Local opinion: A response to op ed on environmentalists and labor

It’s hard to square Erica Prather’s headline with the body of her piece, which reduces everyone who opposed Project Blue to “belly-aching white-collar liberals with high data use.”

That caricature is lazy and wrong.

The No Desert Data Center Coalition is broad and real: teachers, scientists, musicians, naturalists, Indigenous and First Nations people, immigrants and refugees, tech workers and developers (including AI/data folks), retail and service workers, lawyers, nurses, social-justice and nonprofit staff, climate scientists, water conservationists, ecologists, artists, activists, journalists, elected officials, SME business owners — and yes, union members. We include Arizona natives and newcomers, seasonal residents, young, middle-aged, and older; disabled and able-bodied; labor, working-class, middle-class, and upper-income neighbors. It was a bad deal, and we saw through it. How much more broad, unified, and authentic does a coalition need to be?

I’m the daughter of immigrants and farm labor. My first jobs were in the fields and in retail; my dad is in his late 60s and still a field worker after 34 years. I work a white-collar job now, but that doesn’t erase where I come from or what I know about working-class life.

We opposed a bad deal — not unions or union workers. Many of us are pro-labor and want stronger unions. What we heard from the developer, Beale Infrastructure, were vibes, not guarantees: no binding community-benefits agreement, no enforceable local-hire targets, no clear commitments on prevailing wages or apprenticeship slots. When a local Boilermakers member asked at the 7/23 Project Blue Community Information Meeting, “What is Beale Infrastructure’s commitment to using a local construction workforce and a local day-to-day workforce?” the company’s Director of Development replied, “We are already in discussion with the union folk, and we will be inviting all the unions to bid on this project in order to maximize the amount of locals that work on this project.” That’s corporate-speak for competitive bidding with no binding local-hire commitment — often a path to out-of-town contractors.

Calling our testimony a “reactionary blitz” ignores the process. The public learned what was really on the table only weeks before a vote, after NDAs and an insider-driven rollout kept details quiet since 2023. We learned it was an Amazon Web Services project only because AZ Luminaria first got the scoop reported it. Public comment is exactly where communities are supposed to be heard.

We also asked basic, forward-looking questions:

• Water and power in a desert city — how much, from where, and at whose expense?
• Tax policy — why should Arizona’s data-center tax break lure in a project that shifts costs to residents while creating few permanent jobs?
• Jobs — data centers are not long-term job engines. If Tucson labor is truly the priority, show binding numbers, not press releases.
• Community health and land — why trade our air, noise-level, and landscape for a handful of specialized positions unlikely to be filled locally?

It isn’t “performative” to demand that any company using our water, power, and roads meet our standards. We should hold projects, developers, and so-called deals to real scrutiny and accountability. Real solidarity means good jobs and climate sanity — not a false choice between the two.

If the city, developers, and the trades want a project we can all stand behind, start with a transparent process and a signed community-benefits agreement: enforceable local-hire and apprenticeship requirements, prevailing wage, strong environmental safeguards, public reporting, and enforceable consequences for non-compliance. Until then, “trust us” isn’t a plan.

Land is wealth. Tucson shouldn’t give that away for promises that evaporate like desert rain the moment the ribbon-cutting ends. Don’t lecture us about empathy—listen to the people who live here. You might learn something.