TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — Tucson City Council has voted to keep the Project Blue data center out of the city of Tucson.
The massive center was pitched as a major source of jobs and tax revenue but Councilmembers said public opposition and concern about high water and electricity use made them block the project.
At first all we knew was Project Blue was a deep mystery. Anyone who might know more than the name would always say, well you know there’s a non-disclosure agreement, saying anything would risk a lawsuit. Then Pima County Supervisors were able to reveal it as a data center pitched as a rich source of jobs and tax revenue. But when it was up to Tucson City Councilmembers they said the profit was not worth the environmental cost.
Pima County Supervisors approved the sale of 290 acres of land for Project Blue, near I-10 and Houghton.
Project developers promised thousands of construction jobs, and 75 to 180 jobs at at least 60 thousand dollars apiece once the project was in routine operation.
The developers also offered to build an 18 mile pipeline to bring reclaimed water to cool the data center’s electronics. Not only that but they would oversize the pipes at their expense so the city would be able to carry reclaimed water for other projects.
But the project needed Tucson’s support too, to annex the land into city limits and provide millions of gallons of cooling water each day from Tucson’s water utility. It would be drinkable water at first, reclaimed water once the pipeline was ready in two or three years.
Lots of Tucsonans did not like that. They turned out in force to say big data centers do not belong in Tucson’s fragile desert environment.
The project would have been in Nikki Lee’s Ward 4 on the southeast side. She has a background in data centers and IT and asked project planners a lot of questions.
She said in Wednesday’s Council Study Session, “And so I dug deep, as many of you saw, with the risks of what it would look like for a data center to come from air quality to light pollution to noise pollution to the true economic benefit of this project.”
To Ward One Councilmember Lane Santa Cruz Project Blue looked more like a burden than a bonanza.
“Construction jobs might come, but they'll leave as fast as they arrive. And the reality is, data centers require very few long term workers. This won't bring good, paying jobs, dignified jobs, the people actually need in this community. So let's talk about the basics, water and energy. Headline after headline, city after city, we've seen how these facilities drain power and water.”
So instead of approving Project Blue, City Council ordered city staff to stop working with the project’s developers, and start working on new regulations to apply to any new data centers that might want to come to Tucson.
