Arizona county will regulate data centers, but some residents want more

There are currently no active applications for a data center in Cochise County. Still, many residents wanted to ban the facilities outright.

On Tuesday, the county adopted a set of data center regulations after a 3-0 vote by its supervisors.

“We are thinking ahead,” said Frank Antenori, who chairs the county’s board of supervisors.

Cochise County will require data centers to undergo a stricter approval process than most developments, known as a special use authorization. Its new regulations ask data center developers to submit noise impact analyses and water use plans. They will also require them to show they can supply power without “adversely impacting existing users” and mostly bar them from using potable water for cooling servers.

The regulations were one of two data center-related items approved by the county’s Planning & Zoning Commission on March 11. The other was a measure asking supervisors to begin the process for a 120-day outright moratorium on data center development, which the commission approved in a 5-4 vote.

“We must ensure our most vital resources are not depleted before we have had the time to properly evaluate these impacts,” said John Benedict, the commission member who sponsored the measure.

But the county board never took up the moratorium. Arizona’s moratorium process requires counties to hold public hearings and prove that failing to enact one would either overload water and sewer infrastructure or endanger public safety and health.

According to an April 3 press release from Cochise County, county staff believe those conditions are not currently met.

Still, many county residents who spoke at the April 7 board meeting felt that a moratorium, not the regulations, better reflected their wishes.

“I would say about 95% of the people I talk to are opposed to data centers altogether,” said Clay Greathouse, a local realtor specializing in rural properties.

According to county development director Christine McLachlan, whose office wrote the new regulations, they received “significant” public feedback and the “majority of comments opposed data centers as a land use.” A document containing emails received by county staff about the regulations, attached to the board's agenda, is over 200 pages long.

Antenori promised that the regulations would be strengthened.

“We’re getting good suggestions. As we go through this process we’ll be having work sessions, which are open to the public. We are being proactive, so we have time to add things into this, with input from both sides,” he wrote in an April 8 press release.

Many suggestions raised by the public were related to water. The county’s new regulations bar data centers from using drinking water for cooling purposes unless other water is “not reasonably available or feasible.” Cheryl Knott argued they create a loophole for companies to use groundwater and drinking water.

“Data centers should only be allowed on land where they will be replacing an existing operation that uses more water than the data center will,” she said, calling it a net-zero water use policy.

Data centers have traditionally used large amounts of water to cool their servers. Recently, many data center developers, including those planning Project Blue in Pima County, have transitioned to air-cooled or closed-loop water systems. Antenori said he wants data centers in Cochise County to use cooling systems that don’t require large amounts of water.

Another commenter, Shana Gall, encouraged the county to sign agreements with potential developers that would require them to pay into well-digging funds and purchase county bonds held in escrow until they are needed for decommissioning the data center.

“Growth must fix what is broken. We must act as stewards. We cannot allow these structures to become the abandoned mines of the digital age,” she said.

The county’s new regulations outline steps for declaring unused data centers abandoned and decommissioning them and state the county "may require" owners to pay for that process. Antenori suggested asking potential data center developers to help Cochise County buy hazmat trucks for local fire departments, citing a recent train derailment.

Antenori said he expects Cochise County to receive a data center application by 2028. To the west, the City of Tucson and Pima County did not have specialized data center regulations in place when the Project Blue development was approved in June 2025. This week, Tucson city leaders reviewed potential new data center restrictions. Pima County’s code does not contain any special restrictions concerning data centers.