhaustive — dozens of localities churn weekly, and this tracks the ones we have read a source for. **Each row carries its own provenance.** Rows showing a verification date link to the ordinance, the enacting body's own page, or a datable report of the vote, and were read on that date. Rows marked *unverified* came from bulk compilation and have not been checked against a primary source — the locality, the year, and the status may all be off. Verify one of those with the town clerk before citing it as precedent. **Expiry is derived, not asserted.** A row with a documented end date flips to *Expired* on its own once that date passes. A time-limited moratorium whose start date was never documented keeps showing as enacted — that is a known gap, not a claim that it is still in force. Moratoriums are also routinely extended, so an expiry date is the earliest it could have ended, not proof that it did.
Part of the U.S. data center moratorium tracker — open data, CC BY 4.0.