Pima County cites Project Blue for air quality violations

Dust blowing from the site of the under-construction Project Blue data center in Tucson led to a contractor being put on notice of potential $10,000 daily fines for violating an air quality permit.

A construction company at the site received a notice of violation from the Pima County Department of Environmental Quality on Tuesday, officials said.

The county said it sent the notice to AMES Construction because the company violated its “fugitive dust permit” during two inspections of the Project Blue worksite, first on May 8 and again on May 11, officials said. The company has until May 17 to respond to the county.

Representatives of the contractor and the developer didn’t immediately provide answers to questions from the Sentinel about the violations.

Under Arizona state law, the county can fine AMES up to $10,000 per day, per violation of the permit, county officials said. The dust violation came after city officials told a contractor to halt using a Tucson Water hydrant to fill trucks to haul water to the site.

Officials said the Pima County Department of Environmental Quality protects air quality by “regulating fugitive dust emissions and
inspecting dust-producing activities and sites.” Under the permit process, contractors who are likely to create dust are told about the regulations, and are required to provide information about their activities to the county.

AMES is preparing the site for the controversial large-scale data center campus on 290 acres of land just north of the Pima County Fairgrounds on South Harrison Road.

While the county sold the property to the developers of Project Blue last year, supporting the plan to build the massive data center, Pima officials are keeping an eye on its construction.

A county inspector wrote in the notice of violation that AMES had “failed to employ dust mitigation practices (i.e. water), which resulted in visible fugitive dust emissions being generated. The fugitive dust was observed crossing property boundary lines.”

County officials said AMES must “immediately come into compliance with its permit and submit to the county its intended corrections” to comply with the dust permit and explain the “actions that led to the violation,” county officials said. They added the company “must have water onsite to mitigate fugitive dust to ensure no further violations will occur.”

County officials said that dust from construction projects can be a
health hazard, and “can exacerbate symptoms of those suffering from
respiratory disease,
cause respiratory illness, namely Valley fever, and can be a safety
hazard, especially near roads by reducing visibility.”

Pima County
officials said they educate property owners, building contractors, and
others about the importance of dust mitigation.

Last week, the city of Tucson revoked AMES’s permit to use a water meter which
tapped into Tucson Water lines. In a letter, City Manager Tim Thomure
told Beale Infrastructure officials that Tucson does not support the
construction of the data center and the project is not eligible for any
city resources, including water.

After the public learned of the scale of Project Blue, prompting an outburst of objections, the Tucson City Council walked away from further city involvement in the deal, nixing an planned annexation and a commitment to provide water for construction and cooling.

The developers said the $3.6 billion project is expected to generate $152 million in tax revenue over 10 years—$58.5 million for Pima County and $93.5 million to the state of Arizona—and create 3,000 temporary construction jobs. The company also said it will prioritize local union and trade labor organizations, but has made no promises. Once the project is completed, there will be around180 permanent positions earning an average of $64,000 per year — although their contractual commitment was only to hire 75 workers.

The company is moving ahead to build the complex of cloud computers
on the Southeast Side, despite not having a publicly committed customer.
Amazon Web Services had been the intended end-user from the beginning
of the project, but walked away from the deal, according to numerous
sources with knowledge of the ongoing discussions.

Last December, Beale Infrastructure decided to close on the land sale with Pima County, waiving certain conditions, including the annexation and the use of Tucson Water. The company also shifted the project’s needs, telling the public the massive cluster of servers would be air-cooled rather than using water for cooling.

In telling Project Blue to not use city water during construction, Thomure noted that Mayor Regina
Romero and the Tucson City Council voted unanimously to reject the
project last year, and he expressed astonishment that Ames was using Tucson Water to control dust
during work at the site.

“To
our amazement, we were alerted to the fact that your contractor
obtained a construction meter from Tucson Water from within the Tucson
Water service area and transported that water out of our service area
for use on Project Blue site,” Thomure wrote to Beale’s Brendan
Gallagher. “This was completely unacceptable and was terminated by
Tucson Water immediately.”

Thomure also warned Gallagher not to use city resources in the future, including by contractors, subcontractors, or “any other entity with a connection to Project Blue.”