Google starts work on $1 billion data center in Mesa
A conceptual rendering of the entry way to Google's $1 billion data center campus in Mesa. The project was referred to its code name "Red Hawk" throughout a recent meeting in the city of Mesa
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15 June 2023
Google Shows Plans for $1B Mesa Data Center / Google Data Centers’ Secret Cost: Billions of Gallons of Water
Overload Data Center Demands Encounter Low-Voltage Public Resistance
Here's one more instance of corporate-owned mainstream media dubious reporting intended to manipulate and to influence public opinion by Tom Scanlon, Managing Editor of the East Valley Tribune - it's all about the jargon used by city officials in "administrative reviews"
The news broke here in Mesa yesterday, after a closed-door Executive Session of the Mesa City Council at a study session about 'a very big deal". 
Please read the official narrative and City Council staff report with the denial
"not known at this time"
The following is part of a post on this blog earlier this year
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$1 billion data center coming to Mesa
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Google Data Centers’ Secret Cost: Billions of Gallons of Water
To meet surging demand for online information, internet giant taps public water supplies that are already straining from overuse.
In August 2019, the Arizona Municipal Water Users Association built a 16-foot pyramid of jugs in its main entrance in Phoenix. The goal was to show residents of this desert region how much water they each use a day—120 gallons—and to encourage conservation.
“We must continue to do our part every day,” executive director Warren Tenney wrote in a blog post. “Some of us are still high-end water users who could look for more ways to use water a bit more wisely.”
A few weeks earlier in nearby Mesa, Google proposed a plan for a giant data center among the cacti and tumbleweeds. The town is a founding member of the Arizona Municipal Water Users Association, but water conservation took a back seat in the deal it struck with the largest U.S. internet company. Google is guaranteed 1 million gallons a day to cool the data center, and up to 4 million gallons a day if it hits project milestones. If that was a pyramid of water jugs, it would tower thousands of feet into Arizona’s cloudless sky.
Alphabet Inc.’s Google is building more data centers across the U.S. to power online searches, web advertising and cloud services. The company has boasted for years that these huge computer-filled warehouses are energy efficient and environmentally friendly. But there’s a cost that the company tries to keep secret. These facilities use billions of gallons of water, sometimes in dry areas that are struggling to conserve this limited public resource.
“Data centers are expanding, they’re going everywhere. They need to be built in a way that ensures they are not taking critical resources away from water-scarce communities,” said Gary Cook, global climate campaigns director at Stand.earth, an environmental advocacy group.. .
- “The race for data centers to keep up with it all is pretty frantic,” said Kevin Kent, chief executive officer of consulting firm Critical Facilities Efficiency Solutions. “They can’t always make the most environmentally best choices.”
The Arizona town of Mesa, where Google plans a 750,000 square-foot data center, gets half its water from the drought-prone Colorado River. A contingency plan was signed into law last year requiring states dependent on the river to take voluntary conservation measures. Still, Mesa officials say they remain confident about future supply while continuing to remind residents to limit their water consumption. “We do not have any immediate concerns,” said Kathy Macdonald, a water resources planning adviser with the city. In 2019, Mesa used 28 billion gallons of water, according to Macdonald. City officials expect that to reach 60 billion gallons a year by 2040, a demand Mesa is capable of meeting, she said.
Big companies like Google wouldn’t locate to the city if it couldn’t meet their water demands, Macdonald said. Mesa passed an ordinance in 2019 to ensure sustainable water use by large operations and fine them if they exceed their allowance.
Employment Opportunity District Project Narrative [7 Pages]
Revised February 19, 2019
Introduction
Pew & Lake, PLC is pleased to provide this project narrative and related materials to the City of Mesa in support of the proposed Red Hawk Employment Opportunity District (RHEOD). . .
As noted above, the Red Hawk property is approximately 187 acres and is currently designated in the Mesa 2040 General Plan as Employment Mixed Use Activity District.
Amendment Procedure
Amendments to the approved RHEOD will follow the procedures outlined in Section 11-14-9 of the MZO.
Phasing
The RHEOD is designed to accommodate the construction of buildings over time in response to technological advances and market conditions.
Development interests are the largest class of donors to political campaigns for city and town councils and county supervisors in the area -----------------------------------
30 June 2019
HUGE Give-Aways For Ga-Ga-GaZillion Tech Giant Google Data Center Here in Mesa?
According to mainstream media reports, the City Council is "primed" to approve it.
If you want some of the hype - and sketchy details - you know where you can go > Google Picks Mesa for Giant Data Center
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HOLD ON! We've been kept in the dark about this in a confidentiality agreement with the company by city officials. We learned that tidbit after a closed-door Executive Session scheduled on the agenda at last Thursday's City Council Study Session.
To keep it quiet it was code-named Project Red Hawk. . . the deal isn't done until the City Council approves it.
RED HAWK EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY DISTRICT (RHEOD)
< If the real truth gets told, there are few jobs that go with data centers. That's simply a fact.
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“In terms of a financial deal, this is home run. This is a great day, . . " Giles said Google’s decision to build the data center in Mesa means that the Elliot Road Tech Corridor will be anchored at each end by one of the world’s largest tech companies, Apple and Google.
“There’s no city that would not be envious of that,’’ Giles said.
Hmmm.... Time to disclose for Hizzoner!
By Tom Scanlon, Tribune Managing Editor
It may never rival Silicon Valley, but Mesa is fast becoming Data Center Alley.
Several global companies are at various stages of plans to start crunching and storing data in southeast Mesa.
Most people have heard of Google and Apple – RagingWire, not so much.
And many around Mesa have heard Apple already has a sprawling data center and Google is planning an even bigger one around southeast Mesa’s Elliot
Technology Corridor, which runs along the north side of Eastmark. 
But while the secretive Google is taking its time on a project Mayor John Giles and Mesa City Council were crowing about two years ago, RagingWire is already building along Elliot Road.
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"In 2019, both companies signed agreements with Mesa. The Google site, set up as its own district with the code name “Project Red Hawk,” is 180 acres on Elliot and Sossaman roads, just west of the tech corridor.
Mesa City Council excitedly approved the “game-changer” Google data center, which a presentation promised would bring the city $150 million in taxes over 25 years.
Council more quietly approved an agreement for RagingWire/NTT to “opt in” to the tech corridor.
In addition to completed projects, two other developments have been approved for the tech corridor, which fast-tracks construction
As an SRP application to a state regulatory site for huge transmission lines for Project Red Hawk notes:
“The Elliot Road Technology Corridor has approximately l,000 acres available for development. and stretches along Elliot Road from Signal Butte Road to Hawes Road, approximately one mile from the Project Site. Projects that might have taken up to six months to go through the entitlement process can get approval in as little as a few weeks (City of Mesa, 2019).
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