🌵 Desert Defenders: Paul Cunningham and Kevin Dahl Stand Against Silicon Valley's Water Vampires
Paul Cunningham says "no" to data center water grab while other politicians chase Silicon Valley promises
😽 Keepin’ It Simple Summary for Younger Readers
👧🏾✊🏾👦🏾
Paul Cunningham and Kevin Dahl are like the good guys in a movie 🎬 who are trying to protect something really important - our water 💧.
There's a big company 🏢 that wants to build huge computer buildings 🖥️🏗️ that use as much water as entire towns, but they won't tell anyone exactly how much water they need 🤫. It's like asking to borrow your bike 🚲 without saying where you're going or when you'll bring it back ⏳.
Paul said if he had to vote right now, he'd vote "no" ✖️ because the company is being too secretive 🕵️♂️ and other places that said yes to similar projects ended up regretting it 😟. Meanwhile, people in Arizona 🌵 are already being told to use less water because we don't have enough 🚱, so giving millions of gallons to computer companies while families have to cut back seems pretty unfair ⚖️.
🗝️ Takeaways
💧 Paul Cunningham joins Kevin Dahl in opposition to Project Blue, citing corporate secrecy around water usage and a track record of community buyer'’ remorse from similar projects nationwide
🌊 Project Blue could consume up to 5 million gallons daily and represents just the first of three planned data centers across the Tucson metro area, threatening long-term water security during ongoing drought conditions
🤐 Corporate secrecy pervades the process as developers refuse to disclose basic water and energy consumption figures despite requiring public resources and taxpayer subsidies through 2033
🏛️ Nikki Lee fights for transparency by demanding public meetings before votes and pushing reforms to end secret agreements about public water resources
📊 $64 billion in data center projects have been blocked or delayed nationwide since 2023, as communities recognize the true costs of corporate water extraction disguised as economic development
⚡ Energy demands are exploding with Tucson Electric Power projecting 5% annual increases (up from 1%) over the next decade, meaning higher bills for working families while corporations get special deals
Corporate Water Vampires in the Desert: Why Paul Cunningham and Kevin Dahl are Right to Oppose Project Blue
When the tech giants come calling with their briefcases full of promises and water bills that would make the Santa Cruz River weep… if it still had any water
Sometimes democracy happens in the most mundane places—like a Facebook post that cuts through corporate propaganda with the precision of a metate grinding truth from corn.
This week, Tucson City Council member Paul Cunningham posted what might be the most important 54 words written about Project Blue since this corporate water grab first slithered out of the shadows wrapped in economic development rhetoric.
"Right now, the perceived shroud of secrecy that has accompanied Project Blue has made it very difficult to support. We have no specifics when it comes to water usage, energy use and sustainability. Furthermore, a track record of buyer's remorse has emerged from other communities who have built projects similar to this. These issues unresolved make me very skeptical. If we voted today, I'd vote no."
¡Órale! Finally, an elected official willing to call out the agua vampires for what they are—corporate colonizers dressed up in job creation drag, ready to extract our most precious resource for Silicon Valley chatbots while our communities face water restrictions and climate crisis.
The Numbers Don't Lie: Vampiros del Agua Coming for Our Desert
Let's start with the facts that Project Blue's corporate cheerleaders would rather keep buried deeper than a Yaqui sacred site under a strip mall. Project Blue is considering proposing up to two more data-center complexes in the metro area after the first site gets final approvals from the Tucson City Council.
That's right, gente—this isn't just one facility. They're planning an entire network of water-sucking behemoths across our region.
The scale is staggering.
Large data centers can consume up to 5 million gallons of water per day—equivalent to the water use of a town populated by 10,000 to 50,000 people. To put this in perspective for those of us living in the Sonoran Desert, where every drop is sacred: Project Blue will ultimately rely on non-drinking water for its operations, and it will need to use drinking water for the project's first two or three years. Three years of drinking water consumption for corporate servers while our abuelas ration water for their jardines.
But here's the kicker that makes this whole scheme more twisted than a cholla under a full moon: The possibility of a larger data center network and the likelihood of the first center's extended use of drinking water were reported to the Arizona Daily Star this by Ed Hendel, a member of a city water advisory committee. Even water advisory committee members are sounding the alarm.
The Agua Economics: AI Chatbots vs. Human Survival
The artificial intelligence boom has turned water into the new oil for tech companies, and Arizona—with our suicidal tax incentives and corporate-friendly politicians—has painted a bullseye on our aquifers.
Each 100-word AI prompt requires roughly one bottle of water (519 milliliters) for cooling. With billions of AI interactions daily, we're talking about astronomical water consumption for what amounts to corporate chatbots generating marketing emails and pinche automated content.
As if the universe has a sense of dark humor, this water grab is happening while Federal officials have declared a Tier 2a shortage for the Lower Colorado River Basin, requiring cuts in water use that will reduce Arizona's allocation by 21 percent. But sure, let's give Silicon Valley millions of gallons so they can train AI to write better Instagram captions.
Meanwhile, Tucson Electric Power projected demand increasing at a rate of 1% per year just last year. Now, they're projecting 5% annual increases, with a total of more than a 50% increase over the next decade. Translation: your energy bills are about to become more expensive than therapy, and we're giving the biggest energy users special deals.
Corporate Secrecy: The Mordida of Transparency
What makes Cunningham's stance particularly courageous is that he's calling out the elephant-sized nondisclosure agreement in the room. Representatives from Beale Infrastructure, Tucson Water, and Tucson Electric Power declined to disclose the amount of water or electricity the complex would use, nor would they provide estimates when asked during the last board meeting.
Think about this for a minute, raza: We're being asked to approve a project that will fundamentally alter our region's water and energy landscape, but the corporations involved won't tell us basic consumption numbers.
It's like being asked to cosign a loan without knowing the amount, the interest rate, or who's actually borrowing the money.
Councilmember Nikki Lee says she needs a lot of answers before she can vote on the plan, including Project Blue's estimate of the amount of water it will use. "To say that {Project Blue} can't share water usage {numbers} when water is a shared resource {for} about 40 million people who use the Colorado River for a water source doesn't make sense to me."
¡Exacto! Councilmember Lee gets it. When you're dealing with public resources that belong to all of us, corporate secrecy isn't just bad policy—it's an assault on democratic governance.
Kevin Dahl: Environmental Champion Joins the Resistance
Cunningham isn't standing alone in this fight. Tucson City Councilman Kevin Dahl met with officials from the data center development company, Beale Infrastructure Group, and what he learned should concern every person who cares about the future of our desert.
Dahl brings serious environmental credentials to this fight. Before entering politics, Dahl worked as an advocate for environmental conservation, serving in a leadership role at Native Seeds/SEARCH and spending 14 years with the National Parks Conservation Association. This isn't some career politician looking for headlines—this is a conservation expert who understands the long-term implications of corporate water extraction in an arid landscape.
The fact that both Cunningham and Dahl—council members from different backgrounds and constituencies—are raising red flags about Project Blue should tell us everything we need to know about the scope of this corporate overreach.
The Track Record: Remordimiento del Comprador from Sea to Shining Sea
Cunningham mentioned "a track record of buyer's remorse" from other communities, and the data backs up his skepticism with the force of a flash flood in an arroyo. A new report indicates that $64 billion worth of data center projects have been blocked or delayed in the U.S. since 2023.
In Mesa, Arizona—a city that should serve as a cautionary tale for Tucson—Vice Mayor Jenn Duff has become a leading voice of opposition after watching her community get steamrolled by the data center industrial complex. Duff was the only Mesa City Council member to vote against the development of an $800 million data center, which will require up to 1.25 million gallons of water per day.
Mesa has approved eight data centers, and the results are exactly what you'd expect from corporate welfare disguised as economic development: While they generate millions in state taxes and fees, the newest facility will only employ around 150 people. That's the trade-off we're being offered: massive resource extraction for minimal job creation, while tech executives who will never face water restrictions get richer off our public resources.
The Real Costs: Who Pays When the Wells Run Dry?
While Project Blue's developers make promises about future sustainability, working families in Tucson will face the immediate consequences of this corporate water grab. Pima Supervisors almost did not agree to sell and rezone county land for the project, and the 3-2 vote shows that even our typically corporate-friendly county government recognizes the problems with this scheme.
The economic promises are as thin as monsoon clouds in a drought year. The purchase agreement includes provisions that allow the county to buy back the land for "nonperformance, and/or enforce monetary penalties on the developer for failing to meet employment requirements". Translation: The county supervisors are so worried about getting burned that they built escape clauses into the deal.
Meanwhile, Project Blue is a proposed data center campus representing an unprecedented $3.6 billion economic development opportunity for the City of Tucson and Pima County. But "opportunity" for whom? The corporations extracting our water, or the communities that will face higher utility bills and water restrictions?
Both Parties Fail Us: Corporate Loyalty Over People
This is where both major parties show their true colors—corporate green over community brown. Republicans offer tax breaks and deregulation to attract these projects, while Democrats get seduced by promises of clean energy and economic development. Neither party is willing to ask the fundamental question that Cunningham and Dahl are asking: Should we be prioritizing artificial intelligence over actual life in the desert?
Arizona offers a tax incentive for data centers to locate here. We allow new, substantial-sized data centers to receive a rebate of sales taxes on purchases of computer data center equipment. The rebate runs through 2033.
So, we're literally paying corporations to extract our most precious resource through 2033, which coincidentally is around the time climate scientists predict the Southwest could become uninhabitable for large human populations.
The math is simple, carnales: we're subsidizing our own demise while calling it economic development.
Nikki Lee: Asking the Tough Questions
Ward 4 Councilmember Nikki Lee dropped another crucial update about Project Blue—the controversial $3.6 billion data center complex that threatens to turn our sacred desert waters into corporate cooling systems.
As the councilmember whose ward would host this water-sucking monstrosity, Lee is demanding answers that the corporate developers don't want to provide.
Lee fought internal resistance to ensure that public meetings occurred before any votes, while also pushing for reforms that would require large water users to disclose their consumption and end secret agreements about public resources.
¡Qué chingona! Finally, an elected official who understands that transparency isn't a nice-to-have—it's a democratic necessity.
The timeline Lee has provided shows the key dates when our community can make its voice heard:
Week of July 21st: Public neighborhood meeting
August 6th: Study session at Mayor & Council
August 19th: Potential vote to begin the annexation process
These dates matter, gente. This is when we can show up and tell our elected officials that we won't let Silicon Valley turn our desert into their personal water fountain.
What Real Sustainability Looks Like
Instead of subsidizing corporate water extraction, we should be investing in what Cunningham and Dahl understand: long-term community sustainability over short-term corporate profits. Real solutions include:
Mandatory water efficiency standards for all new commercial development—not voluntary promises that disappear when quarterly profits are threatened.
Per-gallon fees that make water-intensive industries pay the true cost of extraction—because if water is truly precious, it should be priced accordingly.
Community ownership of renewable energy projects instead of corporate giveaways that benefit stockholders in Silicon Valley.
Indigenous water rights that recognize the original inhabitants of this land had sustainable relationships with water resources for thousands of years before European colonization.
The Choice is Clear: Community vs. Corporation
Paul Cunningham gets it. Kevin Dahl gets it. Nikki Lee gets it. The question is whether other elected officials will follow their lead or continue to mortgage our future for short-term corporate tax revenue.
Paul Cunningham is a native Arizonan and a longtime community activist with 30 years of professional and volunteer public service experience. He's not some newcomer looking to make a name for himself—he's a public servant who understands that protecting our water supply isn't just policy. It's survival.
As Cunningham said, if the vote were today, he'd vote no. That's exactly the kind of leadership we need more of—officials willing to put community sustainability over corporate profits, even when it means standing against the development machine that controls so much of Arizona politics.
The corporate water vampires are counting on us to stay silent, to trust their promises, and to believe that somehow extracting millions of gallons of water for artificial intelligence will benefit our communities. They're wrong.
Basta ya. Enough is enough.
Take Action: The Water is Ours to Defend
This fight isn't over, hermanos y hermanas. Here's how you can join Cunningham, Dahl, and Lee in defending our desert waters:
Contact City Council members before the August votes. Let them know that Project Blue is a corporate water grab disguised as economic development.
Attend the public meetings that Councilmember Lee fought to schedule. Show up and speak up.
Join local water justice organizations that understand the connection between environmental protection and social justice.
Support candidates like Cunningham, Dahl, and Lee who are willing to put people before corporate profits.
The choice is clear: We can continue to serve as a resource colony for Silicon Valley, or we can prioritize the long-term sustainability of our communities. Paul Cunningham, Kevin Dahl, and Nikki Lee have chosen community. The question is whether the rest of our elected officials will follow their lead.
El agua es vida. Water is life. And life is too precious to sacrifice for corporate chatbots.
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Questions for discussion: What other corporate water grabs should we be investigating in Arizona? How can communities build power to resist these extractive projects before they get approved?
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Paul Cunningham, Kevin Dahl, and (as noted earlier) Nikki Lee have shown that they have integrity and courage. What about the rest of them?