California’s largest data center may be built in their backyard. Not if they can stop it.

A flimsy orange flyer on her doorknob – that’s how Fernanda Camarillo found out that her family home could soon be in the shadows of the largest data center in California.

She had come home from a day’s work as a substitute teacher and could have easily thrown the paper away without looking.

“I thought it was maybe someone advertising their car wash or any sort of services that they do,” she said. 

But time spent going door-to-door as an intern for a congressional campaign made her look. She opened the flyer, spied a map and saw plans for the empty lot two houses down from her own.

“It was a shocker,” she said.

The flyer was the City of Imperial’s effort to inform residents about plans for a nearly 1 million square foot, 330-megawatt hyperscale data center proposed on unincorporated Imperial County land near her neighborhood without environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act.

Huntington Beach lawyer Sebastian Rucci had secured the land, most of it zoned industrial, contending CEQA’s enhanced scrutiny didn’t apply because of how it is zoned. The claim is being challenged in court by Imperial officials who refused to support the project on city-owned land without CEQA review.

It’s why Rucci decided to move the project close by to county land. That prompted the city to begin informing residents of what could be coming their way.

Supporters of the project include Laborers’ International Union of America Local 1184 and the Imperial Valley Economic Development Corp., an organization that facilitates development in the valley by serving as a liaison between private enterprise and local government. The organization’s president and CEO is Timothy Kelley, cousin to Imperial County Supervisor Ryan Kelley.

Timothy Kelley said the data center project would bring economic benefits to the community and that he has working relationships with all board members. 

“One of the reasons that we’re able to get things done here in Imperial County is because we all know each other,” he said.

But thousands of community members are furious about the county’s process. Many of them never pictured themselves as protesters, but they see the project as irresponsible development. 

They say they are compelled to devote time outside of work and family to take a collective stand against a project they feel could set the wrong precedent for massive data center development in Imperial County. The valley has a long history of local projects that overpromised and underdelivered on benefits, and understated potential impacts.

This time, these residents say they will not accept that quietly. Many feel they are setting a new tone in Imperial County.

Bryan Vega, an Imperial Valley resident involved in workforce and community development, said that in the past, industries such as solar rolled into the valley with little resistance. However in recent years, especially since the pandemic ended and many residents came back to the valley, perspectives have changed.

“Some of the things that would otherwise fly in Imperial County are no longer flying,” Vega said.

Other residents agree.

“I don’t think they were prepared for residents to say, “Hey, wait a minute, we’re tired of this narrative,’” said Gina Snow, who lives a few houses down from the proposed site.

“We’re not saying that it doesn’t have opportunities,” she said. “Let’s have a discussion regarding what those opportunities are, but we’re not going to ignore the impacts.”

Tuesday, supporters and opponents of the project crowded into the Imperial County supervisors’ building. After five hours, the supervisors voted 4-1, with Martha Cardenas-Singh voting no, to move the project along by vacating a public right-of-way on a road on the site and approving a lot merger across 75 acres.

The vote leaves permitting issues to resolve before construction and also leaves residents exploring other possible ways to express their disapproval. 

Meanwhile, the debate on regulating data center development is escalating among officials at the federal, state and local level who must balance community concerns against computing and artificial intelligence demands.

The pushback has brought people together across party lines.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, have teamed up on a bill that would require data centers to find their own independent power sources. California state Sen. Steve Padilla is proposing legislation that would require data centers to be subject to CEQA. 

Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-New York, are calling for a federal moratorium on data center development. In California, the Monterey Park City Council enacted a temporary moratorium and voters will consider a permanent ban in June.

Many Imperial Valley residents are calling on the county officials to do the same – halt data center development in the valley and create more thorough protocols on how to regulate massive projects and mitigate potential impacts on residents. 

“All across this country, municipalities are wising up to the dangers of these campuses and placing moratoriums and bans on them,” Chris Scurries said at a March 26 public hearing on the project.

“It’s time for Imperial County to take the torch and do the same.”

Last week, a group of residents filed paperwork to begin gathering signatures for a potential November 2026 ballot initiative that would block data centers in Imperial County altogether. They’re calling it the “Imperial County Data Center Prohibition Act.”

Rucci dismissed the effort, saying it would not impact his project.

Speaker Jake Tison also announced in public comment at Tuesday’s board meeting that residents have launched a recall petition against Chairwoman Peggy Price.

‘Activists by accident’ 

“This is the house where we want to live for the rest of our lives,” said Francisco Leal, looking out a window in his home. Where his fence ends, the property line of the proposed data center begins.

“Everything that we’ve done to this house, I’ve done it myself,” he said. “You know, like the patio, the tile floor, I did it myself. The kitchen, we redid the kitchen, I did it myself.”

When he found out about Imperial Valley Computer Manufacturing’s data center project from a City of Imperial Facebook post the day before Thanksgiving, he stopped painting and preparing to plant vegetables in a greenhouse in his yard, unmotivated, because, “What if I need to sell, right?”

Concerned, he began meeting with others in the neighborhood, and soon he was going door to door to spread the news and help organize a community response.

Within days, a movement galvanized, and by the time the Imperial County Planning Commission was to decide on a lot merger for the data center in December, community members filled the chambers. A vote in favor of the merger failed. That was appealed to the supervisors.

“We just became activists by accident,” Leal said.

“We realized that we were not invited to a race, right? But we had to participate anyway.”

That’s how Not In My Back Yard Imperial formed. The group has gathered more than 3,400 signatures on a petition to block the project.

The key issue for residents was that the county was moving along a project of enormous size and scope on land adjacent to hundreds of homes, and within a mile of schools and parks, without enough public input or environmental review.

The developer contends that data centers are included in the industrial category the land is zoned for, and that the project should be approved ministerially or by right.

A member of Not In My Back Yard Imperial received emails from a public records request that say the Imperial County Air Pollution Control District once considered the project to be discretionary, meaning it would trigger a CEQA review process.

In an Aug. 14 email with a district senior engineer, Rucci asked for a clarification on “the basis of your determination that our project is discretionary.” Rucci said he disagreed with the determination, had evidence to show the review should be ministerial and asked for a meeting with the engineer.

When inewsource asked district officials about this, Bari Bean, Imperial County’s assistant county executive officer, replied that no one from the county would comment  beyond information that has already been publicly released, citing the county’s practice to decline interview requests related to ongoing litigation.

Lawsuits followed when Rucci moved the project to county land.

The city of Imperial has sued Imperial County, challenging ministerial approval of the massive project, the first hyperscale data center in the county. A judge dismissed the city’s petition  but allowed it to file a second amended petition, which it did. Rucci sued the city for obstructing his project, naming councilmembers and others individually. 

He sued KPBS for defamation, alleging “character assassination,” for a report it published on his project in January. KPBS has declined comment. He sued an Imperial County resident and a local environmental organization and its director for defamation this month. The resident disputed the suit and the organization called it meritless in a statement. 

Tensions escalated at the March Board of Supervisors meeting when dozens of residents chanting “Fuera!” – “Get out!” in Spanish – followed Rucci through the parking lot as he got into a car and left.

Residents have also been researching impacts and potential ways to slow the project down. They say Imperial County officials could take the same path as the city of Imperial, setting their own terms for the project and requiring a more robust public process. 

The residents also have identified a section of the planning and land use provisions of the state government code they hope could lead to a data center moratorium.

The law allows a legislative body such as the Board of Supervisors to adopt an urgency measure to pause a project if it poses a potential public health, welfare and safety risk. Rucci says it doesn’t, but residents have raised concerns about noise, potential malfunctions and emissions at multiple public meetings before Imperial County officials.

Scurries, whose family lives near the proposed site, is one of the neighbors trying to find ways to hold the project to a higher level of review than Rucci and county officials say is necessary.

When Scurries isn’t teaching music at high school, leading band practice in the after hours or taking care of his 2-year-old, he is scouring zoning regulations and searching for information on the AI hyperscale data center boom. He’s always thinking of the project.

“It’s the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning,” Scurries said. “It’s the last thing I’m thinking of before I fall asleep at night.”

He has even written a song about it. 

The chorus is “Futile as it may be some day you’ll see. In Heaven, you can’t build data centers.”

‘Keeps us up at night’

Imperial Councilmember Katherine Burnworth sees the project as it stands as “a step backwards” for the American dream because a burgeoning residential community that sprung up in the desert would now be dominated by a data center of unprecedented scope in California.

It would be situated just outside the fastest growing city in the county, according to state Department of Finance estimates. Since 2010, the city’s population has risen from 14,788 to 22,866 – an increase of 55%.

The growth has fed a change in the makeup of the city to a more suburban, residential lifestyle. The city’s median household income of more than $90,000 is well above the county’s $58,000 median household income. 

Michelle Hollinger, the vice president of marketing for Victoria Homes, the residential area lining the property, said her family company has developed nearly 4,000 homes in the valley over 35 years and is building new homes near the proposed data center. A K-8 school is also under construction now.

“This is people’s lives that we’re talking about,” she said. “It’s the homeowner’s legacy.”

Rucci said data centers are specifically allowed in the county’s industrial zone, but Hollinger said that data centers were not included in industrial zoning when many homeowners purchased their homes. A lawsuit city officials have filed against the county says that the term “data centers” was added to the county code in 2016 and that the first 300-megawatt data centers did not come into being until 2022.

“So, the data center identified in the County could not have meant to include the Hyperscale AI Data Center Project,” the suit says.

“To illustrate the differences, a traditional data center can be considered akin to a local grocery store: it is built to serve a specific neighborhood, and stocks a limited variety of goods,” the suit also says. “In contrast, a hyperscale AI data center resembles a colossal, automated shipping port: it is designed for global trade and unlimited goods.”

The suit outlines concerns shared by residents that the project will “introduce new intrusive visual elements that can have negative effects on the neighborhood characteristics and property values, in conjunction with noise (generators, cooling), visual blight (large concrete buildings), light pollution, increased traffic, heavy water/power usage impacting resources, and potential emissions, making homes in the area less desirable.”

A recent study by a dozen scientists from multiple countries analyzing two decades of satellite data showed that land surface temperatures near thousands of AI data centers have increased up to 2 degrees Celsius – 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit – on average since their inception. The study was published last month and has not yet been peer reviewed.

Imperial County temperatures have been reaching record numbers in recent years. 

Still, Hollinger said that with a different kind of review and placement a hyperscale AI data center could be a community asset.

“You definitely shouldn’t put it next to residents,” she said. “It’s common sense, right?”

The developer has a plan to use treated reclaimed water on the site, but in Southern California, water is increasingly a contested commodity. Currently, states are fighting over Colorado River water as Lake Powell, a critical reservoir on the river, is heading toward a record low. 

The Imperial Irrigation District, the county’s main water utility, has been giving up some of its water supply in return for federal funds, a deal meant to help conserve Colorado River water.

And, as the Salton Sea recedes in the area, a growing amount of toxic dust continues to plague communities throughout a valley that already has some of the state’s highest asthma rates and worst air quality. Rucci’s project would result in less water flowing into the Salton Sea but it would be treated at a higher level.

Rita Guillen, who lives near the proposed data center, is scared for her four daughters, one who has asthma, another who has a sensory disorder, making her sensitive to noise.

Guillen says that prolonged noises give her daughter anxiety, causing her to shake her hands and cover her ears.

“I don’t know how this is gonna affect her, and unfortunately, we don’t have the luxury to just get up and move,” Guillen said.

She said she is not against the development but she has questions and wants a more formal environmental review with a chance for greater public input to allow residents to receive and process information that would help them decide on their families’ futures. 

“The unknown is what keeps us up at night.”

Imperial County politics

When Imperial Valley Computer Manufacturing filed its lawsuit against Imperial city officials, Carlos Duran helped Rucci serve one of the defendants.

Duran has been promoting Rucci’s data center project through his Facebook page Imperial County Magazine. He has also described himself as a media contact and a “community information representative” of Rucci’s company on his personal Substack.

Now he is challenging incumbent Alex Cardenas in a June 2 election in which the winner will represent District 1 for the influential Imperial Irrigation District. The IID has not yet committed to powering the data center. Duran moved from Calexico into the district, where he now lives in an Airbnb.

Imperial Valley Computer Manufacturing has provided between $10,000 and $100,000 of income to Duran for media communications, according to a statement of economic interests he is required to file as a candidate. Rucci’s limited liability company has also donated $10,000 to Duran’s IID campaign, according to financial disclosures.

Asked about his association with Duran, Rucci said, “All contributions were fully disclosed. Supporting a candidate is a protected First Amendment activity.”

Duran said, if elected, he would recuse himself from “participating in anything that has to do with Sebastian and this project.” 

The data center dispute caught the attention of state Sen. Steve Padilla, who has been pressuring Imperial County to answer questions about the project.

Ultimately, Padilla said what is important to him is that constituents get “dispassionate” and “independent” assessments of the project and answers to questions about its community impact. 

That’s one reason Padilla introduced two bills this year to regulate data centers. One would require data center customers to pay a tariff to protect residents from absorbing costs, the other would require data centers to abide by CEQA while giving developers a path to fast track projects if they meet certain environmental and public safety criteria.

Regulation is needed, Padilla said, to give both residents and developers clearer guidelines to avoid the kinds of conflicts taking place in Imperial Valley.

“We’re not sacrificing environmental review, but we’re giving applicants and developers of these data centers much lower risk of protracted litigation and timelines,” Padilla said.

Another data center project?

Rucci’s broader data center ambitions extend beyond Imperial County to Quechan sovereign land, where he is interested in pursuing a smaller data center project.

He said he is working with the tribe on a project that would be situated on tribal lands bordering Imperial County. Tribe President Jonathan Koteen confirmed preliminary discussions are underway.

“For the Quechan community, this presents both an opportunity and a responsibility,” Koteen said. “There is potential for economic development, job creation, and long-term revenue – but it must be balanced with careful stewardship of our land, water, and cultural resources.”

In recent months, a lack of transparency by tribal government has angered some tribal members to the point that they launched a recall of Koteen. 

“They may be making deals that they don’t know could cause a lot of problems,” said Preston Arrow-weed, a Quechan elder.

Koteen said tribal members’ concerns about data centers and transparency are valid, and he respects members exercising their right to a recall.

“At the same,” he added, “early-stage discussions – especially those involving negotiations or sensitive business information – often require a level of confidentiality to protect the Tribe’s interests.”

Preston Arrow-weed acknowledged that any deal would involve a trade-off. 

“Whenever they offer you something, you take it,” he said. “What do you lose for doing that? You know, I do wonder what they’re going to lose when they put this data center.” 

Tuesday’s contentious meeting

Similar concerns took center stage Tuesday at the Imperial County supervisors’ meeting, where nearly 50 speakers weighed in on how the data center could impact the community.

Before Tuesday’s meeting, lawyers for Imperial had tried to get an injunction barring the lot merger vote by the county, but they lost. Rucci accused the city of “gamesmanship” and said city leaders have ignored his efforts to settle the dispute, including a proposed agreement that covered issues such as noise, dust, lighting and a complaint process.

Tuesday morning, members of Laborers’ International Union of America Local 1184 and other non-union supporters dressed in orange vests showed up several hours early to the meeting, occupying a majority of the hall and leaving dozens of residents outside the building. 

More than two hours into the meeting, supervisors eventually opened up an overflow room following community complaints that elderly residents were stranded in the sun.

Mike Dea, the union’s business manager whose office is based in Riverside, spoke in favor of the project. 

“I’ve seen what happens when work disappears,” he said. “People leave, families struggle, communities fall behind.”

Residents noted that many union members live outside the county and raised other concerns as well.

Scurries and others complained that Rucci, and the Board of Supervisors, were “piecemealing” the project – serially approving individual steps in the process in order to avoid triggering a CEQA review.

“That’s not a technicality,” one speaker said. “That’s a strategy.”

A lot merger combines several contiguous plots of land into one. At the meeting, residents opposed to the project said approving the merger was far more consequential than simply redrawing lines on a land map.

Alene Taber, counsel for the city of Imperial, echoed that point and added that a section of the land is under a state covenant for having soil contaminated with industrial chemicals, meaning grading “has the potential to create airborne, toxic clouds of dust that are going to be right next to these homes.”

“A yes vote makes the community all the closer to the bulldozers pulling up next to our homes,” Scurries said.

“For us, this is not abstract,” said Claudia Contreras-Harrington. “We are asking you to protect our community.”

The county brought in at least a dozen extra law enforcement officers. Several residents were accused of interrupting the meeting and removed from the room.

“You don’t need four people to throw me out!” one resident said as she was escorted out by the authorities.

A Sheriff’s Office official said one resident was arrested on charges including disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

As evening fell, everyone knew the debate over the data center would continue.

“These people were never in my life before,” Scurries said of his neighbors, “and now we’re talking to each other every day.”