Tucson City Council will consider proposed changes to its large water user ordinance Tuesday, but some environmental advocates and Tucson residents say the changes don’t go far enough.
The city council rushed to approve a new ordinance in August 2025 to protect the city from large water users like data centers with the intention of consulting the community to revisit and strengthen the ordinance within a year.
The 2025 ordinance was a response to public outrage over Project Blue, a massive data center that could have used hundreds of millions of gallons of water a year. In order to access that water, the land where the data center is being built had to be annexed into Tucson. The city council rejected the annexation request…