TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — There were plenty of questions before Pima Supervisors approved their part of the process to build Project Blue—a large data center proposed for just south of I-10. As Now the city councilmember for the area says she needs a lot of answers before she can vote on the plan.
“To say that we can't share our water usage when water is a shared resource about 40 million people who use the Colorado River for a water source doesn't make sense to me.”
The data center will be in Councilmemebbrs Nikki Lee’s ward, if the Tucson City Council agrees to annex the land. For the center to happen the city would also have to agree to provide millions of gallons of reclaimed water to cool all those computers and storage drives.
Pima Supervisors almost did not agree to sell and rezone county land for the project. The plan passed by just one vote. Supervisors Jennifer Allen and Andres Cano did not like how the company refused to reveal exactly how much electricity and cooling water it expected to use. The company said it didn’t want competitors to know that.
Councilmembers will have to consider objections to secrecy, and environmental concerns, against some powerful economics. Beale Infrastructure, the company behind the data center, says the center would mean thousands of jobs during construction and close to two hundred well paying jobs after that.
Lee has a background in high tech and data centers. She asks if the secrecy is really required.
She just posted a long list of questions she wants answered before she decides if she’ll support Project Blue. They include water use, power use, and how many high dollar jobs would really be open to people who already live here.
“We're representatives of the public, and I take that very, very seriously, and without having adequate information and having consistent information that we can reference and we can all be on the same page about, makes it really, really difficult.”
It may be sometime in August before council starts to consider the first parts of the plan. In the meantime, Nikki Lee would like to hear more from the public—and the company.
——-
Craig Smith is a reporter for KGUN 9. With more than 40 years of reporting in cities like Tampa, Houston and Austin, Craig has covered more than 40 Space Shuttle launches and covered historic hurricanes like Katrina, Ivan, Andrew and Hugo. Share your story ideas and important issues with Craig by emailing craig.smith@kgun9.com or by connecting on Facebook and Twitter.
