Yesterday, the City of Tucson officially rejected the proposed Project Blue data center project. 

We’re incredibly grateful to our Mayor and Council, and especially Council Member Dahl, for standing up for transparency, sustainability, and the long-term interests of our community. We’re also grateful for you — this was an impressive show of community, and the strongest we’ve seen in defense of our natural resources.

Let us hold on to that energy, and do so with respect. This is just the beginning — we can expect to see many more data center proposals across the region.

We must be ready, which means shaping strong local policies and ordinances that are grounded in science, transparency, and the public good. There are examples we can look to, including from our neighbors in the Town of Marana.

We want to thank our coalition members for your partnership, including Tucson Mountains Association, Sierra Club – Grand Canyon and Nopales chapters, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Living Desert Alliance, as well as the many other experts we have worked with over the last several weeks, including Russell Lowes, Glenda Avalos, and the fantastic team at Watershed Management Group. We look forward to continuing to work with you on these issues.

CSDP worked mostly behind the scenes — and alongside many, many others, including those above — to help defeat Project Blue. And we tried to keep our updates brief and to the point, but we welcome your feedback on how you’d like to stay informed on future developments such as this.

As a fast follow, we are actively preparing comments on the La Osa data center proposal in Pinal County, which we’ll post on our Publications page as soon as they are finalized. This proposal is directly adjacent to Ironwood Forest National Monument and in the middle of a major wildlife linkage that connects the Silverbell Mountains and Picacho Peak.