I RECENTLY RELOCATED to Tucson, Arizona, after a decade away. I always think of Tucson as a city where people come to dry out — dermatologically, emotionally, or otherwise. (If you’re unfamiliar, Tucson is famous for having the same moisture level as a baked tortilla chip). So when I heard that someone wanted to build a massive data center here, my first thought was, Ah, a tech company trying to prove it can make Tucson even drier than it already is.

It was calling its proposal Project Blue, a mysterious name that sounds like a Cold War operation, or a rejected Gatorade flavor. It was, in fact, a proposal for a massive data center, reportedly linked to Amazon, that would suck millions of gallons of water every year.

At first, I wasn’t entirely sure what a data center did. I imagined endless halls where tech bros in North Face vests whispered sweet nothings into blinking machines. It turns out they’re just enormous, glorified basements for the internet. They hold your unread emails, abandoned online shopping carts, and questionable search histories in air-conditioned perpetuity. And they’re increasingly powering the artificial intelligence (AI) that’s demanding more and more data centers. Beyond the huge amounts of energy these centers require, those blinking machines that hold all this “intelligence” get hot. Very hot. And to cool them, they need water — a lot of it….

Now, if there’s one thing I’ve learned about Tucson since moving back, aside from the fact that I shouldn’t eat the seafood, it’s that you don’t mess with the water. The water here is sacred. When word got out that this project might siphon hundreds of millions of gallons a year, the public did what concerned citizens of any city should do: They showed up in droves to yell at the government.

Environmental justice activist Karina Gonzalez shares this story of people power and corporate accountability in Arizona.

Photo by Donna Sutton

Bears can draw out “the best and the worst in people.” When Wendy Cowan came face-to-face with one, the bruin brought out the former in her, but the latter in others, resurfacing eternally vexing questions about coexisting with our wild neighbors. (Southlands)

The Hodgsons raise cattle, host elk hunts, and maintain a maze of dirt roads connecting the many oil wells on their 56,000-acre family ranch in northwest New Mexico. For decades, they sort of got along with the oil company they shared their land with. But now damage from its operations has become impossible to overlook. (Capital & Main)

Like their famous cousins in San Francisco, California, tropical parrots — imported from Mexico and South America for the pet trade — have escaped their Los Angeles suburban homes and are now squawking and hybridizing across the city. (The Guardian)

How an ostrich farm in rural British Columbia became ground zero for a conflict between anti-vaxxers, animal rights advocates, and government scientists trying to protect Canada from bird flu. (The Atlantic)