🏜️ When "Water Positive" Means Positively Stealing Our Future: Project Blue's Desert Mirage
While Latino families still fight PFAS contamination, Democrats approve another industrial water grab
😽 Keepin’ It Simple Summary for Younger Readers
👧🏾✊🏾👦🏾
🌵🏜️💧 Imagine your family struggling for water during a crazy drought, and then 💼💻 a rich tech company from California arrives saying, "Hey, we're building these massive computer buildings that'll gulp down your water, but don't worry - we'll magically make more water than we use!" That's what's happening in Tucson.
🚰🌆 A company wants to build huge data centers (basically enormous computer warehouses) that need loads of water to stay cool, right in the middle of a desert where water is super scarce. 🌊🤔 They're using fancy words like "water positive" to sound good, but haven't explained how that's really gonna work. Meanwhile, families on Tucson's southside have dealt with toxic water for ages from other companies, and now they might face even less water. 💧🚫
But here's the silver lining 🌤️ - the community is standing strong, speaking up to protect their water. ✊💦 Because water is life, and everyone deserves clean, affordable water. 🌍💙
🗝️ Takeaways
🏭 Project Blue is a massive water grab disguised as economic development - A $3.6 billion data center complex will use 1-5% of Tucson's water supply during the worst drought in Western history
💧 "Water positive" is meaningless corporate speak - Like "clean coal" and "carbon offsets," this term obscures environmental destruction with feel-good marketing
🌵 Arizona is already in water crisis - The state is losing 18% of its Colorado River allocation in 2025, while Lake Mead sits at critically low levels
🏘️ Environmental racism continues on the southside - Latino communities already devastated by TCE and PFAS contamination will bear the brunt of new industrial water use
🎭 Democrats are complicit in corporate environmental crimes - Pima County supervisors approved this project despite community opposition and water scarcity
💻 Data centers serve military surveillance - These facilities power border militarization and facial recognition systems targeting immigrant communities
⏰ There's still time to fight back - The project needs Tucson City Council approval for annexation, creating an opportunity for community resistance
💻 Data Centers in the Desert: The New Manifest Destiny Comes for Our Water
By Three Sonorans
Here we are again, hermanos y hermanas, watching the same tired corporate theater play out in our beloved Sonoran Desert.
This time, it's a $3.6 billion production called "Project Blue" — and like all good theater in the age of late-stage capitalism, it's a tragedy disguised as a comedy, with our water playing the starring role as the victim.
The Setup: Data Centers in the Desert During Drought
We're living through the most severe drought in the recorded history of the American West.
The Colorado River — that lifeline río sagrado that has sustained Indigenous peoples for millennia and now feeds 40 million people across seven states — is gasping for breath. Arizona is set to lose 18% of its Colorado River allocation in 2025, with Lake Mead currently at critically low levels that threaten both power generation and water delivery.
Into this crisis walks Beale Infrastructure Group, a San Francisco-based company backed by the vulture capital firm Blue Owl, with a proposition that would make P.T. Barnum blush: Let's build massive data centers in the desert!
¿Qué pasa? Did these tech bros miss the memo about water scarcity, or do they simply not care?
The Pima County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 in June 2025 to approve Project Blue, selling 290 acres of public land for $20.8 million — a bargain-basement price for prime real estate that could host up to 10 data center buildings. The first phase alone could support four buildings, with 2.25 million square feet of building space sucking up water and electricity like a Silicon Valley vampire.
The Big Lie: "Water Positive" in a Time of Scarcity
Now comes the part that would make Orwell weep: the language. Project Blue's developers claim their project will be "water positive."
How does a massive data center complex become "water positive" in the middle of a desert drought? According to the developers, they plan to "recharge more water into the aquifer in recharge projects than they use in their operations."
But here's the pinche catch: They've declined to say how they plan to do that.
The details are as elusive as rainfall in July, hidden behind non-disclosure agreements and corporate doublespeak. What we do know is that Project Blue will use potable drinking water for the first two to three years while they build an 18-mile pipeline to bring reclaimed water from the northwest side treatment plant.
Think about that for a moment: During the worst water crisis in our region's history, we're going to let a private corporation use our precious drinking water to cool their profit-generating machines for three years.
Ed Hendel, a member of Tucson's water advisory committee and president of an AI company, estimates that this single data center will use 1% to 5% of Tucson's water supply and 11% to 43% of TEP's electricity supply.
Multiply that by the potential three data centers, and we're looking at a resource drain that could exceed TEP's entire electricity capacity.
The Greenwashing Playbook: From Clean Coal to Water Positive
This "water positive" nonsense is just the latest chapter in the corporate greenwashing playbook that's been poisoning public discourse for decades.
Remember when President Obama promoted "clean coal" to win West Virginia? There's no such thing as clean coal, just like there's no such thing as a water-positive data center in the desert during a drought.
It's the same con game as carbon offsets — that magical thinking that lets millionaires like Al Gore burn fossil fuels in their mansion, which use 34 times more energy than the average, to their heart's content as long as they pay someone to plant trees in the Amazon.
These buzzwords — clean coal, carbon offsets, carbon credits, and now "water positive" — are linguistic alchemy, transforming environmental destruction into feel-good marketing copy.
The term "water positive" in this context apparently means they'll "rehabilitate wells that may be contaminated due to other industrial contaminations." ¿En serio? So they're going to claim credit for cleaning up messes that other corporations made?
But here's the mathematical madness that would make any middle schooler laugh: You can't CREATE water by cleaning up contaminated water!
Cleaning a polluted well doesn't magically multiply H2O molecules. It's like claiming you're "food positive" because you washed the dishes after eating all the groceries. The contaminated water was already there — cleaning it up just makes it usable again, it doesn't conjure new agua out of thin air.
This is peak capitalist alchemy: Taking existing resources, slapping a "positive" label on basic maintenance, and calling it environmental stewardship. It's like an arsonist claiming to be "fire positive" because they'll install sprinkler systems after burning down half the neighborhood — except somehow even more insulting to our intelligence.
Environmental Racism: The Southside Pays Again
Here's where this story gets even more cabrón: The proposed data center sits just north of Pima County Fairgrounds, uncomfortably close to Tucson's majority-Latino southside — a community that has already paid the ultimate price for corporate environmental crimes.
For over 30 years, Hughes Aircraft (now Raytheon) dumped trichloroethylene (TCE) into open pits and directly onto the ground at Air Force Plant 44.
This industrial solvent seeped into the groundwater, creating a contamination plume that the EPA designated as a Superfund site in 1983. The contamination covered an area roughly south of 22nd Street, north of Los Reales Road, east of Interstate 19, and west of Del Moral Boulevard — right in the heart of the southside's Latino community.
The human cost has been devastating.
On Evelina Street alone, less than one mile from the airport, 34 cancer cases have been documented. There are families on that street with only one surviving member. Residents complained of chemical smells and tastes in their water for years before the EPA finally tested and confirmed the contamination.
And how did local officials respond to this environmental catastrophe? With denial, victim-blaming, and outright racism.
In one particularly cruel instance, the Health Director of Pima County told an audience of mostly Hispanic people that the high rates of cancer and death in their neighborhood were because their diet was bad, they smoked, drank too much, and didn't exercise enough.
PFAS: History Repeating Itself
Just as the community thought they might be getting some relief from the TCE nightmare, along comes another contamination crisis. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from firefighting foam used at the Air National Guard Base have now infiltrated the groundwater.
These "forever chemicals" don't break down in the environment and are linked to cancer, liver and kidney disease, and immune system damage.
The City of Tucson has spent $71.1 million on PFAS-related remediation and infrastructure, including the shutdown of 31 wells.
PFAS levels in one area increased by 700% from 2017 to 2021, prompting the closure of the Tucson Airport Remediation Project (TARP) plant in 2021.
So when Project Blue developers talk about making their project "water positive" through well rehabilitation that addresses "contamination due to other industrial contaminations," they're essentially saying: "Don't worry, we'll help clean up the mess that the military-industrial complex made on the backs of Brown and Indigenous communities, and in exchange, you'll let us use your water for our profit centers."
¡Qué conveniente!
The Military-Tech Nexus: Palantir in the Desert
Let's not forget who this data center infrastructure really serves.
These aren't just facilities for streaming Netflix or storing your vacation photos. Data centers are increasingly the backbone of military and border surveillance operations.
Companies like Palantir — founded by Trump advisor and anti-immigrant fanatic Stephen Miller's buddy Peter Thiel — use these facilities to power facial recognition, predictive policing, and immigration enforcement algorithms.
In the borderlands of southern Arizona, where the migra already terrorizes our communities daily, the last thing we need is more infrastructure to power their surveillance state. Project Blue isn't just stealing our water; it's building the digital infrastructure for a new generation of La Migra 2.0.
The Democratic Party's Corporate Genuflection
And where are our Democratic officials in all this? Pima County Administrator Jan Lesher endorsed the project, and the Board of Supervisors passed it 3-2, with Democratic supervisors singing the praises of job creation and economic development.
This is the same Democratic Party that talks a big game about climate change and environmental justice, but when push comes to shove, they'll genuflect before any corporation promising a few temporary construction jobs. Project Blue touts the creation of 180 full-time jobs by the third year — a paltry return on a $3.6 billion investment that will strain our most precious resource for decades.
It's the same old story: Democrats adopting Republican talking points about economic growth at any cost, while communities of color pay the environmental price.
They've learned to speak the language of environmental justice, but when the checks from Silicon Valley arrive, "water positive" suddenly sounds reasonable, and "job creation" trumps water security.
The Broader Water Crisis: Colorado River on Life Support
This isn't happening in a vacuum. The Colorado River Basin has been in a prolonged drought for over 22 years, and Arizona will lose 512,000 acre-feet of its Colorado River allocation in 2025 — that's 30% of the Central Arizona Project's normal supply.
Lake Mead and Lake Powell are at historically low levels, threatening not just water delivery but hydropower generation. The river that once carved the Grand Canyon is now so over-allocated and over-used that it rarely reaches the sea.
In response to this crisis, we're inviting more industrial water users? It's like hosting a dinner party during a famine and inviting the hungriest guests.
Other States Are Saying No
While Arizona's Democratic leaders are rolling out the red carpet for water-hungry data centers, other communities are showing more sense. Marana, a town 20 miles northwest of Tucson, adopted an ordinance in December that prohibits the water department from supplying data centers with potable water. Companies must find alternative sources and file applications that estimate their annual water consumption.
That's what actual water stewardship looks like — not this "water positive" corporate smoke and mirrors.
The New Manifest Destiny
Make no mistake: This is the New Manifest Destiny in action.
Just as European colonizers once justified stealing Indigenous land with promises of progress and civilization, today's tech colonizers justify resource extraction with buzzwords about innovation and economic development.
Project Blue represents the latest chapter in the long history of outside corporations coming to the borderlands to extract our resources for distant shareholders.
First, it was mining companies digging up our mountains for copper and gold. Then it was agribusiness draining our aquifers for export crops. Now, tech companies are cooling their servers with our water while building the digital infrastructure for border militarization.
The pattern is always the same: make grand promises, use incomprehensible jargon, buy off local politicians, ignore community opposition, extract as much as possible, and leave the environmental mess for local communities to clean up.
Fighting Back: Water is Life
But here's the thing about nuestra gente: We don't go down easy. The southside community that survived TCE contamination and is now fighting PFAS contamination isn't backing down from this latest threat.
Community activists like Linda Robles, who has been organizing residents around the PFAS contamination, represent the kind of grassroots leadership we need. Environmental justice groups, such as Tucsonans for a Clean Environment, continue the long fight for basic environmental health. And young leaders in organizations like Amistades are building the community infrastructure we need to resist these corporate assaults.
Tucson City Council member Kevin Dahl has been asking tough questions about the project's water use, and the project still needs city approval for annexation. There's still time to stop this water grab, but it will take sustained community pressure.
What You Can Do
No nos vamos a rendir. Here's how you can join the fight:
Immediate Actions:
Contact Tucson City Council members and demand they reject Project Blue's annexation request
Attend city council meetings when Project Blue comes up for discussion
Join environmental justice organizations like Tucsonans for a Clean Environment
Support Linda Robles and the Environmental Justice Task Force in their ongoing work
Longer-term Organizing:
Demand that Pima County and the City of Tucson adopt ordinances like Marana's that prohibit potable water use for data centers
Push for real transparency in water use reporting from all industrial users
Support Indigenous water rights and traditional ecological knowledge in water management
Build coalitions between environmental justice communities and climate activists
Stay Informed:
Follow the ongoing legal battles over PFAS contamination and demand full accountability from the Air Force
Monitor the Colorado River negotiations and demand that Arizona prioritize community water security over corporate welfare
Support investigative journalism that exposes corporate environmental crimes
Financial Support:
Consider donating to local environmental justice organizations
Support Three Sonorans Substack to help us continue this critical reporting
Boycott companies that profit from environmental racism
A Note of Hope
Despite all the corporate propaganda and political corruption, there's reason for hope. Communities across the Southwest are waking up to the reality of water scarcity and demanding better from their leaders. Young activists are building powerful movements that center Indigenous wisdom and environmental justice. And every day, more people are seeing through the greenwashing to recognize corporate environmental destruction for what it is.
El agua es vida. Water is life. And life is worth fighting for.
The choice before us is clear: We can let Silicon Valley extract our most precious resource to power their surveillance state and profit margins, or we can demand that our water be managed as the common resource it is — essential for all life in the Sonoran Desert.
La lucha sigue. The struggle continues.
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There was a time when "liberals" would be appalled by such a hideous theft (and I cannot find a gentler word to describe the seizure of water!). Alas, "liberals" (aka "DemocRats") have either sold out or lost all connection to their true roots. This is obscene.