The artificial intelligence boom is turning water-starved desert land into a goldmine for data center projects — though one developer looking to build near the U.S.-Mexico border is facing pushback from both residents and officials.
Sebastian Rucci, a 65-year-old land-use lawyer and developer with a history that includes a former Ohio strip club and a federally investigated addiction-treatment center, is pushing to build a 950,000-square-foot data center in California’s Imperial Valley, the Wall Street Journal reported. The $10 billion project would consume 330 megawatts of power and is now at the center of a growing fight over who gets to build the infrastructure powering the artificial intelligence economy.
Rucci’s project has preliminary approvals but faces opposition from residents, environmentalists, utility officials and state lawmakers. Rucci has so far sued government officials, the local utility, an activist and a public television station over the dispute. Several of those legal claims have recently been dismissed.
The project initially won support from Imperial County officials, who touted an estimated $28 million in annual tax revenue and 1,600 construction jobs in one of California’s poorer regions. But last month, the Imperial County Board of Supervisors voted for a 45-day freeze on data projects, which they extended to a year. Rucci has sued over that moratorium as well, telling the Journal, “Do I look like a guy that’s going away?”
In May, the Imperial Irrigation District rejected Rucci’s plan to buy farmland, leave it fallow and use its Colorado River water allocation to cool the facility.
Rucci said he has invested $5 million of his own money and learned about the data center business through YouTube, phone calls and tours of facilities in Silicon Valley.
“I knew there was demand, and I knew my skill set made me the absolutely right person to get this completed,” Rucci told the Journal. Prior to joining the data center push in Southern California, Rucci was charged, though not convicted, of money laundering and promoting prostitution in relation to his former Ohio cabaret; he ended up serving 30 days in jail for selling beer without a license. Rucci was not charged in the rehab center case, which prosecutors said focused on Medicaid billing issues.
State Sen. Steve Padilla, who represents the area in state government, chimed in on the matter and has sought to broadly regulate data center building with a series of bills aimed to restrict construction and pass the cost of energy upgrades on to developers.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Padilla said. “I’ve never seen someone, a developer who has that sort of experience and perspective and approach.” For his part, Rucci called Padilla a “buffoon,” and was adamant about moving forward with the project after sinking $5 million of his money into it.
“Just give me my damn data center,” he told the Journal.
McKinsey predicts $7 trillion in global data center spending by 2030. Last month, the Los Angeles-area city of Monterey Park just became the first city in the country to permanently ban data centers outright after voters approved a measure keeping them out of the municipality.
— Chris Malone Méndez
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