What Pacifico Energy proposed at the Sept. 15, 2026 Commissioners Court workshop, what its Pecos County model is permitted to do, and what’s at stake for the Big Bend.
at the Pecos County sister project — bigger than any U.S. power plant, even Grand Coulee (7.1 GW)
than the largest U.S. gas plant (3.8 GW) — and more than Los Angeles uses on its hottest day (6.5 GW)
of greenhouse gases a year allowed there — nearly as much as the entire city of Houston (34M)
a year of air pollutants allowed there (soot, ammonia, CO, VOCs) — particles that can drift hundreds of miles
7.65 GW, 33M and 12,000+ are permit limits for Pacifico’s GW Ranch in Pecos County, the project Pacifico named as its model. Brewster’s plant hasn’t been sized yet.
Pacifico’s model is its Pecos County plant: 35 gas turbines on 3,000–4,000 acres — up to half the ~7,800-acre Ahern Ranch, about 19 miles from both Alpine and Marathon, permitted to be bigger than any U.S. power plant. It’s planned “off-grid,” with its own power plant, to sidestep state regulation and power-line building timelines. But “off-grid” isn’t a promise: a likely later hookup could bring giant 765-kV power lines.
In south Brewster County, Judge Henington and 140+ local businesses have fought a border wall through Big Bend National Park, whose visitors bring $56.8 million a year to the area. Now a record-scale gas plant could rise in the north end, on Highway 67 — the scenic road into Alpine traveled by many of the park’s 500,000+ yearly visitors. A lasting haze over the Glass Mountains, Marathon and Alpine: the same scars, at our northern gateway.
This is a desert in drought: parts of Brewster County hit exceptional drought this year, and every ranch and town here runs on wells. Yet there’s no water source and no usage figure, just a plan to test the Hovey Trough, which Pacifico’s team called “not a studied aquifer.” Our aquifers are already targeted: Midland–Odessa’s water district seeks Glass Mountains wells to pump 25,000 acre-feet a year from the slow-recharging Capitan Reef. Why risk our limited water or haul polluted water here, when the Permian has a billion gallons a day of oilfield water it can’t get rid of?
New tax revenue is real money — but weigh what comes with it. Abilene’s AI data center brought nearly 6,000 construction workers a day — to a city of 125,000. Here, that’s as many people as live in all of Alpine, through a 5–7 year buildout: man camps, crowded roads, scarce housing and small schools overwhelmed. After that, just 100–200 permanent jobs, and Pacifico’s rep said workers from Reeves County and Odessa may not “go live in Alpine.” Add the health cost: the EPA links soot like the plant’s to aggravated asthma, heart attacks and early deaths. The ranching, ag and tourism that sustain us will likely pay the price.
Our lighting rules exempt temporary construction lighting — and this buildout runs 5–7 years. Twenty-one construction lights, each 7–16 times the county’s cap, already sit at the border-wall staging area. The plant would sit about 43 miles from McDonald Observatory. It’s noisy too: a turbine-and-chiller hum that never stops. Lose the dark and the quiet, and we lose our way of life and the stargazers and visitors they bring.
The roads, pipelines and power lines would never leave — “once you cut a road here, it’s here forever.” Communities in the Permian Basin, already shaped by decades of oil and gas, are welcoming projects like this one, and they have the gas, pipelines and oilfield water — plus the housing, workers and infrastructure to support it. If it’s built anywhere, build it there, north of I-10, where its emissions would land farther from Big Bend National Park.
Brewster County has time to stop this — speak up now.
No agreements have been signed, and state data-center permits are frozen until a state audit ends, expected in December.
Watch the full meeting: Brewster County Special Commissioners Court, Sept. 15, 2026. 7.65 GW, 33M and 12,000+ are permits for Pacifico’s GW Ranch, Pecos County.