If it’s anything like our city, they literally come in and try and get it through under complete NDA such that the city officials aren’t allowed to discuss who they are doing the project for. And they had obviously co-opted the city manager somehow—he fought valiantly to get it passed in the face of the entire city council and mayor. Plus, a third party does all the brokering to act as a further shield from knowing who the ultimate client is. We got wind of it here in time and just stopped Project Blue for AWS here in Tucson by all showing up at all the meetings (the idea of a massive data center that uses like 2k acre feet of water a year in a desert in a drought is hilariously terrible and dystopian).
Also, I should add that the actual result of us stopping them in Tucson is that they will now try and get it passed in either unincorporated Pima County or in a smaller satellite city somewhere around us. So it remains to be seen if they still manage to ram this extreme water and power usage through in spite of the wishes of the residents or not…
(And I should also add, this is a pretty heavily Democrat-leaning space—about the only one in AZ. Republicans hardly even try and run here some years.)
How many of them voted for this though?
The great part about being in a democracy is that if it’s working correctly you almost always lose.
When have you ever in your life had direct voting power over a corporate construction project?
If it’s anything like our city, they literally come in and try and get it through under complete NDA such that the city officials aren’t allowed to discuss who they are doing the project for. And they had obviously co-opted the city manager somehow—he fought valiantly to get it passed in the face of the entire city council and mayor. Plus, a third party does all the brokering to act as a further shield from knowing who the ultimate client is. We got wind of it here in time and just stopped Project Blue for AWS here in Tucson by all showing up at all the meetings (the idea of a massive data center that uses like 2k acre feet of water a year in a desert in a drought is hilariously terrible and dystopian).
Also, I should add that the actual result of us stopping them in Tucson is that they will now try and get it passed in either unincorporated Pima County or in a smaller satellite city somewhere around us. So it remains to be seen if they still manage to ram this extreme water and power usage through in spite of the wishes of the residents or not…
(And I should also add, this is a pretty heavily Democrat-leaning space—about the only one in AZ. Republicans hardly even try and run here some years.)
Victim blaming.