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Southern Arizona voters have until 7 p.m. Tuesday to cast a ballot in the special primary election in Congressional District 7. READ THE DETAILS & check back for updates tonight »
Watchdog news from the Tucson Sentinel 
A pair of data centers proposed for Tucson would use more water than four golf courses when fully built out, and be energized with more power than any other TEP customer, according to city documents released Monday. While City Manager Tim Thomure said he's supportive of the proposal, elected members of the City Council have sounded notes of caution, with at least one declaring he's a solid "no" so far. While the Council has yet to discuss the project, the Pima County Board of Supervisors approved rezoning and selling a county-owned parcel to the developers last month. The initial project, on the Southeast Side, will require annexation into the city to procure the massive amounts of water required to cool the planned operation. Another associated data center is being planned for a different location somewhere within the city limits, officials said. A third site is being studied for yet another data center in the region, but outside of the city limits, the city's newly released documents said. The city posted the documents and a message from Thomure on a "Project Blue — Facts and Information" section of its website Monday afternoon. Just the first two sites combined would require nearly 2,000 acre-feet of water per year, making them Tucson Water's largest customer. 'Cloak and dagger' The ultimate operator of what local officials dubbed "Project Blue" has not been publicly identified. Thomure told the Sentinel on Monday that he doesn't know who the company is. Negotiations by the city and county have been conducted with a developer, Humphrey's Peak Properties LLC, which is set to build out the centers before handing over the keys to the operator. Limited details about the project's use of power and water were not provided until Monday, with government officials citing non-disclosure agreements they said were necessary to negotiate behind closed doors in the initial stages of the talks. A draft "development agreement" was made public Monday, along with a summary from the city manager, with Thomure saying he hoped the information would "hopefully replace the misinformation and speculation that has been prevalent to date." "I don't like the whole secrecy thing attached to this project from the get-go," Councilmember Paul Cunningham told the Sentinel on Monday after reviewing the new documents. "There's still too much cloak-and-dagger stuff that I'm not comfortable with." "If the vote was today, I still wouldn't vote for it," the Ward 2 councilmember said. "I appreciate the effort of them releasing some info," he said of the documents which were provided to members of the Council on Monday morning, prior to a public posting in the afternoon. "But that doesn't get me to a 'yes.' My concerns and skepticism remain." Councilmember Nikki Lee, who represents the Southeast Side, likewise sounded a skeptical note Monday. "After reviewing this draft, I now have more questions than answers," she said. "I'm especially concerned about how key water provisions would be enforced and whether they truly protect Tucson's long-term water supply. Air quality hasn't been addressed at all. Economic benefits remain vague. And there are still a lot of missing or unclear details," said Lee, whose ward would include the area to be annexed under the deal. "I've read every single word. Twice," she wrote in a social media post. "Of the 21 questions I raised on June 26, only four can clearly and thoroughly be answered in writing based on what's in this draft. City staff have said they're working on a supplemental document to address the rest, but I haven't received a timeline for when those responses will be available." "There are so few guarantees here," the Ward 4 councilmember told the Sentinel on Monday, after reviewing the documents. "The up-side is not very high compared to the amount of resources we're talking about. That's what I'm trying to help surface. We've seen this play out in community after community." Of the 180 positions the project is forecast to result in, "there's no mechanism to make sure that those jobs actually get created and for how long," Lee said. 'It's not Dr. Evil' Thomure is leaning on his years as the head of Tucson Water in recommending the project move forward, he said. "The net water use (of Project Blue) is zero," he told the Sentinel on Monday, citing provisions in the proposed agreement with the developers that would allow the data center operator to offset water use by purchasing more Central Arizona Project water, supporting leak repairs throughout the city system, funding low flow toilets and leak detecting meters, and cleaning up PFAS-contaminated wells. "This actually isn't draining our water supplies," Thomure said. "We have more leakage than this amount." "We absolutely have sufficient capacity," he said. While he himself doesn't know the company for sure, "I can say it's not Dr. Evil," he told the Sentinel. GET THE DETAILS from Tucson Sentinel's Dylan Smith »
From the newsroom 
Tucson Sentinel journalists Natalie Robbins, Paul Ingram and Cris Seda Chabrier were recognized with national reporting awards from AAN Publishers, with Robbins taking first place for solutions journalism. Robbins took first place in the solutions journalism category, for her work reporting on the Tucson Community Bail Fund. Seda Chabrier won second place in the long-form arts feature category for a story on Tucson Vogue. Ingram won third place in the national reporting awards for his work covering the border and immigration issues in Southern Arizona. READ ALL ABOUT IT »
Two volunteers with a Tucsonhumanitarian group filed claims against the federal government, alleging intentional infliction of emotional distress, assault and false arrest and imprisonment stemming from a March incident near Sasabe, Ariz. GET THE DETAILS from Sentinel senior reporter Paul Ingram »
The Tucson Agenda 
Pima County staff want the Legislature to make it easier to take on racist property restrictions of the past; Southern Arizona Chamber faces questions, TUSD is working to fix deficits and more from local government meetings around Tucson this week. GET THE DETAILS from columnist Blake Morlock »
Your Watchdog Update from the Tucson Sentinel 
This email newsletter is published free for all to read — with no paywall, just like all the news on our entire website — thanks to the generous support of our readers. You can become a member of the Watchdog Club and help ensure Tucson has the Sentinel's independent nonprofit newsroom digging into the desert dirt for even more stories you can't find anywhere else. The Tucson Sentinel was one of the very first nonprofit independent local news sites in the country — we helped start a movement that's rebuilding journalism across the United S8tates. And we've done that with the help of readers like you who understand the importance of real local news for this community. Over the past 15 years, Tucson's come to rely on the Sentinel to report stories that no one else will.
The Center for Creative Photography turns 50 this year and the exhibit titled "Picture Party: Celebrating the Collection at 50" commemorates the half-century milestone of photography and research. READ THE DETAILS »
FC Tucson celebrated Fan Appreciation Night at Kino North Stadium Sunday night with a scoreless draw against Surprise-based Stars FC. MATCH REPORT & ACTION SHOTS »
In case you missed it 
Pima County Attorney Laura Conover said Wednesday federal officials "gutted" a homicide case against a Mexican man accused of shooting and killing 69-year-old Ricky E. Miller Sr. during an attempted carjacking in June. READ THE DETAILS »
Ahead of the start of early voting in the Aug. 5 Tucson City Council primary, an independent campaign sent mailers to Ward 6 Democratic voters urging them to support attorney Leighton Rockafellow Jr. and targeting KXCI operations manager Miranda Schubert. READ THE DETAILS »
The Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity sued the Trump administration on Wednesday in an attempt to halt border wall construction in the San Rafael Valley in Southern Arizona. READ THE DETAILS »
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