Tucson City Council rejects Project Blue data center amid intense community pressure

The Tucson city council voted unanimously Wednesday against bringing the massive and water-devouring Project Blue data center — tied to tech giant Amazon — into city limits. 

After weeks of escalating public outrage over the lack of transparency around Project Blue, the council voted to end negotiations and remove the annexation and development agreement from the upcoming council meeting agenda — a move that effectively shuts down one of the largest development projects ever considered by the city.

“We can all agree this project got off on the wrong foot,” said council member Nikki Lee, who represents Ward 4, where the proposed site is located. “The way that data centers are being built is not sustainable. This is not the type of development that residents of Ward 4 would like.”

Tucsonans have spoken out loudly and clearly and I hear you,” said Mayor Regina Romero, who initiated the process for an ordinance placing limits on future possible data centers. “It is my responsibility to create guardrails to protect Tucson from this industry that is already here in Arizona.” 

Cheering erupted from opponents packed into the council chambers after the vote, who jumped to their feet as the development company representatives behind the project left the room.

“I had hope but zero expectations,” said Vivek Bharathan Wednesday, breathing a sigh of relief as No Desert Data Center members celebrated and cheered around him. “This is a huge win.”

Bharathan said the group would, in some form, plan to take part in a coming conversation about how to protect Tucson’s natural resources from future data centers. “Some collection of us will be here to carry the work forward.” 

Opponents of the data center project cheered as the council voted against annexation. Photo by Yana Kunichoff.

In a statement Wednesday, Beale Infrastructure said they were disappointed with Tucson’s decision not to move ahead with Project Blue, despite working to make the proposal compatible with the city’s climate goals.

“It is a missed opportunity for the City,” the statement said, noting that Beale believed data centers should be designed by working in close partnership with communities.  “We look forward to sharing our future plans.”

The vote doesn’t mean that Project Blue is over for the region. 

Beale and Pima County entered into a purchase and sale agreement for 290 acres of unincorporated land in June. The project developer was interested in having that land annexed into Tucson to access city water supplies, but could consider other locations to build outside Tucson city limits.  

Moving ahead, the city council will begin the process of creating local ordinances to keep large water users accountable and update zoning requirements to address the impacts of possible future data centers. Those ordinances could be up for consideration as soon as the Aug. 19 city council meeting, said Romero. 

“I feel a weight has totally lifted,” said No Desert Data Center artist Maria Renée, who made one of the first visuals for the group. “i also feel a continued responsibility to show up and continue to advocate for policy that puts guard rails on large water users.” 

Council members also expressed concerns about how the process of Project Blue took place, echoing a conversation happening at the county level about the use of non-disclosure agreements spurred by concerns around the project. 

“I believe that this proposal should have never made it this far,” said Ward 1 council member Lane Santa Cruz. “We need to be the city that says not here, not now and not like this.”

A new day for public power? 

The process may also have opened up a long-burning debate: the future of a public power option in Tucson. Since October 2024, a group of organizers with the Democratic Socialists of America have run a campaign to encourage Tucson to break its contract with longtime energy supplier Tucson Electric Power and run its own energy utility.

Amid the data center debate, there were a flurry of questions over how TEP would meet the center’s significant energy demand, and how to ensure the additional cost wouldn’t fall on residential consumers. Earlier this year, the company asked for a 14% rate hike. 

“The biggest piece of this project that concerned me is we have a flawed system here with not using public power,” said Ward 2 council member Paul Cunningham. “When the public power people came to me a few months ago I was like, ‘maybe yes, maybe not — we’ll see.’”

Since the debate over Project Blue, Cunningham said his opinion had changed. 

“There was no way in this situation to guarantee that if we did build this data center that some partial outbuild for the power supply to the data center wasn’t going to be passed on to our ratepayers,” Cunningham said. “We’ve got to work towards seeing that we’ve fixed that.” 

“I’m very excited to hear that Paul Cunningham recognized we need public power,” said public power campaign organizer Lee Ziesche after the meeting. 

See all of Arizona Luminaria’s Project Blue coverage.

Related