Martin Heinrich

New Mexico’s senior senator faces a choice: Protect his constituents and the state’s public lands and waters or pave the way for data centers and fossil fuel interests.

This summer, the Rio Grande ran dry for 220 miles. Wildfires burned more than 181,000 acres of New Mexican forests, adding to the 16 million acres of wildfires that raged across the continent. Haunted by the 341,471-acre Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak fire of 2022, the prospect of losing everything or spending weeks saturated in smoke is all too real for many. Yet it is right here, where rivers run dry and wildfires devastate the land, that corporations want to impose sprawling, water-greedy, fossil fuel-powered data centers.

Data centers’ problems are well documented. In Georgia, homeowners contend with brown, undrinkable, polluted water. In Michigan, neighbors suffer from incessant noise. In West Virginia, residents face choking dust, degraded air quality and flooding from data center development.

New Mexico must not become a sacrifice zone for data centers that take our land, water and energy to power the fever dreams and grotesque wealth of tech billionaires and fossil fuel executives. Fortunately, the more these threats emerge, the more organized citizens become.

In Doña Ana County, people have spoken with passion and logic to challenge Project Jupiter, fighting back against backroom deals, ill-advised pipelines on state trust lands and sketchy fossil fuel air quality permits. Elsewhere, people’s love of Chaco Canyon has spurred more than 200,000 public comments, the vast majority fiercely opposed to the Trump administration’s looming decision to rescind hard-fought public lands and community protections.

The National Environmental Policy Act, known as NEPA, protects the voices of New Mexicans on these issues and more. Time and again, NEPA — as part of a tapestry of laws that protect public lands, clean air and water, wildlife and cultural resources — has served as a powerful check on the outsized influence of corporate interests that would otherwise seize our state’s resources for profit and power. From Otero Mesa to the Valle Vidal, NEPA has proven its mettle as a champion of New Mexico’s people and natural heritage.

Senate Republicans aim to dismantle these protections. Alarmingly, New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich appears willing and eager to join them.

At issue is so-called “permitting reform” legislation. The most notorious of these bills, the SPEED Act (H.R. 4776), passed the House of Representatives in 2025 and is now pending in the Senate. The SPEED Act would bulldoze a path for data centers across the state, along with dirty fossil fuel infrastructure in the Chaco region and elsewhere. New fossil fuel leases and drilling permits could be rushed through without a hard look at the impacts to people and the environment and by denying people justice in court. We are deeply troubled that Heinrich is considering similar legislation at the precise moment the Trump administration has taken more than 550 deregulatory actions that risk direct harm to New Mexico.

Heinrich has admirably stated that his intent in these negotiations is to accelerate the buildout of clean energy infrastructure. But the political math in the Republican-controlled Congress dictates that any deal will include overwhelming concessions that benefit data centers and fossil fuels — to the detriment of regular folks.

So let us be blunt: However well intentioned, Heinrich is making a serious mistake trying to cut a permitting reform deal in the Republican-controlled Congress — a deal that would benefit Silicon Valley billionaires and fossil fuel companies. Now is not the time to cut a deal. It’s time to fight for New Mexico’s people and public lands.

Stand with us, Heinrich. Stand with New Mexico.

Erik Schlenker-Goodrich is an attorney and executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center.