Local leaders have voted to block a massive data center proposed for a 290-acre stretch of land southeast of downtown Tucson. Project Blue was the latest in a slew of data center plans in Arizona and would have used millions of gallons of Tucson water.
It was a prospect that many residents roundly rejected.
Boos and jeers rang out during a series of tense community meetings hosted by city officials and Project Blue developer Beale Infrastructure. As the Arizona Luminaria first reported, public records from 2023 also tied the project to Amazon Web Services. A company spokesperson said while it had “previously engaged in standard due diligence processes in Arizona,” the company doesn’t have “any commitments or agreements in place to develop” the project currently.
Project Blue pledged to generate some $3.6 billion in economic development for Tucson — from tax revenues, infrastructure and jobs, according to city figures. Representatives with Beale Infrastructure said that would include 180 permanent positions and many more temporary ones for construction workers — like Jorge Pereyda, a representative with the Western States Regional Council of Carpenters, Local 1912. He says he and other members often need to commute to Phoenix for large-scale contracts.
“Because as our population increases the demand for jobs is going up, and the growth of jobs is not equal to the growth in population,” Pereyda said after one of the meetings. He and other union members attended both events wearing yellow construction vests and some voicing their support for the project.
He says Project Blue is the kind of thing that would allow him to stay in Tucson.
But, it also required water — at least 1,910 acre feet per year at full build out — largely for cooling and operating purposes. That’s about 6% of Tucson’s total water supply. It would have used potable water for at least the first two years, while a pipeline to bring reclaimed water was being built.
During community meetings, representatives with Beale Infrastructure insisted the plan would be net water positive, meaning all water used would be replaced. They said that would happen through mitigation projects like removing turf, retrofitting homes with water-conserving appliances, and treating compromised wells for contaminants like PFAS.
Many of those efforts are already underway by local water officials and several residents who spoke during the meetings were skeptical about the plan.
“Our summer temperatures are hitting record highs, and our water levels are hitting record lows. We no longer have the monsoon rains that had the Santa Cruz River run from bank to bank,” Danny Garcia, a sixth-generation Tucsonan, said during a packed meeting this month.
Standing at the microphone, he told the crowd he grew up on Tucson’s southside, where military sites and weapons manufacturers caused major groundwater contamination and led to a Superfund designation by the EPA.
“My family roots used to be as deep as the water table, but unfortunately that has gone down,” he said. “We’ve also had industry come into our community and be a negative impact.”
Garcia says now, he also worries about the future.
“Even before Project Blue, my concerns were that my granddaughter would have to leave Tucson around 2050,” he said. “For her to leave because she wants to go get a job somewhere after college, whatever, that’s fine, people do that. But for her to leave because this place has to be abandoned, because there is no water? That means, she’ll have to leave, which means her whole generation will disappear from this region.”
Bringing back rivers
It’s a scorching midsummer morning, and Joaquin Murrieta-Saldivar is staring out at a section of the Tres Rios Reserve.
“The river that we see, the water that we see, it comes from the treatment plants of Tucson,” said Murrieta-Saldivar, cultural ecologist director with the Watershed Management Group.
It’s a vast reservoir and wetland area in the town of Marana, just northwest of Tucson. It’s full of reclaimed water that’s lined with bushy vegetation and teeming with tiny fish. A group of birders peer through binoculars and set up a tripod to photograph ducks floating on the surface.
Murrieta-Saldivar says the Santa Cruz River used to open up here, giving way to a lush landscape of native vegetation like mesquite trees, creosote and cottonwoods and even giving Marana its name — which he says comes from the Spanish word manaña, or thicket.
“Some of the trees, like the cottonwoods and willows, are touching water, and that’s why they’re here. If there is no water, those trees are the first ones that die off,” he said.
The Santa Cruz is a transborder river that starts along the Arizona-Sonora border and dips into Mexico before making its way north to places like Tucson and Marana. It’s dry in many places today, but reclaimed water has brought it back in places like this.
Murrieta-Saldivar leads the way through tall grass and dry brush to get to a section of flowing river.
You sense the river before you see it — the sound of running water and slight thickness of humid, cool air. The stream is about 10 feet wide and 2 or 3 feet deep.
Murrieta-Saldivar says replenishing river streams like this feeds the aquifer below us to ensure groundwater is recharged.
“That water is to maintain the health of the watershed, it’s to cool down Tucson, it’s to provide local life like all the birds that we were talking about … the migrating birds and things like that,” he said. “Not to cool down a big computer, come on.”
In a report last month, Michael Bogan, an associate professor in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment at the University of Arizona, estimated a 3- to 5-mile stretch of the Santa Cruz River downstream of this spot would have dried up completely if Project Blue got the green light.
In an open letter to city leaders, Bogan said details provided by the project showed it could not meet the net positive water goals it pledged, leaving Tucson, and the river, with less real water.
“It seems like one of two options — either the sourcing of the water hadn't been thought about that closely, due to kind of the changing answers the city and Beale [Infrastructure] were providing, or the other option would be, they have thought about the source of the water and they didn't want to disclose that because it would be unpopular and it would not be publicly well received,” Bogan said. “It was alarming that we didn't have answers from the beginning and that the answers that were provided kind of kept shifting.”
City Council votes down plan
Last week, Tucson leaders agreed. It took less than an hour for the mayor and City Council to unanimously vote to stop negotiations with Project Blue. Council member Lane Santa Cruz said Project Blue’s backers weren’t being transparent about their plans and what’s happening in Tucson is not unique.
“Cities across the country are being sold the same story. Promises of jobs, innovation and progress. But what’s not being talked about is who really benefits and what it will cost us,” Santa Cruz said.
Arizona is one of the largest data center markets in the country, and more proposals are on the way — like one plan that seeks to put a 3,000-acre data center corridor between Tucson and Phoenix.
Mayor Romero said that’s why she wanted to move beyond Project Blue.
“For me, it is important to see the forest from the tree. To see what reality we are living in, and it is my responsibility to create guardrails to protect Tucson from the industry that is already here in Arizona,” Romero said.
City leaders also voted to advance plans to set up regulations for large water users and new zoning requirements for data centers.
In a statement after the vote, a spokesperson with Beale Infrastructure called the decision a “missed opportunity” for Tucson and said data centers are “the backbone of the modern economy.”
