The city that draws the line': one Arizona community's fight against a massive data center

"A company's opaque plan to build a massive data center outside Tucson, Arizona has roiled the desert city over the past few months, the latest US community to push back as tech companies aggressively seek to build out infrastructure for cloud computing and to power the AI boom. The proposed data center, known as Project Blue, would span 290 acres in Pima county, and become the biggest development ever in the county, or anywhere in the southern part of the state."

"The San Francisco-based company hoped to get the project annexed by the city, a necessary step for it to be supplied by the public utility, Tucson Water. But since the parcel sale agreement, the proposed center has faced stiff pushback from a community upset over the enormous amounts of water and electricity it would require, and the lack of transparency with which the developers and some in local government have pursued the project."

"Conflict over the project made what is normally a sleepy time for Tucson politics the city council is off in July amid searing heat and, with luck, monsoon downpours into the craziest seven weeks I've seen in Tucson, said Michael Bogan, an aquatic ecologist and hydrologist at the University of Arizona who has long worked in the area. A view of downtown Tucson. Photograph: Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images"

Project Blue is a proposed $3.6bn data center on 290 acres in Pima County near Tucson that would be the largest development in the county and southern Arizona. The county board narrowly agreed on 17 June to sell and rezone land to developer Beale Infrastructure, which sought city annexation to access Tucson Water. The proposal prompted strong community opposition over expected high water and electricity demands and concerns about lack of transparency by developers and some local officials. The controversy intensified local politics during peak summer heat and prompted questions about environmental and resource impacts versus economic incentives.

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