Pima officials demand contracts after Project Blue developer pledges $15M in local investments

Beale Infrastructure — the company behind the controversial Project Blue data center — announced Thursday it will match all of its local energy use with renewables and invest $15 million in education, workforce development and community programs. But with no signed agreements or details on how those commitments would be enforced, Pima County officials say the promises offer more publicity than protection.

“Beale’s commitment to pursue 100% renewable energy for its Pima County data center is a significant additional investment and reflects the company’s dedication to sustainable infrastructure development,” according to the Nov. 6 letter from the company. “To achieve this, Tucson Electric Power (TEP) will serve the data center through an energy supply agreement and Beale will seek to accelerate the development of new renewable energy resources for TEP’s grid that produce enough energy to match 100% of the data center’s energy consumption — at the data center’s cost.”

“I love that. It’s great. Fantastic. But how is it enforceable?”Pima County Supervisor Matt Heinz told Arizona Luminaria about Beale’s commitments. 

A memo from County Administrator Jan Lesher echoed the concern about enforceability. “While Beale states in their letter that details will be captured in a future agreement instrument, at this time there is no specificity on how the Beale commitments would be incorporated into an appropriate form of enforceable agreement to ensure future compliance,” according to the memo.

Lesher also noted the lack of specific information throughout Beale’s memo, including how future new clean energy generation would be developed or paid for, the time frame, and the dollar amount of investment.

“As stated in their letter, Beale has decided to move forward with the project even though Pima

County has unresolved questions at this time,” Lesher’s memo said. 

The memo noted that in September the county suggested to Beale various community investments, including “clean energy generation, workforce development, broadband infrastructure, transportation infrastructure and climate mitigation in the form of home weatherization.” Beale chose to focus on “clean energy generation and work development options.”

A group that formed in opposition to the project, No Desert Data Coalition, responded to Beale’s announcement the same day.

"Once again, Beale Infrastructure brings forward vague promises of investment in workforce development that would only serve their own extractive industry. All while failing to address the outstanding public health and environmental concerns that have been raised since the inception of this ill conceived project.”

The coalition warns the county against “getting fooled a second time” by Beale. 

They add: “Our community wasn't fooled by Beale's initial propaganda, and we aren't fooled by this latest round of green washing and empty labor promises.”

Heinz said that Beale is “under tremendous pressure” to close the land sale before the end of the year. In June, the Pima County Board of Supervisors voted to sell county-owned land to Beale for the future development of a massive data center. Initially, the sale depended on the City of Tucson annexing the land so they could supply water to be used to cool the servers. 

Heinz voted for the project. The board voted 3-2 in favor, with supervisors Jen Allen and Andrés Cano voting against. 

After strong public opposition against the data center, the city unanimously rejected the annexation, but then Beale decided to go forward with the project anyway, saying it would use air-cooling technology rather than water. The land sale hasn’t yet closed.

“They want to get this project going, I understand that,” Heinz said. “But my priority isn’t Beale or the labor unions, my priority is to make sure the county has an agreement in place that will hold everyone to their commitments. Right now, the only agreement in place is the land sale.”

“This is a new project,” Pima County Supervisor Jen Allen told Arizona Luminara of the current plan for the data center. “We need a new contract, and these things that they are putting out now need to show up in the contract. This is just them putting out a letter and getting some press and trying to frame themselves as doing good, but it needs to be integrated into a contract.”

Besides the promise to use renewable energy, Beale’s community investment initiative includes a “$5 million scholarship fund designed to support STEM education and trade school training in Pima County.”

Despite county supervisors repeatedly stating that there is no legal means to back out of their agreement to sell the land to Beale, community members have continued to voice their staunch opposition to the project, crowding into supervisors’ meetings and laying out the environmental harms the data center may herald.

At the Nov. 4 supervisors meeting, union members also made their position clear: they want the data center and the construction jobs it will bring, even if those jobs end once the build is complete.

As the standoff continues, Beale has now added community benefits to the package. And yet skepticism remains.

“If in four years, if things change with Beale, what can the county do to enforce any of that?” Heinz said, referring to their commitments. 

“Let’s put pen to paper and get a contract, legally binding and enforceable, that the people of Pima county can rely on,” Heinz said.

This article first appeared on AZ Luminaria and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.