The Tucson City Council is preparing to write new rules for the massive data centers that caused an uproar last summer.
City officials are still in the “here’s what we’ve got cooking, tell us what you think about it” stage, but they’re tentatively planning for the council to vote on the new rules in May.
That means Tucsonans have about two months to figure out what the proposed rules would do and whether they’re a good idea.
Given how contentious the debate is likely to get in Tucson over the next few months, we thought it’d be a good idea to take advantage of the calm before the storm and break down for you what Tucson officials are cooking up, and what’s beyond their control.
The state of play
Data centers have been around for a long time, but it was only in the past few years that large-scale data centers became a hot political issue.
That’s because hundreds of millions of people now use artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT, and tech companies are pouring billions of dollars into computing power for those AI tools, along with storing things like digital photos and email exchanges.
The rise of large data centers created “a land use that never existed before,” as city officials put it at a March 5 public meeting.
Right now, the City of Tucson just doesn’t have many rules specific to large data centers. When the city council blocked Project Blue from being built inside city limits last August, for example, they did it by refusing to annex the land, not by citing a specific rule regulating data centers.
Since then, a data center planned for 600 acres in Marana is drawing protests and lawsuits, Pima County is having its own public battles over new rules for data centers, Republican lawmakers in the Arizona Legislature are trying to make the state as tech-friendly as possible, and President Donald Trump has thrown his weight behind anything that boosts the AI industry.
The problem for local officials is that data centers aren’t great neighbors. They’re loud and they look like drab warehouses. They also need huge amounts of electricity to run rows of servers and many of them need lots of water to cool down those servers, which is especially concerning in the Sonoran Desert.
But they do bring in property tax revenue and give a boost to the local tech industry. Plus, they have to be built somewhere (the plan to build them in outer space is still a ways off).
That leaves local officials trying to balance the good and the bad from the data center industry, while residents make passionate pleas to protect the environment and business leaders try to keep the profits flowing and the local economy humming.
In Tucson, the only thing guaranteed at this point is there will be controversy whichever way the council decides to go.
Judging by the extensive outreach that city officials are doing, they’re trying to make sure nobody can claim they’re making moves in secret, which was one of the fuses that set off a political powder keg last year at Pima County.
Reaching out
For the time being, Tucson officials are checking all the boxes for what a transparent process should look like.
Clearly explain what you’re trying to do? The city put together a fact sheet describing the proposed changes.
Anticipate the main questions people are going to have? You can look through the FAQs the city wrote up.
Organize all that information so anybody who’s interested can poke around? The city made a landing page that’s fairly well organized.
Hold public meetings to listen to constituents? Over the past few weeks, city officials gave presentations at two local high schools and held two virtual meetings.
Create an easy way for residents to give feedback? The city designed a simple survey, but you really need to bone up on the proposed changes before you can give informed answers to the survey questions. That’s where we can help.
What they’re proposing
The proposed rules from the City of Tucson are technical and cover a lot of ground, but here are some of the key points:
What would be regulated: The city wants to define “large-scale data centers” as those that are greater than 50,000 square feet, which would exempt the half-dozen smaller data centers that have been operating in Tucson for years.
Who gets the final say: The mayor and council would need to sign off on any new large data centers.
Where they could be built: They would only be allowed in heavy industrial zones and certain other designated areas.
Public review: Every property owner within a half-mile would get a notice, along with every neighborhood association within two miles. Then the data center representatives would have to speak at a neighborhood meeting, followed by a zoning examiner public hearing and at least one city council meeting.
The electricity: Companies would have to show they have access to enough electricity. They would also have to disclose how much energy they plan to use, as well as how much of that energy would come from renewable sources.
The water: Companies would need to comply with the city’s Large Quantity Water User ordinance if they plan to use Tucson Water. The city council created that ordinance when it blocked Project Blue.
The noise: Large data centers would need a 400-foot setback in urban residential areas or a 200-foot setback in commercial areas. Companies would commission an independent noise study and put sound walls around loud equipment.
Beyond the city’s control
As city officials ruminate on public feedback, they also have to consider what state officials in Phoenix and federal officials in D.C. are going to do.
This legislative session, Arizona lawmakers are pushing bills that would require the State Land Department to develop a map showing state trust land parcels that are suitable for data centers.
They’re also trying to force Pima County and other populous counties to include land for data centers in their comprehensive plans.
Another bill would block county officials from preventing the construction of small modular nuclear reactors, which the tech industry is eyeing as the solution to data centers’ energy needs.
All those bills came from Republican lawmakers.
Democrats, including Tucson-area Sen. Priya Sundareshan and Rep. Kevin Volk, introduced bills that are more in line with what the Tucson City Council is trying to do, like requiring data center companies to pay all their energy costs without raising rates for nearby residents.
But, like most Democratic-sponsored bills in the Republican-controlled Legislature, their bills aren’t advancing.
Meanwhile, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes is appealing an energy agreement between Tucson Electric Power and the Project Blue backers.
And, as we reported earlier this week, TEP and City of Tucson officials are considering an agreement that includes TEP making annual $2 million payments to the city for the next 25 years.
As if that weren’t enough, there’s an even bigger question on the horizon: What happens if the City of Tucson decides to ditch TEP and create a municipal utility?
While we watch what Tucson does between now and the council meeting in May, we’re also going to keep our eye on Cochise County, where officials are starting their own planning and zoning process for data centers.
Stay tuned.
Just a typo, I swear: After the Arizona Republic revealed Sheriff Chris Nanos misrepresented his work history, Nanos updated his online résumé and the department said the error wasn’t “intended to mislead or misrepresent” his work history, per Arizona Public Media. Nanos resigned from the El Paso Police Department in 1982, not in 1984 as he had claimed. But Nanos’ troubles with his record aren’t over. The Republic’s Stephanie Murray reported that Nanos said during a recent deposition that he’d never been suspended, when records show he’d been suspended several times in El Paso.
Overcrowding is dangerous: Federal officials want to pack even more people into the planned immigration detention center in Marana, per the Arizona Luminaria’s Yana Kunichoff. The former state prison was built to house about 500 people, but a procurement document showed federal officials want to push capacity to 775 people. Daniela Ugaz, head of the legal research team for Pima Resists ICE, said packing more people into detention leads to surges in “abuse, devastation, medical neglect resulting in death and safety concerns.”
Post-election takes: The wide margin of victory for RTA Next on Tuesday boiled down to a few key factors: the lack of a “no” campaign, no alternative plan, and Tucson’s political elite getting its “mojo back,” Arizona Daily Star columnist Tim Steller writes. Joe Wolf, a campaign consultant for the pro-RTA Next campaign, said his analysis showed more than 80% of people who voted in Tuesday’s election were over 50 years old, Jim Nintzel reports for the Tucson Sentinel.
A sigh of relief: Down in Sahuarita, local officials were relieved, and surprised to see how much public support the RTA Next plan had, Jorge Encinas reports for the Green Valley News. And Tucson Mayor Regina Romero says the first projects to be funded by RTA Next will be those that were left unfinished over the last 20 years, the Star’s Charles Borla reports.
We’ll breathe a sigh of relief if you click this button and support local journalism.
Budget woes abound: The Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and Blind, which just caused an uproar by moving most of its students from Tucson to a campus in Oro Valley, is now looking at capping salaries for new teachers, per KJZZ’s Bridget Dowd. The schools’ board would change the number of years of experience considered when calculating salaries, which in effect would lower the highest possible salary from roughly $106,000 to about $66,000.
Talk about targeted advertising.
The Southern Arizona Leadership Council played a big role in the RTA Next election, including by creating a series of web sites to get the message out.
All the URLs below are essentially a single web page tweaked for specific targeted audiences.
We especially like MomsforRTA.com.
And we had to chuckle when we saw the SALC felt compelled to create two different websites to remind everyone they needed to vote “yes” on both propositions.
