The environmental case against the Imperial Valley Data Center rests on three claims: it will drain the Colorado River, it will crash the IID grid, and it deserves comprehensive environmental review before proceeding. Each of these claims has been examined in detail and found to be either factually inaccurate or legally unsupported. Taken together, they do not constitute an environmental argument against the project — they constitute an environmental argument that requires not looking at the project’s actual design.
The environmental case for the project has received far less public attention, because the project’s environmental benefits are not politically useful to the opposition and have therefore not been amplified. Here is what that case looks like.
Water: Net Positive for the Region
The IVDC proposes to use 100 percent recycled municipal wastewater — treated effluent that El Centro and Imperial currently manage as a disposal challenge. No Colorado River water. No competition with agricultural users. No draw on the potable supply that residential communities depend on.
The project also proposed to finance upgrades to El Centro’s and Imperial’s wastewater treatment infrastructure — improvements that would increase those plants’ capacity and quality of output regardless of the data center’s fate. The treated effluent in excess of the data center’s cooling needs would flow toward the Salton Sea, adding to the freshwater inflows that the lake desperately needs.
This is not a neutral environmental impact. It is a positive contribution to the region’s most pressing water management challenge. The opposition blocked the will-serve agreement that would have made it possible, and then continued arguing that the project’s water use is an environmental problem.
Grid: Additional Stability Capacity
The 862 MWh battery storage system stores power during off-peak periods and discharges during peak demand, performing the grid stabilization function that IID would otherwise have to procure from other sources. The dedicated 330-megawatt substation is built at the developer’s expense, adding transmission infrastructure to IID’s service territory without cost to ratepayers.
These are not incidental features. They represent a substantial private capital investment in grid infrastructure that benefits the entire IID service territory. The environmental and operational value of grid stabilization — reduced curtailment of renewable generation, smoother load curves, lower reserve requirements — is real and quantifiable. The project provides it as a design feature.
Land: Industrial Zoning in an Industrial Location
The project site is zoned I-2 Heavy Industrial and surrounded by industrial land uses. It is not adjacent to a residential neighborhood. It is not adjacent to sensitive habitat. It is not encroaching on agricultural land. It is an industrial project built on industrial land for which it is zoned, consistent with the land use plan that the county adopted through a legitimate public process.
The environmental review argument — that this project needs a full EIR despite its ministerial approval — is not driven by genuine concern about the project’s location or its compatibility with adjacent uses. It is driven by the desire to impose a process that would delay the project long enough for its financing to collapse. That is not an environmental protection strategy.
The Real Environmental Choice
If this data center is not built in Imperial Valley, the computing infrastructure it would have housed will be built somewhere else — in a state with a dirtier grid, with higher water consumption from potable sources, on land with fewer industrial precedents. The environmental profile of data center infrastructure does not disappear because Imperial Valley declines to host it. It relocates to a jurisdiction with fewer environmental safeguards.
Blocking the IVDC does not protect the environment. It exports the environmental impact to another location while denying Imperial Valley the economic benefits of hosting it. For a region that has been asked to absorb the environmental costs of agricultural production, water management infrastructure, and industrial activity for generations, being told to also forfeit the economic benefits of technology infrastructure in the name of environmental protection is not a reasonable ask.
The people of Imperial Valley understand the difference between environmental protection and environmental theater. They have been living with the consequences of the real thing for a long time.