The race to build the infrastructure that powers artificial intelligence and cloud computing is colliding with the fragile ecosystems and working-class neighborhoods of Southern California. In the Imperial Valley and the San Gabriel Valley, residents are watching speculative data center projects move faster than environmental review, water planning, or basic public health safeguards. What looks like a digital gold rush from afar is starting to feel, on the ground, like a new kind of sacrifice zone.
In the desert along California’s Mexican border and in drought-stricken Monterey Park, the same pattern keeps surfacing: developers promise jobs and tax revenue, while communities brace for diesel exhaust, soaring power demand, and competition for scarce water. I see a widening gap between the global tech economy that depends on these server farms and the local people who are being asked to live next to them.
Imperial County’s $15 billion bet on the cloud
In the far southeast corner of California, developers are converging on a rural desert community with plans for more than $15 billion in data center construction, turning the Imperial Valley into a test case for how much environmental risk the state is willing to absorb for digital growth. The projects are clustered near the Mexican border and the shrinking Salton Sea, where residents already live with dust, heat, and some of the state’s worst air quality. Local leaders and residents are now weighing whether the promise of high-tech investment justifies adding another heavy industrial layer to a region that has long been treated as expendable.
One of the most ambitious proposals is a massive complex in Imperial County that critics say is advancing without adequate environmental review, even as the region struggles with the health impacts of the drying inland lake. Reporting on the boom describes the area around the Salton Sea as a potential sacrifice zone, where the cumulative burden of dust, heat, and new industrial power demand could fall on low-income residents with limited political clout. That framing captures the stakes: the same infrastructure that keeps streaming services and AI tools running could deepen environmental injustice in a county that already ranks among the poorest in the state.
Promises of jobs, questions about who benefits
Developers and their allies are pitching the Imperial County projects as a once-in-a-generation economic opportunity, especially for a majority-Latino region that has struggled with chronic unemployment. Rucci and his supporters have argued that a large data center complex would bring construction work, permanent technical jobs, and new tax revenue to a county where good-paying positions are hard to come by. They present the buildout as a way to plug Imperial Valley into the global digital economy instead of leaving it dependent on low-wage agricultural labor.
Yet the details of that pitch are still thin, and residents are being asked to take a lot on faith. Reporting on the plan notes that Rucci and his backers have not provided clear numbers on long-term employment or binding guarantees on local hiring, even as they seek to move ahead without a full environmental review. The gap between the sweeping promises and the sparse documentation has fueled skepticism that the benefits will flow to existing residents rather than outside investors. That tension is at the heart of the debate over Rucci and his supporters’ vision for the desert.
Local governments and neighbors push back
Imperial County’s own cities are not united behind the rush to approve these projects. The City of Imperial has formally challenged the county’s approval of a major data center proposal, warning that the record already shows the project has the potential to create significant impacts on air quality, water, noise, and public health. In a detailed section labeled Potential Impacts of, the city argues that the project could trigger exactly the kind of long-term environmental effects that state law is supposed to scrutinize before shovels hit the ground. That challenge underscores a basic point: even within the region, there is deep unease about locking in decades of new industrial load without a full accounting of the costs.
Residents are voicing their own concerns in public meetings and protests. Earlier this year, Just last Saturday, dozens of people in an unincorporated part of Imperial County gathered to oppose potential noise pollution and other impacts from a proposed facility, highlighting how quickly the debate has moved from abstract planning to neighborhood-level anxiety. Their objections are backed by a poll that found widespread worry about water use, air quality, and the strain on local infrastructure if multiple data centers are approved. Those concerns have been amplified by investigative reporting that found key details about the projects, including firm commitments on jobs and mitigation, are hard to come by in the public record, a gap that has fueled distrust of the Imperial County approval process.
Monterey Park’s fight over diesel, heat, and water
Hundreds of miles from the Salton Sea, residents of Monterey Park in the San Gabriel Valley are waging their own battle over where the digital economy should live. A developer called HMC StratCap wants to demolish a two-story office building at 1977 Saturn Street and replace it with a dense, power-hungry data center, promising more than 1,000 temporary construction jobs and millions in local revenue. The site sits in a drought-stricken neighborhood that is largely Latino and Asian, surrounded by homes, schools, and small businesses that already cope with extreme heat and limited green space.
Neighbors have zeroed in on the project’s reliance on diesel backup generators, which would kick on during power outages and testing cycles. One local advocate warned that these generators emit particulate matter and nitrogen oxides that are extremely harmful for public health, especially in communities with high asthma rates. Residents fear that the pollution burden will be passed on to them while the benefits flow elsewhere, a concern echoed by environmental groups that have joined the fight. Their arguments have helped turn a local zoning dispute into a broader referendum on whether dense urban neighborhoods should absorb the health risks of Right now proposed data centers.
Grassroots organizing reshapes the debate
What stands out in Monterey Park is how quickly residents organized to challenge the project’s basic assumptions. Community members packed public hearings, circulated petitions, and pressed city officials to scrutinize the environmental review, arguing that the developer’s rosy projections did not account for the cumulative impacts of noise, heat, and diesel exhaust. Their campaign has already forced changes, including new conditions on how the facility would operate and commitments to additional community benefits. In the process, they have shifted the local conversation from whether the project is allowed under zoning rules to whether it is compatible with long-term public health.
The developer, HMC StratCap, has tried to answer those concerns with a package of promises, saying the Saturn Street facility would generate more than 1,000 construction jobs and significant tax revenue, and agreeing to fund local programs as part of the deal. Residents counter that no amount of money can offset the risks of clustering industrial-scale power use and diesel emissions in a neighborhood that is already vulnerable to climate stress. Their skepticism has resonated beyond the city’s borders, with civil rights groups highlighting Monterey Park as an example of how data center siting can reinforce environmental inequities in Monterey Park and other communities of color.
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