Local opinion: Turns out water actually is life

"Twilight Zone: The movie" opens inside a car eerily cruising down a lonely desert highway on a pitch-black night. Feels scary watching it. After the driver nervously jokes about being scared, the passenger turns to him and says: "Do you want to see something really scary?” As the driver turns his head, the passenger physically transforms into a monster from your worst nightmare and devours him.

Now, do you want to hear something really scary? TEP draws water from the same aquifer as does the City of Tucson. The so-called Active Management Area that's supposed to prevent TEP from drawing down unsustainable amounts of water allows TEP to use cap-and-trade paper credits from some other activity to physically draw down from that aquifer right here and right now. That doesn't help Tucson, Oro Valley, Marana or other communities that actually rely on real liquid water from Tucson Water. Can’t drink paper water. Is it far-fetched to think that TEP would really draw down Tucson’s aquifer with those paper credits and endanger us? Would TEP threaten its own profits by draining local economies?

Well, the bigger picture that emerges should scare the living daylights out of anyone paying attention. TEP is under tremendous pressure to increase its electrical generating capacity by unfathomable amounts to accommodate both Project Blue — originally proposed at 1300 megawatts — and the Marana data centers, estimated at 1500 megawatts.

So what? Here's what: It's the water. TEP invests headlong into gas power plants — which will use up incomparably more of our precious water than does renewable energy. The utility has been dragged kicking and screaming into producing renewable energy and has the nerve to brag about its tiptoe progress. Reality check: it’s just not as profitable for TEP to build out solar arrays as it is for it to build a gas power plant. TEP builds a gas-burning power plant and recovers its cost from ratepayers, with an added profit of 9.5% now, and likely soon to be 10.5% when the rubber-stamping ACC hears TEP's upcoming request. So why is that important? TEP’s slow walking of renewable energy into its mix is depleting water resources at an alarming rate. Here are the numbers.

Those two data centers together require 2800 megawatts of power. They will run 24/7, but with transmission line capacity limitations, it’ll be closer to 80% of that demand, or 2240 megawatts of power per day. Multiplying 2240 by the 24 hours in a day and then by 365 days in a year yields an energy use of about 54,000 megawatt-hours per day and 19.7 million megawatt-hours annually.

TEP's cooling processes evaporate about 200 gallons of water per megawatt-hour of energy produced. So, multiplying 19.7 million by 200 to calculate the gallons of water used in one year by TEP to produce the energy required by these two data centers results in the staggering figure of about 4 billion (with a “b”) gallons of water evaporated in the process.

Now, compare that water intensity (industry term for gobbling up water) with the water intensity for solar power — which Arizona has in beaucoup abundance. Aside from using water to occasionally clean off the solar panels, there is hardly any water consumption. Industry estimates range from 0.1 to 2.0 gallons per megawatt-hour. Using the median number results in 19.7 million gallons of water to produce the solar energy required by those two data centers.

Scorecard: Gas: 4,000,000,000 gallons. Solar: 19,700,000 gallons. Solar would use up about 0.05% of the water that gas burning would consume. Now, that 4 billion gallons of water lost in using gas and not the sun to supply energy to those data centers would have been enough water for over 100,000 Tucson lives for one year.

You've got Lake Powell projected to reach minimum power pool by December of this year. You're hearing dire warnings of water scarcity everywhere you turn. And you're going to allow TEP to put Tucson, Oro Valley, and Marana water resources in jeopardy?

Not on your life.