Community members in Tucson packed the Pima County Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday asking them to put a stop to Project Blue — a data center proposed for a 290-acre swath of county land. A non-disclosure agreement obtained by the Arizona Luminaria show Amazon Web Services is the company behind the project.
The Pima County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 to approve the land sale in June, and the proposal next sat the city of Tucson — which needed to decide whether to annex the land and provide millions of gallons of city water to cool off computer systems inside the data center.
City leaders rejected that proposal this summer amid public outcry. Now Project Blue’s developer, Beale Infrastructure, wants to use electricity for its cooling needs from Tucson Electric Power, or TEP. Speaking to supervisors Tuesday, Eliseo Gomez argued data centers pose public health risks.
“Asthma is a big problem with these data centers, pollution causes asthma in children. The water contamination releases PFAS into our drinking supply, that’s a carcinogen,” Gomez said.
Gomez was one of dozens of speakers who addressed the supervisors during a call to the public Tuesday that lasted more than an hour, all told, the majority of which focused on opposition to Project Blue.
Several speakers asked supervisors to reverse course on their June vote, even if it meant retaining outside legal counsel. Elaina Ortiz testified that as a native Tucsonan, she worried the data center would drain the community’s already-scant resources.
“Changing your mind when presented with new information is a mark of leadership. I urge this body to pursue all mechanisms available to it to stop this project,” she said.
Supervisor Matt Heinz says he stands by his yes vote from June. Plus, he argues, reversing course would be complicated.
“Even if all five of us decided unanimously to try and cancel or get ourselves out of this contract, and voted that way in the next meeting, we would be immediately taken to court and we would absolutely lose,” he said.
Heinz says that’s because the land sale has already been approved. But, he says, the project and its community response did trigger other things at the county level — like an updated policy on non-disclosure agreements with private entities and more stringent environmental impact requirements for large projects. None of those changes will apply to Project Blue because the contract was created beforehand.
Supervisor Rex Scott, who also voted to approve the sale in June, says he still supports the project.
“I appreciate everybody’s passion and interest in this issue, but the only way that the land sale and the rezoning are going to come back up is if one of three people in the majority move for reconsideration,” Scott said. “Not only are we unlikely to do that because we support the project as designed, but, the board has also received legal counsel from the Pima County Attorney’s Office with regard to reconsideration of those items.”
Scott says under board rules, supervisors can only reconsider contracts like the land sale under certain situations. He says those don’t apply to the Project Blue proposal, and according to their counsel, going back on the rezoning approval could trigger legal issues.
“The bottom line really is, none of the three of us in the majority would vote for reconsideration, even if we could, but there are legal constraints in terms of moving for reconsideration, even if we wanted to,” Scott said.
In Project Blue’s latest proposal, submitted to the Arizona Corporation Commission in September, TEP would supply 287 megawatts of capacity by 2028.
TEP maintains that its other customers would not see a rate increase as a result of the data center, and says infrastructure improvements funded by the project will improve grid efficiency overall. It’s not yet clear how the facility would get water for its everyday needs.
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This latest proposal would use electricity from utility company Tucson Electric Power — or TEP — to power and cool off the facility, which would aim to be operational by 2027.
