Chaparral has grown into New Mexico's largest unincorporated community, but the borderland town just north of El Paso still has no city government, no single county home, and — according to residents and officials — not nearly enough public services to match its size. The community straddles Doña Ana County to the west and Otero County to the east, a split that has left roughly 16,500 residents, by the 2020 census, without the kind of local oversight most towns take for granted.
State Rep. Sarah Silva, a Democrat from Las Cruces who represents Chaparral directly, has said the community could actually be home to as many as 30,000 people today. As reported by the Santa Fe New Mexican, Silva described the town as “bursting at the seams.” Chaparral was established around 1960 and has never incorporated, leaving it without a local government to oversee zoning, infrastructure, or public safety even as its population has swelled far beyond what census figures capture.
Residents have long dealt with a lack of law enforcement and infrastructure, junk accumulation, animal-control problems, flooding, and delayed emergency response, according to the same report. The Doña Ana County sheriff's substation in Chaparral has been closed since 2022, and the community's private water utility, Lake Section Water, serves more than 5,500 connections on its own, separate from any municipal system.
A Push for a Public Safety Facility
Otero County Sheriff David Black has proposed a $10 million public-safety facility in Chaparral that would include a sheriff's office substation and ambulance bay, with space for fire, animal-control, and road-maintenance crews, according to an opinion piece Black wrote in the Santa Fe New Mexican. Black wrote that the closest ambulance to Chaparral can currently be anywhere from 14 to 40 miles away, and that Doña Ana County shuttered its substation in 2022. The facility's first phase, a sheriff and fire/EMS building, is budgeted at $5 million, with the full project reaching $10 million once completed.
Otero County has secured $5 million toward construction, and developers behind Project Jupiter, a data center in Santa Teresa, contributed $1.5 million in gross receipts tax revenue to the effort, per the seed reporting. The Colquitt Company is donating 7.5 acres of land for the facility, which Black's piece says is scheduled to break ground in December. Longtime resident James Perez, 52, who moved to Chaparral in 1983, called the proposed facility “actually amazing.”
Nearly $16 Million for Sewer Expansion
Separately, Doña Ana County commissioners approved almost $16 million in financing to expand Chaparral's wastewater system, a move intended to let more homes connect to centralized sewer service and decommission aging septic systems. According to Organ Mountain News, commissioners approved nearly $15.83 million in Colonias Infrastructure Fund financing in September for two wastewater projects, combining about $14.25 million in grants with $1.58 million in low-cost loans. With the county's own match, the outlet reports the combined project investment reaches roughly $17.4 million.
The funding breaks down into two phases. Phase 2B received about $10.43 million in state financing and, per county documents cited by the outlet, is estimated to benefit around 740 residents. Phase 3C received nearly $5.4 million and is expected to benefit about 382 residents, the report states.
Weighing Incorporation, a County-Line Move, or Status Quo
Beyond infrastructure, Chaparral residents are now weighing whether to incorporate as a city, shift the entire community into a single county, create a new county altogether, or simply maintain status quo. The debate includes questions about incorporation and a county-line change, as well as whether to create a separate county.
Moving the county line is another option residents are considering.
Silva has said she plans to keep talking with residents about the possibility. In comments reported by the Las Cruces Bulletin, she said, “I'm going to be having conversations in the coming months with the people of Chaparral – which is split between two counties – about moving the county line.” She added that such a change “will help them develop local governance and make progress on public safety, health, economic growth.”
What Residents Told a September Meeting
Silva held a community meeting at the Dolores C. Wright Community Center in September, drawing around 40 attendees, according to the seed reporting. Attendees discussed placing all of Chaparral in one county alongside incorporation or creating a new county. Insurance agent Jorge Aguirre, who lives in Las Cruces, said residents want urban-level services but resist the higher taxes that typically come with them — a tension that runs through much of the debate, given that Chaparral's median household income was $24,900 in 2020, less than half the statewide figure of $52,285.
A state-funded governance study, backed by $100,000 and launched in late October, is now underway to assess whether incorporation or another path can deliver the services residents want and help attract new business to the area. The study is expected to be ready by the end of June 2027. Until then, Chaparral remains a community of tens of thousands of people with no single government to call its own.
