Nick Seibel, editor and publisher of the Silver City Daily Press, covers top stories each week in the Silver City Report. Grant County has a new data center proposal, a Silver City teacher resigns and is arrested, a new type of Día de los Muertos is looking for volunteers and more.
Susan Morée:
Nick, another data center is now being proposed and this one is near you. Tell us about what's going on.
Nick Seibel:
It's relatively near us. The data center that's being proposed is technically in Grant County. If you're familiar with the map of Grant County, it's sort of rectangular except it has this tail, this panhandle that comes down right from the middle of Grant County and goes down in between Deming and Lordsburg, between Hidalgo and Luna counties. It's a relic of the early days of the county and it involved wanting to have a piece of the transcontinental railroad in Grant County. But there is a New York-based investment company that is looking to develop a data center down in that little tail not far from the little community of Hachita, which is down there. A lot of folks, of course, concerned about this. It originally became public when the company that is planning to build it placed a legal ad in the Daily Press a couple of weeks ago, giving notice of their intent to file for an air quality permit application. That's because they're planning on putting in a number of large natural gas-powered generating units down there. That would generate pretty considerable amounts of greenhouse gases. People are concerned about that.
Susan Morée:
What about water?
Nick Seibel:
And water. Well, and that's part of it. It is, you know, this is still relatively early in the process, and we don't really have answers to a lot of questions. Water use being the big one of them. The only thing that we really know about is the air quality permit application. And so far, they haven't really filed applications for any of the other things that they would need to do. So it's a big question mark in terms of water consumption, in terms of a lot of these sorts of things. Different from the data center there in the Las Cruces area, they haven't asked for incentives from local government. So there isn't that level of interface there. But there's a lot of push now from a lot of folks here in the area basically urging the Grant County Commission to enact a moratorium on data center development, as has been done in other counties in the state, in fact, as the county government in Hidalgo County is considering doing right now. So it's a hot button issue all over the place, and now there is one potentially coming to Grant County.
Susan Morée:
And a Silver City teacher got arrested. What happened there?
Nick Seibel:
Yeah, on Wednesday morning, a now former Silver High School teacher was arrested on felony charges of possession and distribution of child sexual abuse material. Again, these sorts of situations, it's only charges so far, but he was actually arrested at the school administration office where he had just met with the superintendent of schools and tendered his resignation from the teaching staff at the high school. Obviously a very troubling and story there from last week.
Susan Morée:
And on a brighter side, there's a new Day of the Dead celebration happening. Tell us about that. It sounds exciting.
Nick Seibel:
Yeah, there's some folks from the Hispanic community here. Patricia Cano, who is a former, a retired professor from Western Maestro University, and her daughter, Guadalupe Cano, who was a longtime member of the Silver City Town Council. They have done several major cultural events here over the last several years. And this year they are teaming up with friends and community members to do a new Day of the Dead celebration that they're calling Zentolo. It's based on the traditional Day of the Dead celebration from the Huasteca region of central Mexico. And they were particularly drawn to those traditions because of the role of dance and also these sort of colorful masks that are involved in the celebration of that tradition. So it's going to be a two-day long event on Saturday. On [October] 31st, it'll happen on Pope Street. They're actually going to close the street. There's going to be performance out there and a community dance. And then on November 1st, on Sunday, it's going to move up to the campus of Western New Mexico University for performance at the Fine Arts Center Theater. So they are looking for folks to be involved both in the performances and in helping to organize the thing, but a major effort there and certainly something that we're looking forward to.
Susan Morée:
All right, that sounds like a lot of fun and a reason to get in the car and head to Silver City if you're not already there.
Nick Seibel:
Absolutely right. And if you want more information on that or any of these stories, you can, of course, find them online at scdailypress.com.
Susan Morée:
All right, thanks so much, Nick.
Nick Seibel:
Have a great one.
