On July 22nd I attended the meeting of the Torrance County Board of Commissioners in Estancia. The room was packed with citizens who were anxious to hear from their commissioners regarding the conflicting rumors of something being referred to as “Project Mars”. Most had heard rumors that it was a data center that would be built just a little bit southeast of the Moriarty Airport. Others had heard that it was going to be a secret military project. The public comments portion, where those who wished to speak were afforded a few minutes to voice their concerns and ask questions of the commissioners lasted over an hour. So, in a nutshell, here’s what the constituents said they’d heard through the rumor mill, and then what the commissioners, had to say.

Many of those present had heard that this project was a done deal, and that some of their leases of public lands for grazing livestock would be cancelled to afford the developer of the project, whatever it was to be, sufficient property. A few had been told that some of their own privately owned land would be seized by the government as well, either for the project itself or to create a right of way for access to the property. Needless to say, ranchers who would be affected were up in arms, but even those present who wouldn’t be affected were concerned about the lack of transparency, with commissioners rumored to have met with representatives of the potential developer in secret, hiding everything from the residents of Torrance County.

Now let’s talk about the responses from the commissioners (mostly Ryan Schwebach). First and foremost, Project Mars, IF it gets built in Torrance County, is NOT an AI data center! And I need to emphasize the word “IF”, because it’s not a done deal. Far from it. Apparently, Torrance County was one of several possible locations for Project Mars. It would appear that the full nature of the project may be classified, but it seems likely that the facility would be for a Department of Defense contractor for purposes of research, development and testing of ballistic weapons. That last sentence is just my opinion, based on what I heard and from many years of working in a DOD environment.

Of course, just the mere mention of “ballistic weapons” didn’t put many minds at ease too much, but Commissioner Schwebach assured those in attendance that the testing that would be involved was not the type of testing that would endanger anyone and emphasized that the project, if it happened, would bring several hundred jobs to Torrance County and water usage would be no more than what would be necessary for toilets, hand-washing sinks and maybe a few water fountains.

So, the public probably doesn’t need to be concerned at this point about a 2,500-acre data center going in anytime soon. What the public SHOULD be concerned about is the fact that it appears that at least one of the three commissioners has known about this potential project for several months and the County Commission waited until several weeks AFTER rumors started flying around before even considering reassuring the general public. The reasons given for not “clearing the air” sooner were that it was to early in the process to go public with the potential project and that just to be consulted on the proposal the one county commissioner involved, the county manager and county attorney were required to sign non-disclosure agreements. But those agreements wouldn’t have precluded putting out a statement to the effect that there is a potential project in the works without stating exactly where and what the project. But they also could have included a statement of what it was NOT, specifically “It’s NOT an AI data center”. That much wouldn’t have violated an NDA and would have put the minds of citizens at ease, at least a little bit.

This is an issue with transparency. Without transparency, trust goes away. When citizens lose trust in their elected officials, representative government begins to break down.