Tucson Project Blue: data centres lie about water again

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:04]Hello, I'm David Gerard and this is Pivot toAI coming to you daily. Today, the industry that does everything to cover up its water use is lying about water again. Bill Infrastructure is a data center developer. They're part of Blue Owl, the hedge fund and private credit lender that's up to its neck in data center development and has only minor problems paying its investors back. One of the companies be develops for is Amazon Web Services. Somebody thought it would be a great idea to build a water sucking data center in Tucson in Arizona, which is in a desert.

[00:00:49]Both Beal and Amazon have pulled every trick they can to keep all details about this plan out of the public eye and even out of the awareness of the local government. The project's actually been in the works since 2022.

[00:01:05]That's the year city of Tucson staff signed non-disclosure agreements with Amazon and Beal such they didn't tell the actual elected city councilors anything about the plan until 2025.

[00:01:21]Quote, "While city council members did not sign any non-disclosure agreements, Ward 4 council member Nikki Lee said an agreement was signed by Barbara Coffeeoffey, the director of economic initiatives for Tucson. I was told that one was signed on behalf of the city of Tucson and that it applied across the organization," said Lee, whose ward would house the proposed data center," unquote.

[00:01:47]The no desert data center coalition has a timeline of every quiet action by Beiel and Amazon they could find over those initial few years.

[00:01:59]Puma County approved the plan anyway to sell a block of land to Beal to build their data center. Residents worried that Project Blue would suck up all the water and electricity, but Beal said it would be fine. Honest. How much water would the project use? The first version of Project Blue was set to use 2.9 million L of water every day in a desert. Beal said the data center would use reclaimed water, but only after a few years of using fresh water. Beal also claimed they'd build a pile of water reclamation plants on site, but all of those would be somewhere off in the fabulous future.

[00:02:46]There was quite a backlash over the abuse of non-disclosure agreements.

[00:02:51]Amazon tried to backpedal.

[00:02:55]Quote, "We do not have any commitments or agreements in place to develop this project." unquote.

[00:03:03]Later, it came out that Amazon had also got Puma County to sign a 5-year non-disclosure agreement in 2023 to keep Amazon's involvement out of public view.

[00:03:16]Pretty good for a company with no commitments or agreements. That sounds not quite true.

[00:03:23]In August, the city of Tucson council voted unanimously to stop any data center discussions with Beal and not grant them anything.

[00:03:37]Beal would get nothing from the city of Tucson. This killed the first version of Project Blue.

[00:03:45]Beal proposed an air cooled setup in September. That is loud cooling fans screaming 24/7.

[00:03:56]Quote, "New aircooled design will utilize a closed loop system and will not otherwise consume any water for industrial cooling."

[00:04:10]Amazon pulled out of Project Blue entirely in December. Since then, Project Blue has not had a customer.

[00:04:21]Beal kept on building the air cooled version of Project Blue even without any help from the city and without a customer.

[00:04:30]Just this month, it turned out Beiel was using the city's drinking water for dust control in construction. The city had explicitly blocked Beiel from using a drop of city water, but one of their contractors used their own rights to city water on the project. They trucked the water over to the site. Tucson city manager Tim Tomier was not happy.

[00:04:57]Quote, "To our amazement, we were alerted to the fact that your contractor obtained a construction meter from Tucson Water from within the Tucson Water service area and transported that water out of our service area for use on the Project Blue site. This was completely unacceptable and was terminated by Tucson Water immediately."

[00:05:20]unquote.

[00:05:22]Tomier had previously been a huge booster for Project Blue, but even he was sick of their weasling and dissembling. Tomia also demanded Beiel pay for that water. Without the water, the construction threw up masses of dust. So last Wednesday, Puma County issued Beiel a notice of violation.

[00:05:47]It also turns out the air cooled data center will still need a huge amount of water. They can't get it from the city of Tucson. So, a bill subsidiary has applied directly to the state of Arizona for permits to drill two wells so they can suck up 117 million L of groundwater each year in the desert.

[00:06:16]You might think Beal wasn't telling the whole iron varnish truth about not using any water for not cooling the data center. With Amazon pulling out, Beal still doesn't have a customer for this data center. But that hasn't stopped both Beal and Amazon pulling every scurvy trick and corporate shell game they can when they're not just straight up lying. because that's what data center developers do.

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