I moved to metro Tucson seven years ago, and, specifically, to the suburban area known as the Foothills, which is just north of the city limit of Tucson, in unincorporated Pima County.
Well, that establishes my intelligence: dumber than a saguaro cactus.
It also establishes my psychological makeup: masochist.
I have a lot of company. A whopping 36 percent of metro Tucson is unincorporated county. To compare, about six percent of metro Phoenix is unincorporated county.
This means that there are over 300,000 residents of the Tucson metropolis who live in the unincorporated county. These unfortunate souls have about as much say in how the county is run as saguaros do. And the county communicates with them about as much as it does with saguaros.
The county’s most recent flagrant disregard for residents was its decision to approve the building of a huge data center just south of the city limit. About a week elapsed from the time that the county administrator announced that she was endorsing the project to the country supervisors voting to approve it.
The vote came at the only public meeting on the project, a meeting attended by only about 40 saguaros, er, residents. After slick presentations were made by the developer, Tucson Water, and Tucson Electric Power, the saguaros were allowed to play along and ask questions, in a fantasy version of representative democracy. Unbeknownst to the cacti, the decision has already been made by their overlords.
It was a monumental decision with huge implications for the cost and availability of water and electricity in Tucson. That’s because data centers consume staggering amounts of both, a fact that has generated a tremendous backlash to their construction in many parts of the country, including in areas with a lot more water and power than Tucson has.
As in Tucson, promises were made that the centers would be green—that they would use reclaimed water and sustainable energy. The promises were broken in those other locales. Promises also were broken about the number of high-wage jobs that would be created.
It’s hard to believe, but the data center in Pima County will be built near an area where Tucson Water had to abandon deep wells due to being contaminated by forever chemicals.
The City of Tucson also gave up part of its Colorado River allotment in exchange for federal money to build a technologically-advanced treatment plant to remove dangerous chemicals. It has since been discovered that the technology isn’t as effective as first touted.
Don’t think that this is the ranting of a Nimby, anti-industry, environmental wacko. Before retiring, I worked as an executive in manufacturing, natural resources, and mining. And I’ve written volumes on the need for Tucson to attract high-wage businesses.
But that doesn’t mean that I believe that a steel mill, a petrochemical plant, or a rubber plantation is appropriate for the desert of Tucson. I haven’t made up my mind about data centers, but there are enough red flags to give me pause—and should’ve given the county supervisors pause, to allow for more public meetings, more contra-opinions from outside experts, and more time for the supervisors themselves to weigh the pros and cons.
Why the rush to make a decision on something with such long-term implications?
In perhaps a bitter taste of what’s coming, the day after the county approved the data center, Tucson Electric Power announced a 14 percent rate increase. And the City of Tucson has announced that it is proceeding with its plan for Tucson Water to charge county residents more for water than it charges city residents.
The vast majority of Tucson residents probably didn’t even know that a meeting and vote on the data center had been scheduled. I certainly didn’t, although I pride myself on staying informed on local issues, as difficult as that can be.
Unlike other metropolises where I’ve lived, the county doesn’t have a newsletter or neighborhood offices. Its website is not user-friendly and seems purposely designed to obfuscate goals and budgets. And I never hear from the county supervisor for my ward.
The other day, I went to the county website to try to find out how to safely discard hazardous household waste. Not finding any information, I searched information for the City of Tucson and found that the city has collection sites far from the Foothills. There is no charge for city residents but a ten-dollar charge for county residents.
Items also can be brought to the City of Tucson’s landfill, which is the landfill for the metro area. Wear a gas mask. The city is facing over $300,000 in fines for violating environmental regulations on how much methane gas can be released from a landfill. It seems that the city has not installed the proper equipment to capture the gas.
Incidentally, when I lived in Scottdale, the city of 241,361 residents not only had convenient collection sites for hazardous household waste, but upon request would pick up hazardous items at the curb in front of homes.
Unincorporated Pima County doesn’t even have trash service. That has to be contracted with a private trash company. The same for fire service.
Likewise, in the roughly 30 square miles of the Foothills, there is not one public park, community center, senior center, swimming pool, ball field, tennis court, or dog park. However, there are miles and miles of badly deteriorated and poorly landscaped streets, including some dirt roads just north of the city limit, in Pima County’s version of Appalachia.
Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the metropolis, the county has approved a humongous sports complex to be built and run by a for-profit company. Amongst all of the local cheerleading over the complex, little was said about how it would be financed.
My research suggests that it will be financed by a New York investment company through a special loan vehicle in which Pima County will be the collateral, meaning that if the developer defaults, Pima County residents will be on the hook. I haven’t been able to verify this, because, to repeat, the county is lousy at communicating but excels at obfuscating.
The county is also lousy at planning. So is the City of Tucson. Both of these jurisdictions comprise about 88 percent of the metropolis and have been run for decades by the same political monopoly. Yet they are unable to agree on the funding, priorities and protocols for the Regional Transportation Authority and the Pima Association of Governments. As a result, metro Tucson is 50 years behind metro Phoenix in transportation networks and other infrastructure.
There is no need to recite the many other examples of the bad governance in both Pima County and the City of Tucson. Unless you’re as dumb as a saguaro, you get the point: that neither the county nor the city can be trusted with a decision as consequential as the data center.
Mr. Cantoni can be reached at [email protected].
