The Arizona Daily Star has been doing a great job in covering Project Blue, the name given to the proposal from a developer to build data centers in metro Tucson for Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Unless I missed it, however, the daily has not answered a burning question that is as burning as stepping barefoot on hot asphalt in Tucson in the summer sun: Why Tucson?
Data centers need staggering amounts of water and electricity for cooling and for powering their banks of computers. But Tucson is one of the hottest and driest cities in the nation, a city with limited water supplies and with high costs for water and electricity.
The same question could be asked about the many data centers that have been built and are planned to be built in metro Phoenix, two hours up the interstate but still in the Sonora Desert. The Phoenix metropolis has better water and power supplies than Tucson, but supplies are still a drop in the bucket compared to supplies of water and electricity in some other parts of the country, including Seattle, where AWS is headquartered.
Putting data centers in the desert seems as foolish and wasteful as putting cranberry bogs in the desert.
Well, Amazon is not foolish, at least not about its balance sheet, profit and loss statement, and market capitalization. The same can be said for other corporate giants investing in artificial intelligence and data centers, such as Google and Meta.
So, why Tucson (and Phoenix)?
The top four reasons are as follows:
First and foremost, owners of data centers get a big tax break from the state of Arizona. If a company invests at least $50 million in data centers in urban locations and $25 million in rural locations, it is exempted from paying state, county and local sales tax on equipment purchases for up to ten full calendar years.
Second, while electricity isn’t cheap in Arizona, it’s not as expensive as electricity in California.
Therefore, although Meta, Google and other big users of AI and data centers are headquartered in California, it makes economic sense to locate the centers in Arizona—at least until the data centers drive up the cost of power in the Copper State. In a real sense, California companies are being subsidized by Arizonans through the tax code and through their electricity bills.
Third, Arizona is largely immune from natural disasters that can knock data centers out of commission, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes.
A fourth reason comes from Novva Data Centers, which is a big developer and operator of data centers:
Arizona’s central positioning within the Southwest allows for rapid connections to major metros like Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Denver, and Dallas. That means lower latency for content delivery, cloud services, and enterprise applications. The state is also crisscrossed with long-haul fiber routes and carrier-neutral interconnection points—making it ideal for hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
Novva gives other reasons that are less important and can be found here.
The situation in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa is instructive. The city of over a half-million people has gone whole-hog into data centers but is now seeing a need to tighten its zoning and regulations governing the industry, as detailed in a Mesa Tribune story at this link.
Mesa’s economic development director says in the story that data centers won’t help the city achieve its stated goal of attracting 100,000 high-value manufacturing jobs. He went on to say:
We want to make sure we prioritize some of the land that’s down here for the manufacturing and high-wage, high-quality jobs that would be in aerospace, defense, clean tech, a bunch of different diverse industries that we’ve been targeting and trying to reach out to . . . I want to say, just in a broad stroke, we’re trying to create those permanent-type jobs.
And so data centers typically aren’t the highest job creation engine out there. We’re trying to create that diverse economy where we’re not putting all of our eggs in one basket. So we’re in support of adopting the proposed text amendment for responsible, sustainable and balanced economic growth going forward.
Finally, there is a balanced analysis of data centers at this link. The analysis is a collaboration between APM Research Lab and the Ten Across initiative, housed at Arizona State University. It addresses the question, “Are data centers depleting the Southwest’s water and energy resources?”
My answer is yes. But admittedly, I’m biased, since I’d rather see cranberry bogs in Tucson than data centers, because I can at least eat cranberries.
Mr. Cantoni can be reached at craigcantoni@gmail.com.
It’s all about money. Project Blue produces maybe 10 jobs once construction is complete. It is a water and energy hog – both of which put future residential supplies and pricing at high risk. Arizona is at stretched capacity just to serve existing population and businesses. Thus we get and have gotten for years info inserts with our utility bills to conserve our limited resources. For the 3rd year in a row we are getting a smaller apportionment of CAP Colorado River water and are suffering 2-3 years of a bad drought that means our natural water basins are not being replenished.
Even our city council saw the citizens rise up and vehemently express our opposition, out of self preservation, yet money and greed are seemingly overriding the will of the voting public citizenry – the tax payung base, owners of Tucson.
Yes we are a desirable community for this data center, but we do not want it. We prefer the copper mines that provide jobs and use water and energy, however, they produce a tax base to help serve to develop current water supply issues as city & county have been discussing building desalinization plants. Why? Because we have a water shortage that is being covered up. It’s time to go to the Arizona Corporation Commission to shut this down.
You can file a complaint with the Securities Division by U.S. mail, email, or facsimile. Please fill out the Investor Complaint Form online and submit it, along with supporting documentation related to the investment, to the Securities Division.
http://azcc.gov
Investor Complaints | Arizona Corporation Commission
Annual budget $39,509,254
Commission executives Kevin Thompson (R), Chairman Lea Márquez Peterson (R), Commissioner Nick Myers (R), Commissioner Rene Lopez (R), Commissioner Rachel Walden (R), Commissioner
Website http://www.azcc.gov
It’s all about money. Project Blue produces maybe 10 jobs once construction is complete. It is a water and energy hog – bith of which put future residential supplies and pricing at high risk. Arizona is at stretched capacity just to serve existing population and businesses. Thus we get and have gotten for years info inserts with our utility bills to conserve our limited resources. For the 3rd year in a row we are getting a smaller apportionment of CAP Colorado River water and are suffering 2-3 years of a bad drought that means our natural water basins are not being replenished.
Even our city council saw the citizens rise up and vehemently express our opposition, out of self preservation, yet money and greed are seemingly overriding the will of the voting public citizenry – the tax payung base, owners of Tucson.
Yes we are a desirable community for this data center, but we do not want it. We prefer the minds that pricier jobs and use water and energy and produce a tax base to help serve to develop current water supply issues as city & county have been discussing building desalinization plants. Why? Because we have a water shortage that is being covered up. It’s time to go to the Arizona Corporation Commission to shut this down.
You can file a complaint with the Securities Division by U.S. mail, email, or facsimile. Please fill out the Investor Complaint Form online and submit it, along with supporting documentation related to the investment, to the Securities Division.
http://azcc.gov
Investor Complaints | Arizona Corporation Commission
Annual budget $39,509,254
Commission executives Kevin Thompson (R), Chairman Lea Márquez Peterson (R), Commissioner Nick Myers (R), Commissioner Rene Lopez (R), Commissioner Rachel Walden (R), Commissioner
Website http://www.azcc.gov
guess we ought to put on ballot
we do NOT NEED energy eating industry for 10 workers
Kinda late with this article as I think the whole thing has been cancelled for building by
the city clowncil about 2 weeks ago. They claim to want high paying jobs BUT they do
NOTHING to attract them. Infrastructure is a complete mess as the needed road maintenance is ignored or takes years of ‘study’ to start and almost complete. The school systems in Pima really suck kids can’t read, write or do simple math and the supposed
‘Teachers’ can’t teach yet they rule the I roost and the kids suffer the results! As I have said several times before I drove school buses and have seen the results 1st hand. Anyhow people continue to vote these idiots into political offices because the left/democrats promise to fix or do great things. Just remember they are LONG on
Promises and short on Delivery vote for change this go round get rid of the socialist of
the socialist D’Souza and see if others can do better I don’t think they can do any worse.
Finally, a straight forward explanation of why they did it, using the background econ & biz terms most people (who aren’t Woke) can understand.
I wonder how much Amazon is paying each member of the Tucson City Clowncil and Board of Supervisors to be able to build the data center here?
And if the data centers become a reality in the Copper state, guess who pays in the long run. Well lets take a guess. The taxpayers will already subsidize the construction and tax abatements for 10 years. How about the water and energy rates will go up to….they have to because of the mass quantities that the energy centers will use. There must be new sources of energy and water found and I guarantee you it won’t be renewable energy. Can an a couple of atomic reactors be far behind? Good luck taxpayers, you will eventually be screwed in favor of big business.
Here’s the dirty secret. There is no water shortage in southern Arizona, only politics. Noone knows how much water there is in the natural aquifers nor its supply (underground streams and rivers). It is not counted in the water considered ‘available’, only that water which is pumped into designated underground areas. You can track this all back to Mo Udall, the building of the CAP and how laws forced Tucson into taking the water. It’s all a sham.
“No one knows how much water. . . . . . ”
So, it’s a guessing game it according to that comment. It’s either plenty, or there is little, and as for replenishment in our arid climate that’s speculative too.
Do you know where the largest aquifer in the world is? Here’s a hint, it’s in the most remote and arid part of the world. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. It’s not a guessing game, it’s censorship and radical environmentalism. No different than when Americans were told there’s not enough oil.
But we do know already that incompressible groundwater is what physically supports (holds up) the soil and every living thing on the surface and we already know that big cracks and subsidence occur in a big way when we pump too much water out of the ground. We’ve already done that here, which is why farmers use CAP water.
Copper – Cattle – Cotton – Citrus – Climate
water – water – water – water – water
doesn’t take AI
‘ C ‘ 4 new open pit mines are coming – soon now and 2030 – to area just south of Tucson – lots of street level jobs 2 add’l mines Patagonia area.. more mining jobs – what’s needed is rail to move the product – off the roadway.
‘ C ‘ folks are coming to Az. in droves – or there would not be a Phx. international manufacture of defense products to mention one; the ‘c’ climate bring aviation, being one of those mfg. (many) now building. No one says to much about.
‘ C ‘ One of the largest Cattle processing center “Pearce Az. Area” now in progress
‘ C ‘ Citrus ; who doesn’t like a margarita at the pool 🙂 still a viable crop in the Phx area