By-Right Zoning and Why the IVDC Was Never the City of Imperial’s Call to Make

The first and most fundamental fact about the City of Imperial’s lawsuit against the IVDC is geographic: the project site is in unincorporated Imperial County. Not within the City of Imperial’s boundaries. Not subject to the City of Imperial’s zoning code. Not in the City of Imperial’s jurisdiction for land use decisions.

The city filed suit anyway — to block a project that its own land use authority does not extend to, on the theory that Imperial County had approved it incorrectly. The Superior Court’s February 10, 2026 ruling that the complaint was “legally insufficient” is, in part, a court’s answer to a jurisdiction that overreached.

What I-2 Zoning Actually Means

The IVDC site is zoned I-2 Heavy Industrial by Imperial County. This designation has a specific legal meaning: the zoning code identifies the uses that are permitted on I-2 land, and industrial uses conforming to those designations are allowed by right. “By right” means exactly what it sounds like — the owner of I-2 zoned land has a legal right to develop it for permitted uses without seeking discretionary approval from a planning board, a city council, or any other body with the authority to approve or deny the project based on policy preferences.

The by-right system exists to create investment certainty. A developer who buys I-2 land knowing it is zoned for heavy industrial use is entitled to build a heavy industrial facility. If that entitlement can be defeated by a neighboring jurisdiction filing a lawsuit claiming the project should have required a CUP, the entire by-right framework is illusory.

The Permit Streamlining Act reinforces this. California law requires ministerial approval of projects that conform to applicable development standards within specified time limits. The IVDC’s site plan was submitted. The county reviewed it against I-2 standards. It conformed. Approval was ministerially required.

The CUP Theory and Why It Failed

The city’s legal theory was that a project of the IVDC’s scale — 950,000 square feet, 330 megawatts, 1,688 construction workers — was too large to be processed as a by-right ministerial approval, and that its impacts required the discretionary review that a Conditional Use Permit process provides.

The court rejected this theory as legally insufficient. The reason is fundamental to how zoning law works: the size and complexity of a project that conforms to applicable zoning standards does not transform a by-right approval into a discretionary one. If I-2 zoning allows heavy industrial uses, a large heavy industrial project is permitted. The code does not have a size exception that converts conforming uses into discretionary ones when opponents find them inconvenient.

If the county’s I-2 standards need to be revised to address impacts from very large industrial users, the appropriate mechanism is a legislative update to the zoning code — a transparent public process in which the community sets the rules prospectively. What is not appropriate is using litigation to retroactively impose discretionary review requirements on a project that was approved under the rules as they existed.

The Jurisdictional Question

Setting aside the legal merits, there is a governance question that the City of Imperial’s lawsuit raises: what gives a city the standing to challenge a county’s approval of a project in unincorporated county land?

California law provides avenues for challenging land use decisions, and neighboring jurisdictions can sometimes establish the standing necessary to pursue those challenges. But standing is not unlimited. A city that claims standing to block development on county land — based on claimed impacts that the court has found legally insufficient to support a CUP requirement — is asserting a very broad version of municipal authority over regional land use decisions.

The implications extend well beyond this project. If any city can block development on unincorporated county land by filing a facially insufficient lawsuit and running out the clock on the developer’s financing, no county approval is ever secure. The investment certainty that I-2 zoning is supposed to provide becomes conditional on whatever neighboring cities choose not to challenge.

The February 10 ruling said, clearly, that the city’s challenge was legally insufficient. The rule of law requires treating that finding as what it is: the end of a legal theory that shouldn’t have been pursued in the first place.

What “Legally Insufficient” Really Means: The February 2026 Court Ruling on the IVDC

Courts use precise language for precise reasons. When an Imperial County Superior Court judge described the City of Imperial’s amended complaint against the IVDC as “legally insufficient” on February 10, 2026, that phrase was not editorial commentary. It was a legal conclusion — the product of a judge reviewing the city’s arguments and determining that they do not, as a matter of law, state a valid legal claim.

“Legally insufficient” means the complaint failed to allege facts that, even if true, would entitle the city to the relief it was seeking. It is a higher-bar finding than a procedural dismissal. The judge was not saying the city filed its papers incorrectly. The judge was saying the city’s fundamental legal theory — that the IVDC required a Conditional Use Permit rather than a ministerial permit — is wrong as a matter of law.

What the Ruling Actually Decided

The City of Imperial’s lawsuit rested on a single central argument: that the IVDC could not be approved through a ministerial permit process because it required discretionary review under CEQA. If the project required discretionary review, a Conditional Use Permit would be necessary. A CUP triggers a public hearing process in which opponents can raise objections, demand studies, and ultimately block or condition the project in ways that would have made it economically nonviable.

The court said no. The project site is zoned I-2 Heavy Industrial. Data centers are a permitted use in I-2 zoning by right. A by-right use that conforms to applicable development standards does not require a CUP and does not trigger CEQA. The ministerial approval issued by Imperial County was legally correct.

This is not a technical quibble. It is the central dispute in the entire legal battle. The city argued the approval process was wrong. The court disagreed. The approval stands.

The Significance for By-Right Development

The broader significance of this ruling extends beyond the IVDC. By-right development — the principle that a project conforming to applicable zoning and development standards is entitled to ministerial approval without additional discretionary review — is the legal foundation for regulatory predictability in California’s land use system.

If every by-right project can be challenged by neighboring jurisdictions claiming the project actually requires a CUP, the by-right system becomes meaningless. Any opponent of any project can raise the same argument, force the same litigation, and impose the same delay and cost. The investment certainty that by-right zoning is supposed to provide disappears.

The court’s ruling affirms that I-2 zoning means what it says. A project built in accordance with I-2 standards on I-2 zoned land does not require additional approval from jurisdictions that don’t like the project. That is a significant affirmation of how California’s land use system is supposed to work.

The City’s Response and What It Costs

The City of Imperial has the legal right to appeal the ruling. It is exercising that right. This is standard practice — appellate processes exist for a reason, and losing at the trial court level does not obligate a party to abandon its claims.

But the appeal extends the delay. It costs more public money. And it extends the period during which the IVDC is unable to break ground, the 1,688 union positions are not filled, and the $28.75 million annual tax revenue does not flow to the county’s schools and public services.

The city’s residents are paying for litigation that their city filed, on a project their county approved, in a jurisdiction their city does not control. Every month of appellate proceedings is another month of taxpayer-funded legal fees spent trying to override a ruling that the court already called legally insufficient.

At what point do the residents of the City of Imperial ask their council members to account for those expenditures — and for the larger economic consequences of the campaign those expenditures are funding?

Behind the Unemployment Numbers: What the IVDC Fight Means for Real Families in Imperial Valley

The economic data on Imperial County is comprehensive and consistent. Unemployment rates that regularly run double or triple the state average. Per capita income among the lowest in California. Poverty rates that reflect not just individual hardship but systemic economic exclusion. The numbers are cited in every policy paper, every grant application, every speech by an outside official who comes to the Valley to express concern before returning to Sacramento or Los Angeles.

Behind the numbers are specific people making specific decisions under conditions of genuine scarcity. The family deciding which bill to skip this month. The graduate who took a job in Riverside because there wasn’t anything in Brawley. The worker who drives ninety minutes each way to a job in San Diego because the local economy doesn’t have enough work to fill a week. These decisions accumulate into the demographic and economic statistics that describe Imperial County’s chronic distress.

The IVDC is not a solution to every dimension of that distress. But 1,688 union construction jobs, paying prevailing wages, in a multi-year build that would sustain those positions across a full business cycle, is the largest single jobs commitment in the county’s history. What is being done to block it matters — and the people blocking it should be required to explain themselves to the families who would have filled those positions.

What Union Wages Actually Mean

The difference between a union construction job and a non-union service job, in terms of its effect on a working family’s life, is not a policy abstraction. An IBEW journeyman electrician on a prevailing wage contract earns $45-65 per hour, plus health insurance that doesn’t require a $3,000 deductible before it starts paying, plus pension contributions that accumulate across a career, plus apprenticeship programs that allow workers to build skills while earning a full wage.

Compare that to the economic profile of the jobs that have historically been available in Imperial County: seasonal agricultural work, retail positions at county minimum wage, public sector roles that require credentials most working-age residents don’t hold. The structural gap between what the local economy offers and what a construction trades career provides is not marginal. For many families, it is the difference between building equity and perpetual subsistence.

The Politics of Who Gets Hurt

The organizations and officials leading the opposition to the IVDC are not recruiting their membership from the households most affected by Imperial County’s unemployment. They are recruiting from environmental advocacy networks, from city officials whose political careers are built on opposing rather than building, from state legislators whose districts do not include the communities where these jobs would actually land.

This is not to say that everyone who raises questions about the project is acting in bad faith. Legitimate concerns about water use, environmental review, and development impacts deserve serious answers — and the project’s water recycling plan, if allowed to proceed, provides those answers far better than blocking the project does.

But there is a meaningful difference between raising legitimate concerns and filing lawsuits designed to delay a project until its financing collapses. One serves the community. The other serves the interests of whoever benefits from the project never being built.

The Voices That Aren’t Loud Enough

Public hearings on development projects attract the organized and the motivated. Environmental groups are organized. City officials with a political stake in the outcome are motivated. The IBEW local that would staff this project is organized but fighting on multiple fronts simultaneously. The farmworker family in El Centro who would send their oldest son to an apprenticeship program if the project broke ground is not appearing at any hearings.

The political economy of land use opposition consistently overweights the preferences of people who have enough stability in their own lives to spend time at hearings, file comments, and maintain organizational memberships. It consistently underweights the preferences of people who are working two jobs, managing childcare, and navigating an economy that doesn’t have enough to offer them.

The IVDC fight is, at its core, a question about whose interests the institutions of Imperial County are organized to serve. The court has ruled that the project is legally sound. The economic case for it has never been seriously contested. What remains is the political will to let it happen — and the accountability for the families who bear the cost when it doesn’t.

Your IID Electric Bill and the Data Center Someone Is Trying to Block

If your IID electric bill goes up next year, there is a specific reason to pay attention to what has been happening in the courts and the boardrooms around the Imperial Valley Data Center project.

The IVDC would generate an estimated $30 million per year in net revenue to the Imperial Irrigation District. In utility economics, that number matters beyond its face value. IID operates a regulated utility — its costs are spread across its ratepayer base, and its rates are set to recover those costs plus a reasonable return. When a large, stable industrial customer joins the rate base, the fixed costs of generation, transmission, and distribution infrastructure get spread across a larger total demand. The per-unit cost for every other customer — including every household paying an IID residential bill — decreases.

This is not a speculative model. It is how regulated utility economics work. High-volume, stable industrial loads subsidize residential rates. Always have.

The Z-Global Problem

So why has IID’s institutional posture toward the IVDC been, at best, ambiguous — and at worst, according to the federal lawsuit filed by IVCM, actively obstructive?

The federal complaint filed in Case No. 3:26-cv-00128 alleges that IID’s resistance to the project is not driven by legitimate utility planning concerns. It alleges that Z-Global — a consultancy with deep ties to IID’s leadership — has a competing interest in the transmission capacity and renewable energy development opportunities that the IVDC would occupy.

Z-Global, according to the complaint, wants to develop its own renewable energy projects using the same IID infrastructure that the data center would utilize. An industrial customer consuming 330 megawatts of IID capacity is a direct competitor for the transmission and generation assets that Z-Global’s projects would need. The alleged motivation for IID’s resistance is not protecting ratepayers. It is protecting a consultant’s market position.

What Ratepayers Are Owed

IID ratepayers have a direct stake in how their utility allocates its capacity and serves its largest potential customers. A $30 million annual net revenue contribution from a single industrial customer is not a rounding error in IID’s budget. It is a material improvement in the utility’s financial position — money that can offset rate increases, fund infrastructure maintenance, or retire debt that is otherwise serviced through ratepayer bills.

The suggestion that IID leadership may be making capacity allocation decisions based on the interests of a connected consultancy — rather than the financial interests of the ratepayers the utility exists to serve — is a governance question of the first order. It is the kind of allegation that utility regulators and elected IID board members should be demanding to investigate, not dismissing.

If the allegation in the federal lawsuit is accurate, IID ratepayers are being asked to pay higher rates so that a consultancy with insider access to IID decision-making can protect its business interests. That is a serious claim. It deserves serious scrutiny.

The Independent Grid Advantage

IID’s position as an independent utility — not subject to CAISO’s grid management, operating its own generation and transmission infrastructure — is one of Imperial Valley’s competitive advantages for attracting data center investment. A data center operator that connects directly to IID’s grid gets predictable, stable power from an entity that controls its own supply stack, without the transmission congestion and pricing volatility that affect utilities tied to the broader California grid.

That advantage only holds value if IID is actively trying to attract major industrial customers. An IID that protects incumbent consultants at the expense of large new ratepayers is squandering a genuine competitive asset — and charging its residential customers more than they would otherwise pay for the privilege.

The $30 million question deserves a public answer. IID board members are elected officials. The ratepayers who elect them are entitled to know whether the utility’s decisions about the IVDC are being made in the interests of the people who pay the bills, or in the interests of the people who have the utility’s ear.

Why Rural California Needs Data Centers More Than Silicon Valley Does

Silicon Valley is full. The land is expensive, the power grid is constrained, and the water is scarce. The hyperscale data centers that train AI models and process the world’s information can’t be built there at any price that makes economic sense. So the industry moved — to eastern Washington, rural Iowa, West Texas, northern Virginia — to places that have abundant land, access to power, and room to build at scale.

Imperial Valley has all of those things. It also has something most of those competing locations don’t: a geothermal energy resource that can power next-generation AI infrastructure with zero-carbon electricity, and a local workforce that needs the jobs badly enough that you don’t have to offer equity packages to fill construction crews.

The question is not whether the Imperial Valley Data Center is a good fit for this region. The question is whether this region will make the institutional choices necessary to capture the opportunity.

The National Pattern

Microsoft’s data center campus in Quincy, Washington transformed a small agricultural community into one of the most significant technology infrastructure hubs in the world. Google’s data centers in rural Iowa have generated hundreds of millions of dollars in local tax revenue and created thousands of construction and operational jobs in counties that had no realistic alternative economic development path. Meta’s facility in Prineville, Oregon became the economic anchor of a community that had watched its timber industry collapse.

In each of these cases, the pattern was similar: a region with cheap land, reliable power, and a workforce hungry for industrial-wage employment received a major technology infrastructure investment that restructured its local economy. The counties that said yes to these projects — and fought for them against the inevitable opposition — transformed their fiscal positions, their school systems, and their residents’ economic prospects.

The counties that said no, or whose institutional resistance made approval too costly and slow, are still waiting for the next opportunity. Some are still waiting.

What Imperial Valley Has That Others Don’t

Imperial Valley’s energy infrastructure is unusual. The Imperial Irrigation District operates an independent grid — not subject to CAISO transmission constraints, not dependent on the same overloaded southern California infrastructure that limits development in coastal communities. IID has generation capacity and the ability to accommodate major new industrial loads in ways that grid-dependent utilities cannot.

The region sits on one of the world’s most significant geothermal resources. The same Salton Sea brine that carries the lithium that Lithium Valley developers are racing to extract also carries thermal energy that can generate baseload renewable electricity at industrial scale. A data center campus co-located with geothermal generation creates a vertically integrated energy-compute stack that no coastal California location can replicate at any cost.

Add the I-2 heavy industrial zoning that makes the specific IVDC site legally available by right — without the discretionary reviews and community approval processes that add years and tens of millions to comparable projects in other jurisdictions — and the case for Imperial Valley as a premier data center location is not just plausible. It is compelling.

The Cost of Saying No

Rural communities that block major industrial investment don’t return to a neutral baseline. They return to a trajectory of gradual fiscal deterioration, population loss, and declining public services. The young people who leave for better opportunities don’t come back. The businesses that serve a working population contract. The tax base erodes, which reduces services, which accelerates outmigration, which further erodes the tax base.

This is not speculation. It is the documented history of dozens of rural California communities that didn’t diversify their economic base before their primary industry contracted. Imperial Valley has managed to sustain itself on agriculture longer than many comparable regions, but the structural pressures are identical.

The IVDC is not the only economic development opportunity the Valley will ever see. But it is the largest one currently on the table, and it has already cleared the most significant legal and regulatory hurdles. The people organizing to block it have not identified what they think should come instead. That is a significant omission, and the residents who would benefit from the project deserve to ask for an answer.

The Largest Private Investment in Imperial County History — And Why Some Officials Want to Stop It

There is a question that every economic development official in a chronically underinvested region eventually confronts: when the investment finally comes, will the institutions that are supposed to welcome it actually do so?

Imperial County is confronting that question right now. The Imperial Valley Data Center represents a $10 billion capital commitment to a 75-acre industrial site in one of the most economically distressed counties in California. No private entity in the county’s history has made a comparable investment commitment. Not the agricultural processors, not the energy companies, not the logistics firms that have come and gone over the decades. Ten billion dollars, on land that is zoned for exactly this use, approved through the county’s legitimate ministerial process.

And some of the region’s own officials are litigating to stop it.

Scale in Context

It is worth sitting with what $10 billion means in a county the size of Imperial. The county’s total assessed value — the cumulative value of all property, commercial and residential, within its borders — is measured in the tens of billions. A single private investment of $10 billion doesn’t just add to that base; it restructures it. The ratio of commercial to residential assessed value shifts. The county’s credit position improves. The ability to finance future infrastructure improvements — schools, roads, water systems — expands because the collateral base supporting those instruments is materially stronger.

This is before a single permanent employee is hired, before a single server is powered on, before the recurring $28.75 million in annual property tax begins flowing to county services.

What the Multiplier Looks Like on the Ground

Economic multipliers are often cited as justification for subsidizing private investment. In this case, no subsidy is being requested — the developer is paying full cost for permits, infrastructure improvements, and utility connections. The multiplier effect flows entirely to the county.

During the multi-year construction phase, 1,688 union workers drawing prevailing wages will spend money in Imperial County. They will rent housing, buy groceries, eat at restaurants, purchase work supplies, and use local services. The businesses that serve them will hire additional staff. The hotels and rental properties that house out-of-region workers will generate occupancy tax. The contractors and subcontractors who supply materials and services will place orders with local vendors wherever possible.

Economic research consistently finds that major construction projects generate two to three indirect and induced jobs for every direct construction position. Applied to 1,688 direct positions, that implies a total employment impact of four to five thousand jobs during the build phase — in a county where the working-age population is roughly 100,000 people.

The Infrastructure That Comes With It

The project includes a dedicated 330-megawatt substation — infrastructure that the developer is paying for, not the county, not IID ratepayers. The wastewater recycling upgrades the developer proposed for municipal plants in El Centro and Imperial would have improved those utilities’ infrastructure at private expense. The 862 megawatt-hour battery storage system would add grid stabilization capacity to the IID service territory, benefiting ratepayers who would otherwise pay for those stabilization services through utility rates.

These are not ancillary benefits. They are the kind of private-funded public infrastructure improvements that counties typically spend decades trying to attract through tax incentives, grant competitions, and development agreements. They are being offered as part of the standard project package — and the opposition is fighting to refuse them.

The Institutional Question

When a region consistently fails to convert economic development opportunities into actual investment, it eventually stops attracting them. Site selectors and developers maintain institutional memory. A county that fights a $10 billion by-right project through years of litigation sends a signal to the next developer evaluating a site list that includes Imperial County: find somewhere else.

The officials litigating against this project will not be held responsible for the investments that don’t come next. The residents who depend on the jobs and tax revenues those investments would have generated will bear that cost invisibly — in the school that stays underfunded, the fire station that stays understaffed, the young adult who moves away because there isn’t enough work to stay.

Imperial County has one chance to get this right. The courts have agreed the project is legal. The land has been zoned for this use for decades. The investment is ready. The decision now is whether the county’s institutions will honor the choices that brought it here.

Blocking the IVDC Is a Vote to Defund Imperial County Schools

When politicians talk about defunding schools, they usually mean budget cuts, levy failures, or state funding formula disputes. In Imperial County, defunding the schools looks different. It looks like a lawsuit filed by the City of Imperial against a data center that the county already approved.

The connection is direct and arithmetic. The Imperial Valley Data Center would generate $28.75 million in annual property tax revenue. A significant share of property tax in California flows to the local school districts in which the property sits. The project site is in unincorporated Imperial County. The schools that would receive that funding serve children in communities where the median household income is among the lowest in the state.

Every year the project is delayed by litigation, the school districts go without that revenue. Every year the project is blocked, the math compounds.

The Arithmetic of Obstruction

Property tax in California is apportioned among county agencies according to formulas established under Proposition 13 and subsequent legislation. Approximately 40-50 percent of property tax typically flows to school districts, with the balance divided among county general funds, special districts, and other local agencies. Applied to $28.75 million in annual IVDC property tax, that suggests roughly $11-14 million per year flowing directly to Imperial County’s school districts — from a single parcel.

Over ten years, that is $110-140 million that school districts in the area would receive. Over twenty years — the typical planning horizon for major infrastructure decisions — it approaches $300 million in school funding from a single project.

The City of Imperial’s lawsuit, if successful, eliminates that revenue stream entirely. The state court has already called the city’s legal theory “legally insufficient.” But the appeal will consume more time, more money, and another year or more of delayed revenue. The cost of that delay is not paid by the city officials who filed the suit. It is paid by the students in the school districts who will never see the teachers, the programs, and the facilities that $28.75 million a year would have funded.

The Opportunity Cost Nobody Is Calculating

Public debate about the IVDC has been dominated by the opposition’s framing of costs and risks. Water consumption. Grid impact. Environmental review. These are the questions that get asked at hearings, cited in press releases, and repeated in media coverage.

The question that does not get asked with equivalent urgency: what does Imperial County’s education system look like without this revenue? What does the child in a Brawley elementary school classroom lose when the tax base that should fund her education is permanently blocked by a lawsuit her city filed outside its own jurisdiction?

The opposition has not answered this question because they have not been required to answer it. The advocacy campaign around this project has allowed the framing of costs and risks to stand unchallenged, when the actual risk calculus — accounting for the cost of blocking the project, not just the cost of building it — runs the other way entirely.

Who Should Be Asking These Questions

School board members in Imperial County have a fiduciary responsibility to the children in their districts. County supervisors have a responsibility to manage the county’s fiscal position in the interests of all residents. Elected officials at every level have an obligation to weigh the full consequences of the policy positions they support — including the consequences of supporting or acquiescing to litigation that blocks major revenue sources.

The City of Imperial spent taxpayer money filing a lawsuit that the Superior Court called legally insufficient. It now proposes to spend more appealing that ruling. At no point in this process has anyone filing these legal actions been required to account for the cost their obstruction imposes on the school districts, the fire departments, and the other public services that would have received IVDC revenue.

That accounting needs to happen. And it needs to happen in public, where the residents who benefit from those services — and whose children sit in those classrooms — can make their own judgments about the people making decisions on their behalf.

The $72.5 Million Windfall Imperial County Is Being Told to Refuse

Counties don’t get many chances like this. A single construction project generates $72.5 million in one-time sales tax revenue — before the first server rack is installed, before the first employee badge is printed, before the first year of $28.75 million in recurring property tax is collected. Just from buying the steel, the concrete, the electrical infrastructure, and the cooling systems that a 950,000-square-foot data center campus requires.

For context: Imperial County’s entire annual general fund budget runs around $600 million, and a significant portion of that is state and federal pass-through funding the county does not control. A $72.5 million capital injection — money that the county can actually direct — is not a budget line item. It is a generational financial event.

What a County Can Do With $72 Million

Deferred infrastructure maintenance is the quiet crisis that every Imperial County department director knows and few outside observers understand. Roads that should have been repaved five years ago. Bridges that are flagged but not fixed. County buildings that are heated and cooled by systems installed in the Reagan administration. The maintenance backlog grows every year because the general fund is perpetually stretched between competing urgent needs and the capital projects keep getting deferred.

Seventy-two million dollars — applied strategically to the county’s infrastructure backlog — would not solve every problem. But it would make a dent that no other single source of funding currently on the table comes close to matching. Bond measures require voter approval and debt service. State infrastructure grants are competitive and conditional. Federal funds arrive with compliance requirements that consume significant administrative capacity.

A one-time sales tax payment requires none of those conditions. It arrives when the equipment is purchased. The county spends it according to its own priorities.

The Alternative Is Not Neutral

There is a common rhetorical move in the opposition’s argument that deserves examination: the implicit suggestion that blocking the project is a neutral act — that the county simply returns to its baseline if the data center doesn’t come. That framing is false.

The baseline is not neutral. The baseline is the infrastructure maintenance that doesn’t happen, the school repair that gets deferred another year, the reserve fund that doesn’t exist when the next fiscal emergency arrives. The $72.5 million is not a speculative future benefit. It is a concrete, calculable loss that accrues to the county’s public infrastructure every year the project is delayed or blocked.

The people making the argument for delay are not the ones who will drive across the potholes, teach in the aging classrooms, or manage the deferred maintenance on a county budget that never quite has enough. They have made a comfortable calculation that the costs of their opposition will fall on someone else.

This Money Would Come From the Developer, Not Residents

Sales tax on construction materials and equipment is not paid by Imperial County residents. It is paid by the developer — in this case, a $10 billion project purchasing hundreds of millions of dollars in equipment, much of it subject to California sales tax. The county collects revenue that was generated by a private party’s investment decision, without imposing any additional burden on the households and small businesses already contributing to the local tax base.

The opposition has not explained how refusing this revenue serves the public interest. They have not identified an alternative source. They have filed lawsuits, introduced legislation, and organized campaigns — all of which cost money that ultimately comes from somewhere — while the $72.5 million waits on the other side of a building permit.

At some point, the question is not whether this project is good for Imperial County. The question is who benefits from preventing it.

$28.75 Million a Year: What IVDC Tax Revenue Would Mean for Imperial County Schools and Public Safety

Abstract numbers don’t move people. $28.75 million in annual property tax revenue is an abstract number. So let’s make it concrete.

The average salary for a public school teacher in Imperial County is approximately $65,000 per year when benefits are included. At that rate, $28.75 million funds 442 teaching positions annually. The district currently operates with class sizes that routinely exceed state targets. Those 442 positions represent smaller classes, more support staff, and the kind of instructional continuity that determines whether a kid from Brawley or El Centro can compete for a college admission.

A fully equipped fire engine company — apparatus, staffing, training, and operations — costs roughly $2 million per year. The IVDC’s annual property tax contribution could fund 14 fire companies. In a county as geographically dispersed as Imperial, with response times that already strain state standards, that is not a marginal improvement. It is the difference between a structure fire and a neighborhood fire.

The Scale of What Is Being Refused

The $28.75 million figure is recurring — not a one-time construction windfall, but a permanent annual contribution to the county’s general fund. Across a ten-year horizon, that is nearly $290 million in public revenue that would flow to the schools, fire departments, sheriff’s office, libraries, and road maintenance crews that serve every resident of Imperial County.

The project also generates $72.5 million in one-time sales tax from construction materials and equipment — a capital injection that could retire infrastructure debt, repair decades of deferred maintenance, or seed an economic development reserve fund that the county has never been able to build.

These numbers come directly from the project’s economic impact analysis. They have not been contested by the opposition. What the opposition has not done — in any filing, any hearing, any press release — is identify where this revenue comes from if the project is blocked.

The Fiscal Reality the Opposition Ignores

Imperial County operates at the edge of fiscal solvency in normal years. The combination of high service demand, a limited commercial tax base, and a transient agricultural workforce creates chronic budget pressure that every county department director understands intimately. The county has deferred infrastructure maintenance, accepted chronic understaffing in public safety, and watched school facilities age past their useful lives because the tax base simply does not generate enough revenue.

The IVDC is not a silver bullet. But $28.75 million a year — in a county with a total assessed value that makes that number genuinely significant — is not a rounding error. It is a structural change in the county’s fiscal position, of a magnitude that elected officials should be fighting to secure, not fighting to prevent.

Who Pays When the Project Doesn’t Come?

When a school is underfunded, the parents who can afford to supplement it do. When a fire response is slow, the homeowners with adequate insurance absorb the loss. When a county can’t fill patrol officer positions, the residents in areas with the least political leverage feel it first.

The opposition to this project is not being organized by the families in the least-served corners of Imperial County. It is being organized by officials with city salaries and benefits, and by organizations funded by outside interests. The cost of their campaign is being paid by the people who will never see the teachers, the fire companies, or the road repairs that $28.75 million a year would have funded.

That is a choice. And it is being made by people who will not bear its consequences.

1,688 Union Jobs: What the Imperial Valley Data Center Means for Working Families

Imperial County has the highest unemployment rate in California. Not occasionally — consistently, year after year, decade after decade. The Valley’s farmworker families know the math of a seasonal economy by heart: work hard in the harvest, stretch it through the off-season, start over. For a generation of young adults, the calculation has led to one conclusion: leave.

That calculus is exactly what the Imperial Valley Data Center is positioned to change — and exactly why the fight over its approval matters beyond legal briefs and zoning codes.

The Numbers Behind the Jobs

The IVDC project has committed to 1,688 union construction positions across a multi-year build phase. These are not temporary service jobs or part-time retail positions. They are IBEW electrician slots, pipefitter certifications, heavy equipment operator licenses — skilled trades that pay wages a family can actually build on. A journeyman electrician in California earns between $45 and $65 per hour under prevailing wage agreements. A pipefitter on a union contract earns similar rates, with benefits and pension contributions stacked on top.

At those wages, 1,688 positions don’t just represent paychecks. They represent mortgage qualifications. They represent kids who don’t have to move to San Diego or Phoenix to find work. They represent the tax base that funds the schools, the fire stations, and the roads that everyone in the Valley uses.

Beyond construction, the facility will require approximately 100 permanent high-skill operational roles in network engineering, security, and facility management — positions that anchor families to the region rather than pulling them away from it.

What the Opposition Has Offered Instead

The City of Imperial filed a lawsuit to block the project. State Senator Steve Padilla introduced legislation to strip data centers of the legal protections that make this project viable. Environmental groups have lined up to demand reviews, studies, and hearings — each one designed to add years and millions to the developer’s costs until the project collapses under its own carrying costs.

Not one of these actors has proposed an alternative that puts a single union electrician to work in Imperial County. Not one has offered a competing economic development plan. The opposition’s contribution to Imperial County’s unemployment problem is the opposition itself.

The Trades Are Ready

Imperial County’s construction trades have been watching this project. The IBEW locals that would staff the electrical work on a 330-megawatt data center campus represent workers who live in the Valley, pay taxes in the Valley, and send their children to Valley schools. A project of this scale — nearly a million square feet of data hall on a 75-acre industrial site — is the kind of multi-year build that sustains a local trades economy across a full business cycle.

The workers who would fill these positions are not abstractions in an economic impact study. They are the people who attend the same churches as the city council members voting against them. They shop at the same grocery stores as the environmental advocates filing litigation against them. The disconnect between the opposition’s stated values and the material harm their obstruction causes to working families in this community deserves to be named plainly.

The Alternative Is Already Here

Imperial County does not need a study to understand what happens when large employers don’t come. The county has been living that study for generations. The data on chronic unemployment, outmigration of working-age adults, and underfunded public services is extensive and devastating.

The 1,688 jobs attached to the IVDC are not a promise. They are a commitment backed by a $10 billion capital investment — the largest single private investment in Imperial County’s history. The only thing standing between those jobs and the families who need them is a coordinated campaign by officials and organizations who will not be harmed by the unemployment that continues in their absence.

Imperial County chose this project through its legitimate land use approval process. The trades are ready. The land is zoned. The court has ruled. The only question left is whether the people blocking these jobs can be held accountable for the harm that obstruction causes.