Residents cheer as Tucson rejects data center campus

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/residents-cheer-as-tucson-rejects-amazons-massive-project-blue-data-center-campus-in-arizona/

47•01-_-•4h ago

Comments

sitkack•4h ago

Good for them. No groundwater for data centers! Data centers should be run closed loop, if they can't, they shouldn't exist. AZ should also make them generate at least 70% of their power onsite.

belter•3h ago

> No groundwater for data centers!

It's worst. They use tap water.

"...For the purposes of cooling, data centres mainly use potable water (water that is safe to drink or use for cooking, free from harmful contaminants). .." - https://www.twobirds.com/en/insights/2025/cooling-the-cloud-...

jeffbee•3h ago

This particular data center was going to build a wastewater pipeline to cool their facility with currently-squandered wastewater.

mac-mc•2h ago

I also wonder why this isn't the go-to if you want to work in water-stressed places. Become a water distillation plant at the same time, have a win-win solution.

bob1029•3h ago

I think the most cursed aspect in all of this is the fact that regions where evaporative coolers work best tend to have the scarcest water resources. Evaporative cooling is unreasonably effective when water is happy to evaporate. You can cut the power consumption of a datacenter by 70-80% in these regions if you are willing to sacrifice water.

I think in this case, solar energy is the best way to run the cooling systems, even if it requires an absurd amount of power to exercise compressors, etc. in order to improve heat concentration and rejection efficiency. As long as it's all green and theres a disaster recovery plan, who cares?

hooverd•3h ago

If you're doing large scale evap cooling in the Sonoran you're just removing water from an already stressed water table. I'd say put them somewhere cold and do district heating during the winter.

duped•2h ago

I'm not a geologist but...does evaporation remove water from the water table? Where I live, my understanding is the answer is "no" because the vast majority of rain water is deposited in our groundwater. Things like agriculture are dangerous because the answer is "yes" - you're literally shopping the water away as an agricultural product.

Another dumb question: why are we building projects that need tons of power and water in the Sonoran desert instead of next to the Great Lakes

AnimalMuppet•2h ago

It at least removes water from the local water table.

You pump water up from the local water table to run your evaporative cooler. The water evaporates. But the air was at 10-20% humidity. The water from the evaporative cooler will raise the humidity, a little bit, but not enough to make it rain. It may make it more likely to rain somewhere downwind a few miles, or a few hundred, but not here.

For your second dumb question: At least some of the Great Lakes have at times had issues with water level. (They want enough to allow ships to pass between the lakes.) The upside is, there the humidity is high enough that you're more likely to get the water back in the form of increased precipitation.

AnthonyMouse•2h ago

Does district heating actually work for heat from data centers? The exhaust temperature of computer equipment is only slightly above room temperature and the structures in need of heat would only be at slightly below room temperature when calling for heat. Heat distribution systems with tiny differentials like that tend to have poor efficiency, i.e. you're going to have consume a lot of energy on fans/pumps.

Meanwhile in a cold climate you can do cooling by just blowing outside air through a filter, so the alternative in those climates is that rather than running a compressor.

robotnikman•1h ago

Arizona has the perfect conditions for solar energy (sunny 99% of the time), they really should have taken advantage of that.

jandrewrogers•3h ago

What should water be used for then? They do large-scale agriculture in the same area, which uses several orders of magnitude more water while generating substantially less value.

EA-3167•3h ago

Food that people and livestock eat is less valuable than data centers used to chase the "AGI any day now" pipe dream? You're kidding right?

morkalork•2h ago

Let the people eat and drink slop

UncleOxidant•2h ago

* AI slop

JumpCrisscross•2h ago

> Food that people and livestock eat is less valuable than data centers

This is objectively false, particularly when we consider that much of that food and water are exported. It’s also irrelevant in Tucson, which doesn’t have Central Valley syndrome.

EA-3167•2h ago

You... do understand that it isn't exported to be incinerated, it's exported in return for money, and then people and livestock in other countries eat that food. The fact that there's a transaction in the middle of the process doesn't change the value proposition, just like the absurd overvaluation of all things AI doesn't change the value proposition there either.

JumpCrisscross•1h ago

> it's exported in return for money

Which is also paid for data centre access.

We need food production as a matter of survival. That doesn’t mean all food production is inherently more valuable than everything else. We let most food spoil without being eaten because it’s more efficient to do that than treat every calorie as precious.

> just like the absurd overvaluation of all things AI doesn't change the value proposition there either

Literally does.

There are good arguments against a data centre in Tucson. “We could grow food with that water” isn’t one of them.

cactacea•2h ago

Not near Tucson they don't.

jeffbee•3h ago

Please apply this rule to Tucson's 40 golf courses.

FirmwareBurner•2h ago

But where will the poor elites go hang out then?

NickC25•2h ago

They can bugger off to Phoenix and get the same type of weather, landscape, etc.

They won't be as high of altitude though so their shots won't go as far. Too bad.

pxc•2h ago

Most Tucson residents undoubtedly agree. The golf courses are almost exclusively used by rich out-of-town visitors

joshuaheard•2h ago

It was going to use 1% of the available recycled water. That's about the equivalent usage of a medium size farm.

time_is_scary•3h ago

> Update: Brendan Gallagher, Beale's SVP of development, said in a statement: “We are disappointed in the decision not to pursue this opportunity for Tucson. [...] We see it as a missed opportunity for the city, as this project potentially represents tens of millions of dollars in tax revenue, hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure to serve the community, and thousands of high-paying local and union jobs.”

and I'm "potentially" the next president of the U.S.

polski-g•2h ago

Datacenters do not employ thousands of jobs. They employ about 5.

UncleOxidant•2h ago

and those definitely aren't union jobs.

philipwhiuk•1h ago

Long term yes. Short term thousands.

Mars008•2h ago

They would have to build a road to datacenter, datacenters themselves, all GPUs etc put together. That requires "thousands of high-paying local and union jobs" for short time. "hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure". Then a dozen of armed guards with dogs.

ofcrpls•2h ago

Visited NOVA recently and after Loudon let them pass under the radar(right by use) for as long as they have, they've recently to tried to put the kibosh on it, or at least slow it down.

https://virginiabusiness.com/loudoun-county-supervisors-shak...

What was once a rural county outside of Fairfax, Loudon has seen tremendous development thanks to data center expansion. Now Prince William County( one county over, westward) is trying to fight the same battle before it gets too big of a problem for them.

Mtinie•1h ago

I’ve lived in Loudoun County for twenty-four years, so I’ve seen much of the development firsthand. The data center expansion, particularly in Ashburn and Sterling, has been amazing to watch.

However, I’m puzzled by this portion of your comment: ‘…has seen tremendous development thanks to data center expansion.’

The major residential growth in Ashburn, Broadlands, Sterling, Lansdowne, and surrounding areas significantly predates the data center boom. These communities were already experiencing rapid expansion and large influxes of new residents well before the data center industry took off here.

jeffbee•16m ago

Yeah, it was only farms in 1985. Now it's 95% residential sprawl and 5% data centers.

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