County to revisit data center NDA policies, environmental reviews

In the months following the Project Blue data center development, the Pima County Board of Supervisors passed two policies governing future economic development projects.

With news of another data center in talks in Sahuarita in recent weeks, the county is scheduled to revise those policies this week.

The first policy added new guidelines to the county’s use of non-disclosure agreements, including shortening how long the county can be held to such an agreement, and who can sign it.

Supervisor Jen Allen told the Star she wants to expand the new NDA criteria to existing agreements, not just new ones.

Part of her motivation was the flurry of applications for data center tax exemptions in the weeks leading up to the three-year moratorium enacted by Governor Katie Hobbs.

“In the two or three weeks leading up to July 1, when that moratorium went into effect, there were nearly as many applications for the sales tax exemption, as there were in the entire 13 years of that sales tax exemption being in place,” she said at the Aug. 13 meeting.

The other board policy is proposed to revamp the criteria that triggers an environmental review, such as when an NDA is signed, or a developer expresses an interest in Pima County.

Allen said she wants to expand that criteria.

“Projects can come in through the door through Development Services and through other means that is not necessarily through a business recruitment lens,” she said.

Still in the pipeline is a potential 120-day moratorium on all data center development activity while the county hammers out its code amendment changes. Allen told the Star that the agenda item is due back at the end of September.

At the Aug. 11 meeting, supervisors voted 3-2 to draft the moratorium language, with Supervisors Rex Scott and Steve Christy voting no.

Scott said he could not support the motion due to “advice from legal counsel.”

On Aug. 26, the Pima County Board of Health passed a unanimous motion advising supervisors to adopt the 120-day moratorium to “prevent irrevocable public harm.”

Similarly, the Pima County Health Department recently released a review of existing knowledge of the health impacts of data centers, which pointed out Pima County’s existing vulnerabilities in cardiovascular and respiratory health issues that could be made worse by data center environmental impacts.