Project Blue

Timeline from the record

Newest first. Record entries come from the filings and reports the registry cites. Coverage entries are headlines from publisher feeds we monitor daily, linked to the outlet; last checked September 14, 2026.

1. April 2026

   Under construction
   Land clearing/grading began April 24, 2026, after county-level revival following the Tucson City Council's 2025 annexation rejection. Source: AZ Luminaria

Opposition and litigation at this site

Yes. Organized local opposition to Project Blue in Pima County, Arizona is documented in the public record. Dismissed April 2026, appeal expected.

How the community has taken it

Reception is a sourced signal, not an editorial judgment: opposed means documented, organized local opposition is the dominant signal on record.

Dismissed April 2026, appeal expected. Project Blue, $3.6 billion data center campus; county land sale of roughly 300 acres for $20.875 million plus rezoning. Dozens of protesters organized as the No Desert Data Center Coalition rallied at the site as construction began in late April 2026, holding "Not One Drop For Data" signs and briefly attempting to block construction vehicles before Pima County sheriff's deputies moved them out of the roadway.

Source: KJZZ Fronteras Desk

Power and water

Tucson Electric Power is reported as the serving utility for the campus.

Beale told Pima County it selected an air-cooling technology using a closed-loop system that continuously recirculates small amounts of water and consumes none for industrial cooling; the County Administrator restated this in the same memo, and it became a binding commitment on 2025-12-16. Water volume remains publicly contested, Beale has cited roughly 40 acre-feet/year while the ADWR permit ceiling is 96.5 acre-feet/year. The dispute concerns volume, construction conduct and process, not the cooling technology.

Notes on the record

Unincorporated Pima County, west of Houghton Rd, near Tucson. 500-700MW planned across 13M sq ft (a range, so omitted from capacityMw). AWS confirmed as end-customer via an NDA obtained by AZ Luminaria. Distinct site from Beale Infrastructure's Fremont Peak Properties/Luckett Road project in the Town of Marana (also AZ, also tracked this session) - same developer family, different parcel. Coordinates are approximate. The 180 permanent jobs figure is a projection for the third year of operations in 2029, published by Pima County and by the developer. Beale's own letter of 2025-09-17 adds a qualifier the county FAQ omits: the figure "include[s] full-time contractors and support personnel", and at least 75 of the roles will be directly employed by the end user. Beale has also stated it "is not asking for property tax incentives, often a necessary component of a data center project's cost competitiveness", and the utility agreement with Tucson Electric Power carries no financial incentives or discounts, unusual for a project of this size, and the reason subsidies are recorded as absent rather than merely unsearched.

Our reporting on this site

• Project Blue in Pima County · Dismissed

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