Tucson leaders unanimously rejected a massive data center dubbed Project Blue last year amid outcry from the community with concerns about water, power and resources that they didn’t want put toward a data center. It was a heated moment that came to a head during an August council meeting
But despite that vote, the project is still being built. Developer Beale Infrastructure got the zoning they needed from Pima County instead and announced they would build the data center to be air-cooled instead of water-cooled.
Jim Nintzel is covering it for the Tucson Sentinel and joined The Show to talk more.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, Jim.
JIM NINTZEL: Good morning. Thanks for having me on, Lauren.
LAUREN GILGER: Thank you for coming on. So tell us how this story about the use of Tucson water here came to light, Jim. Like, the city doesn’t seem to have known that their water was being used in a way for the construction of Project Blue?
JIM NINTZEL: That’s right. Some protesters were out at the construction site, which is outside of the city of Tucson near our county fairgrounds, and they noticed that the contractors were spraying down the dust that has, you know, goes along with the construction process.
And they asked the city, "Hey, where are they getting this water?" And the city did some looking into it, and they discovered that Tucson Water had granted a permit to tap into the water line in order for the contractor to do that. And the contractor was putting the water into trucks and hauling it out to the construction site and using it to spray down the dirt.
And the city decided, "Hey, listen, you can’t be using our water in that manner." The city manager wrote a letter to the Project Blue folks at Beale Infrastructure and said, "Not only are we mad that you’re using our water, we’re taking that permit back and we expect you to give us back 2 acre-feet of water in water credits."
LAUREN GILGER: Right. So this letter from the city manager was pretty strongly worded. Let’s just back up and have you remind us a little bit, Jim, about how this all came to be, because Project Blue was so controversial at the city level even though it sounds like city leaders initially were pretty gung-ho.
JIM NINTZEL: They were. This was something being worked out by both Pima County and the city of Tucson. Pima County actually owned the land and sold it to the developer. They also rezoned it for this.
The next step was the city was going to annex the property, and then the developer was going to build a big pipeline leading out to the area to extend the city’s reclaimed water system — the water that’s been through the reclamation process after going through the sewer system. And there’s a lot of that around Tucson. It’s very expensive, so it’s hard for them to sell, but the Beale folks were going to purchase that and use it to air-cool the facility.
And once word got out about this, there was just a tremendous blowback in the community, and the city decided to pull the plug on that particular deal. However, Beale said, "You know what? We’re going to move ahead with this anyway, and instead of using the water to cool the system, we’ll use an air-cooling system."
LAUREN GILGER: Right. OK, so it’s still happening. Have you gotten a response to this latest report, Jim, about the water use from this contractor to tamp down the dust at the construction site? What does Beale Infrastructure have to say to the city manager?
JIM NINTZEL: Beale Infrastructure said, "Hey, listen, we didn’t know we were doing anything wrong. We had our contractor apply for the permit. Tucson Water gave us the permit, and we have been using the water and we’ll pay for the water and the subcontractor will be paying for the water." For the cost of the water, essentially.
LAUREN GILGER: Right. But this has become such a lightning rod in Tucson that it sounds like that’s not going to fly with the city.
JIM NINTZEL: Well, they said that they would be reviewing their legal and political options with the City Council if indeed the 2 acre-feet credits were not submitted to the city.
LAUREN GILGER: How else might Beale Infrastructure get the water for the construction site if not from the city?
JIM NINTZEL: Well, the opponents — the No Desert Data Center organization — has been doing a little research and they have discovered that it appears that Beale has applied for a permit to simply drill on the site that they have through the Arizona Department of Water Resources. So they’re apparently moving forward with a plan to just drill on their own property in order to have the water they need for this particular element of the project.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So let’s back up before I let you go, Jim, and just talk about the broader context that this is happening in, right? Like, data center projects have been and become controversial all over the country. But this one in Tucson really seems to have hit a nerve.
Why do you think that is? Like, what about this particular proposal or the way people went about doing it? Why do you think people in Tucson got so angry about Project Blue?
JIM NINTZEL: I think it had a lot to do with water and the idea that they were going to be using water, which is, you know, a pretty important resource here, especially as we’re looking at what’s going with the Colorado River and the possibility that the CAP may turn off its taps to Tucson or significantly reduce what they’re sending our way.
I think it’s also frustration with the idea that these data centers are using so much energy and so much water — and this is not, the county officials say this is not going to be an AI data center, that could change in the future, presumably. But I think a lot of the concern is that we’re going to be using incredible amounts of both electricity and water to power these things across the country, and we’re developing this artificial intelligence that seems designed to take away a lot of people’s jobs and, you know, for our particular business, flood the zone with an insane amount of AI-generated stories that may or may not be true.
LAUREN GILGER: Very interesting. I mean, the developers of this and other data centers though argue that, you know, it brings some jobs, a lot of economic impact dollars come with these data centers. I mean, do they understand, it sounds like, the concerns from the community or do they think, you know, this is misguided?
JIM NINTZEL: I think they think the concerns are misguided and they’re moving full steam ahead with this. And I think that the community’s response has been pretty dramatic in terms of saying, "Hey, no, we don’t want this thing here," but I don’t know that they’re really going to be successful in stopping it.
There’s another one under construction in the Marana area, also by Beale Infrastructure, and that one was headed for a vote at the ballot after folks collected enough signatures, but the Marana town clerk rejected it, saying that the legal description that was passed around in those petitions was incorrect and they found a basically a legal technicality to boot it off the ballot.
LAUREN GILGER: Very interesting stuff. All right, I’m sure more to come on this front, but we’ll leave it there for now. Jim Nintzel covering this for the Tucson Sentinel. Jim, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate it.
JIM NINTZEL: Oh, always a pleasure. Thank you so much.
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