Another no on Project Blue

We really should have a list … Scott defends decision … $8 million for what?

Former Pima County Supervisor and Congressional District 7 Democratic nominee Adelita Grijalva dropped a political bombshell on Tuesday, adding her name to high‑profile Democrats in southern Arizona opposed to Project Blue.

As a guest on Bill Buckmaster’s radio show on Tuesday, Grijalva said she couldn’t support the massive project to build several data centers in the middle of the desert. Her concern echoes what many have focused on: the amount of water being used solely for data centers.

“I think I would have voted against the project. I have major concerns about the water consumption and the resources, electricity, and the fact that because of the expansion of AI and how fast it's going and how the demands for those resources are going to continue to grow without any sort of federal intervention,” Grijalva told Buckmaster.

Adelita Grijalva

One of the major issues is the nondisclosure agreement (NDA) signed by both the city of Tucson and Pima County, with the legal interpretation that the NDA expanded to all employees — including the Board of Supervisors.

Several elected officials have bristled at being bound and gagged by an agreement that they never signed.

Grijalva told Buckmaster she was proud that she was not bound by any NDA related to Project Blue.

The interview revealed that Grijalva subtly changed Pima County administration’s policy of briefing only the chair on major economic developments.

“I was very clear with administration that if it is not something that is going to come to the entire board in an executive session, even then, I don't want to have information that's different. I think that the chair is really only responsible for running the meeting. They shouldn't have more information than everybody else does,” Grijalva told Buckmaster.

Grijalva says she wasn’t aware of the proposed data centers until after she left office.

However, a county memo issued in late February specifically says that "The current Chair of the Board of Supervisors and the immediate past Chair have been advised of an impending business attraction prospect being facilitated by the Pima County Economic Development Department." And it names Project Blue.

Still, she says the public has a right to know more than is being provided.

“I have a lot of concerns, and really some of it is the secrecy. And I understand, you know, the need for it in some cases. But when you're talking about what it is — our community deserves to know,” she said.

She acknowledges that if she had been on the board at the time, it wouldn’t have stopped the sale of county‑owned land to the Project Blue developer. Her successor on the board, Supervisor Andrés Cano, also voted against the measure.

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Party politics

Grijalva also sat down with the Democrats of Greater Tucson on Monday, spending an hour talking about her congressional campaign and sharing her thoughts on local politics.

The Arizona Democratic Party, she said, needs to work together after recently firing chairman Robert Branscomb.

“This sort of infighting and drama is not good for us. It's not good for our organization. It doesn't instill the faith that people need to have in our party,” Grijalva said.

While Grijalva has a considerable advantage running as a Democrat in CD7, a seat her father easily held for 22 years, she worries the Arizona Democratic Party’s current state of disarray will hurt turnout in 2026, when Democrats want to take back the U.S. House of Representatives.

“What I heard very clearly at the doors is like, well, why should I vote? Why should I even go out and vote? It's not going to make a difference. People were very discouraged by the presidential race, and what we have to do is instill hope that we have to hope that there is the light at the end of the tunnel, and we need everyone to get together,” she said.

We’ll add a link to the Grijalva interview with DGT when it goes live on YouTube.

The next official debate for Congressional District 7 is scheduled for August 21, 2025. Grijalva will debate Republican nominee Daniel Butierez.

Correction: In Monday’s overview of the Ward 3 race, we wrote that Councilman Kevin Dahl didn’t support Proposition 414. He did — we meant to say Project Blue. Our mistake! We conflated one deeply unpopular proposal with another equally unpopular proposal that also has a two-word name.

Pima County Supervisor Rex Scott defended his vote to sell 290 acres of county-owned land to the developers of Project Blue in an op-ed published in the Tucson Sentinel.

Scott focused on the proposal’s potential benefits, highlighting the $3.6 billion in capital investment, $250 million in government revenue, and a $100 million contribution to the city’s water infrastructure.

Pima County Supervisor Rex Scott

He also emphasized that the project would create thousands of temporary construction jobs and noted that the project would use just 6% of the city’s annual reclaimed water supply.

The chair of the Pima County Board of Supervisors wrote that he is “proud” of his vote, stressing that the developers aimed to make the project as environmentally sensitive as possible.

“The city, county and the project developer know well that our people expect that we will not sacrifice or compromise when it comes to safeguarding our resources, protecting our land, or ensuring public health and safety,” Scott wrote.

While acknowledging that the developer is an outsider, Scott pointed to the region’s long-standing record of environmental stewardship. He did not, however, mention it was being built by a subsidiary of one of the world’s largest corporations, Amazon.

Scott urged residents to support the proposed data centers.

“There is clearly so much we can gain from Project Blue if we insist that it be done the right way,” Scott wrote. “I fervently believe in our determination and ability to preserve everything we love about our home while also making it a better place to live and work, now and in the future.”

Switching gears: Tucson Electric Power is converting two of its coal-fired units at the Springerville power plant to natural gas by 2030, the Arizona Daily Star’s Tony Davis reports. The move will cut the units’ greenhouse gas emissions by 40%. It also clarifies what the utility is planning to do with the two units, which it announced it was closing in 2023 without a clear plan for what would replace them.

Backing the Blue: Two artificial intelligence experts at the University of Arizona say Tucsonans should support the Project Blue data centers to power more breakthroughs in health care, agriculture and other industries. Tomás Diaz de la Rubia and David Ebert penned an op-ed in the Star, asking readers to “imagine a future where every cancer patient receives care tailored precisely to their genetic makeup,” which is only possible with the right infrastructure for the growing AI industry.

Immigration trumps all: Pima County Attorney Laura Conover says federal officials are still getting in the way of her office’s prosecution of a Mexican man accused of shooting and killing a man during an attempted carjacking, the Tucson Sentinel’s Paul Ingram reports. A grand jury indicted Julio Cesar Aguirre on a first-degree murder charge, but federal officials said Conover’s office will have only “limited” access to speak with him. The U.S. Attorney’s Office says it plans to charge him with attempted carjacking and for being an “alien in possession of a firearm,” among other charges. But federal officials haven’t charged Aguirre with murder. Instead, they say his arrest was part of “Operation Take Back America,” a key initiative in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

Stuck inside: Monsoon seasons are usually the time when Tucsonan Hernan Castro heads out to the mountains to pick mushrooms. But he’s now sitting in a federal immigration detention center for failing to include a decades-old brush with the law on his application for citizenship, Lourdes Medrano reports for the Guardian.

Booming on the south side: Tucson Marketplace at the Bridges is proving to be popular both with investors and the general public, the Star’s Gabriela Rico reports. New businesses keep joining the ranks of Costco and Walmart at the south-side marketplace, while about 1 million people visit every month.

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Call to the public: More than 200 people turned out in Benson on Monday to hear what state environmental officials had to say about an air quality permit for Aluminum Dynamics, Inc., the Herald/Review’s Hector Acuna reports. A coalition of residents have been trying to raise awareness about the potential risks of living near a 207-acre aluminum recycling plant.

By now, you’ve probably heard that Justine Wadsack is suing Tucson for $8 million over a speeding ticket she got in 2024.

Yes, the former Arizona senator is literally making a federal case out of it — claiming she was targeted for her political beliefs, and not because she was clocked doing 71 mph in a 35 mph zone. Totally normal behavior.

We, along with the rest of the rational world, are scratching our heads trying to figure out how Wadsack landed on $8 million.

At her $24,000-a-year salary, she’d need to serve as a state senator for about 333 years to make that kind of money.

Maybe she was banking on a massive raise from the Legislature?