McGuire Warns Marana Is Betting Its Water, Power and Future on an AI ‘House of Cards’

Jackie McGuire says Marana’s proposed massive data center is not economic development. It is a high-stakes gamble that could consume electricity, exploit loopholes in water law, drive away employers and leave the town with a concrete monument to a collapsed artificial intelligence boom.

McGuire, a Marana Town Council candidate and research analyst with experience in Wall Street, venture capital, and AI, said she entered the race after town leaders dismissed her warnings.

“I tried for months to get them to listen,” McGuire said. “They just wouldn’t listen,” she said on the Insight Arizona Podcast hosted by Michael Bryan and Andrew Sheesley.

She is scheduled to speak at the Democrats of Greater Tucson meeting next Monday, July 20, on Zoom.

Seven candidates are seeking four seats on the Marana Town Council in the July 21 election. McGuire, Susan Ritz, Julie Prince and Greg Johnsen are campaigning as a group under the name “Marana for the People.”

A Scale Marana Has Never Seen

McGuire said council members visited Phoenix-area data centers that use 5 to 25 megawatts of electricity, then treated those facilities as comparable to a Marana proposal she estimated at 1,100 to 1,500 megawatts.

The project would cover roughly 600 acres, with two buildings and infrastructure occupying a footprint she compared to Disneyland.

The immediate threat, she said, is electricity. Trico Electric Cooperative handles a peak demand of about 230 megawatts across its system, McGuire said, but could be expected to supply 750 megawatts to a single data center building.

Because Trico buys power on the open market, she argued that residents could ultimately pay far higher prices when demand outruns supply.

“High school economics class taught me that if supply can’t keep up with demand, prices go up,” she said.

McGuire also warned that rules allowing data centers to curtail grid use during peak demand could create a loophole that permits projects to open before sufficient generating capacity exists. Operators could then rely on natural gas turbines or other on-site generation subject to weaker emissions standards than power plants, she said.

Water Protections With Desert-Sized Loopholes

Town officials have emphasized that the facility would not use potable water for cooling. McGuire called that protection incomplete.

Air cooling in Arizona’s extreme heat requires far more electricity than water-assisted systems, she said, shifting water consumption from the site to power plants. Data centers must maintain humidity levels to prevent electrostatic discharge.

The site lies within the Cortaro-Marana Irrigation District, McGuire said, and the ordinance does not bar agricultural water. She pointed to an Arizona law that allows industrial users denied municipal service to obtain long-term well permits.

The result, she argued, is an ordinance focused more on fences, shrubs and building facades than safeguards for water, pollution, noise and emergency generation.

Economic Promise — or Expensive Dead End?

Town leaders projected $125 million in tax revenue from the center over 10 years, according to McGuire. She said that figure ignores the opportunity cost of dedicating prime employment land to a facility expected to create only a few hundred permanent jobs.

McGuire said an unidentified developer had been considering a $500 million project near the proposed Luckett Road data center campus but is now pulling out because the company does not want to operate next to a titanic computing facility.

Mixed-use development on the property could support 3,000 to 5,500 jobs. However, the developer considering the $500 million project nearby withdrew because it did not want to operate beside a data center.

“That’s the opportunity cost,” McGuire said. “What are we driving away because of this?”

“We need jobs,” she said. “We don’t need data centers that provide no jobs and drive everybody’s utility costs up.”

McGuire described AI’s buildout as a debt-fueled “house of cards,” financed through private equity, short-term borrowing and commercial mortgage-backed securities. If the market turns, she said, Marana may not owe the mortgage, but it could be left with an obsolete building, lower property values and services built around unreliable revenue.

From Zoning Hearing to Ballot Box

McGuire is challenging the rezoning in court. A hearing is scheduled Aug. 19. She said the dispute exposed a broader failure in Marana: growth approved before roads, public services and long-term financing are ready for it.

Marana’s reliance on construction taxes, impact fees and sales taxes forces the town to keep building, she said, while lower-income neighborhoods wait for investment and residents endure worsening traffic.

McGuire said she is not anti-growth or anti-AI. She uses AI professionally. She argues that residents, not developers and wealthy landowners, should decide how much desert, water and financial risk their community will sacrifice.

She said she and her husband considered leaving Marana after the project advanced. Instead, she chose to fight.

A town, McGuire said, is only as healthy as its most vulnerable residents. Marana’s choice now is whether to protect them — or gamble their future on promises that may evaporate long before the concrete does.