OpenAI and Oracle are building one of America’s biggest data centers in a state where tree mortality tripled last year

New Mexico’s forests are dying faster than at any time on record. In 2025, the state mapped 209,000 acres of trees killed by bark beetles and other insects, which was more than a 200% increase over the year before, according to a newly released report from the New Mexico Forestry Division. And the main impetus for that arboreal death was the state’s dwindling water supply. “At the beginning of January 2025, 35% of the state was in moderate drought and 20% in severe drought,” the report read. “By the end of December 2025, 71% of the state was in moderate drought and 52% was in severe drought.” According to the report, New Mexico recorded its second-warmest year on record. The lower Rio Grande, the river that has sustained farming communities in the southern part of the state for centuries, is now a river of sand most of the year, as the aquifer underneath is dropping by more than a foot each year. Now, just two miles of the Mexican border in the Chihuahuan Desert, Oracle and OpenAI are building one of the largest data centers in the country. Project Jupiter will span 1,400 acres in Doña Ana County, generate 2.5 gigawatts of electricity, and draw on $165 billion in investment capital if developers hit their targets. That number is bigger than New York’s Central Park, and the sheer expected electricity generation could power more than half of New Mexico. Data centers in the wild Data centers require enormous volumes of water to cool their server farms running 24 hours a day, a resource conflict Fortune has documented from Georgia to Arizona, where developers were using water in communities already experiencing stress. But Project Jupiter is operating at a different scale entirely given its sheer size and the huge resource allocation needed in the state. Developers of Project Jupiter purchased existing water rights from a sod farm just west of Sunland Park, New Mexico, for 2,400 acre-feet per year. After a report earlier this ye