Sign-on Letter to FERC (DEADLINE AUGUST 3rd)

Date: July 23, 2026

 

To: Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)
888 First Street NE, Room 1A
Washington, DC 20426

Subject: Demand a Full, Rigorous Environmental Review of the Red Chile Lateral — and Consistent Treatment with Its Collocated Twin Pipeline

Re: Red Chile Lateral, Desert Southwest Expansion Project — Docket No. PF26-9-000 Compare: Green Chile Lateral — Docket No. CP26-80-000, filed under Blanket Certificate Docket No. CP82-534-000

Dear Commissioners and FERC Staff,

 

We, the undersigned organizations and individuals, write to express our unequivocal opposition to the proposed Red Chile Lateral in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, and to demand that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) require a full, independent, and rigorous environmental review before this project moves forward.

Why This Project Must Be Reconsidered:

1. Threats to Water and Land: The Red Chile Lateral is proposed just 50 feet from the Green Chile Lateral, over the same shared aquifers with Mexico — the Conejos-Médanos/Mesilla Bolson and Hueco Bolson — already stressed by drought and overuse. Two pipelines drawing on the same fragile desert water resources compound the risk of depletion and contamination, and construction will again disrupt fragile desert ecosystems, compact soil, and disturb natural drainage that farms, ranches, and wildlife depend on.
2. Cultural and Historical Destruction: On the immediately adjacent, collocated Green Chile Lateral, FERC Staff's own May 15, 2026 Environmental Information Request demanded "the New Mexico State Historic Preservation Office's finding of 'no historic properties,' 'no effect,' or 'no historic properties affected,' for the project, or an expected date of receipt." Instead, the State Historic Preservation Officer has declined to concur with federal findings — so that finding still does not exist. Red Chile's cultural surveys demand independent scrutiny from the start, not a repeat of that same unresolved dispute.
3. Transboundary and Environmental Justice Violations: This project will disproportionately harm low-income, Latino, and Indigenous communities on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, worsening air quality and water scarcity. It touches binational commitments — including the La Paz Agreement and this region's own water-sharing obligations with Mexico — and prioritizes private financial interests over people. Even within FERC, Commissioner Chang has already warned that co-located data-center loads risk "shifting system costs to other customers" when they don't pay their fair share of grid costs — a concern she raised in a December 2025 order on PJM's tariff (193 FERC ¶ 61,217). We ask FERC to determine whether the same risk applies here, and whether El Paso Electric's ratepayers — not just Project Jupiter — could end up bearing costs this project creates.
4. A Double Standard in Plain Sight: Red Chile and Green Chile are functionally the same infrastructure — same diameter class, same county, same 50-foot right-of-way, built back-to-back to feed the same project. Yet Green Chile was pushed through under an abbreviated 1982 blanket certificate (Docket No. CP26-80-000, filed under original Blanket Certificate Docket No. CP82-534-000), while Red Chile proceeds on a separate track (Docket No. PF26-9-000). FERC should not allow an applicant to seek a lighter review for one half of a single, integrated pipeline system simply by filing it differently. Both must be evaluated together — exactly as FERC Staff already required for Green Chile, whose May 15, 2026 Environmental Information Request demanded analysis of "Project Jupiter and all associated facilities." Neither lateral should receive less scrutiny than the harm it can cause deserves. Once operational, this system will enable Project Jupiter, an AI data center whose own permit filings have projected between 10 and 14 million tons of CO₂-equivalent emissions annually — as much as four times the emissions of El Paso Electric's power plants.
   
   Our Demands
   
   We call on FERC to:

1. Require a full, independent environmental review of the Red Chile Lateral — not narrowed or streamlined to match the shortcuts sought for Green Chile — including:
   
   1. Independent, locally led surveys of rare plant species, cultural sites, and ecological resources.
   2. A transboundary impact assessment in consultation with U.S. and Mexican agencies and affected communities.
   3. Public scoping sessions for both pipelines in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, to ensure meaningful input from all impacted stakeholders.
   4. A cumulative-impacts analysis that treats Red Chile and Green Chile as the single, integrated system they are — not two unrelated filings — and that includes, in FERC Staff's own words from its May 15, 2026 Environmental Information Request, "Project Jupiter and all associated facilities." FERC has already required this standard for Green Chile; Red Chile must meet the same standard, not a lesser one.
2. Confirm NHPA Section 106 consultation is fully and independently completed for Red Chile before any approval, producing exactly what FERC Staff already demanded for Green Chile: "the New Mexico State Historic Preservation Office's finding of 'no historic properties,' 'no effect,' or 'no historic properties affected,' for the project, or an expected date of receipt" — not treated as resolved by association with Green Chile's own still-unresolved survey.
3. Prioritize environmental justice by centering the voices of marginalized communities who will bear the brunt of this project’s harms.

We Stand United

The Red Chile Lateral is not in the public interest, and it should not benefit from a lighter review than the harm of two pipelines on one aquifer deserves. It threatens our land, water, heritage, and future. We urge FERC to listen to the people — not private for-profit companies — and hold this project to the full standard the law requires.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]
[Your Organization, if applicable]
[Zip Code]

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