As communities in the Coachella Valley grapple with proposals for AI data centers, a similar battle unfolding in neighboring Imperial County offers a glimpse at what could come next.
Reporter Kori Suzuki of our California Newsroom partner KPBS speaks about why one proposed facility has sparked a legal fight, grassroots organizing and broader questions about who stands to benefit from California's AI boom.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Anthony Victoria: Tell us about Imperial Valley Computer Manufacturing. Why do they want to build a large data center?
Kori Suzuki: Well, Imperial Valley Computer Manufacturing is this pretty brand new company, and the chief executive officer of the company is a lawyer and businessman named Sebastian Rucci. He is based in Huntington Beach.
What this project is, I think, in many ways, is someone looking to this nationwide infrastructure boom that we're seeing across the country of these large data centers to support the growing AI industry, and a private developer looking at that growth and seeing an economic opportunity.
Rucci says that he likes an underdog story. He says that he wants to bring jobs and tax revenue to Imperial County, which is a really poor corner of the state where it's hard to find a job and hard to find steady employment.
But the company has also said in court filings that it stands to make billions of dollars leasing this facility out to one of the four major AI companies: Google, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft.
Anthony Victoria: Why specifically is there tension between IVCM and the Imperial Irrigation District?
Kori Suzuki: IVCM approached the Imperial Irrigation District back in late 2024 and early 2025 to do some studies about how a facility like this could work.
The Imperial Irrigation District, or IID, is the regional power and water utility in both Imperial County and parts of the Coachella Valley, which I know is more of your coverage area. IID is a public agency that provides both energy and water to many communities in these regions. It oversees the generations-old water rights of the Imperial Valley, and it also provides electricity to more than 100,000 customers in both regions.
This is one of the government bodies that IVCM needs permission from to get this project up and running. They need the agency to provide electricity and potentially water as well.
I should say here that this data center they're proposing would be a truly massive project. It would be about 950,000 square feet, could use close to twice as much power as the entire county of Imperial used in 2024, and a large amount of water, too.
IID originally did some studies for the company, and they found that the project could work. But as the months went on, some IID officials started raising concerns, and IVCM has accused IID of treating them unfairly.
Just this month, the developer sued the irrigation district over water for the project, so this dispute has continued to intensify and is now moving to the courts.
Anthony Victoria: How are residents mobilizing and organizing specifically in Imperial? I know I spoke to organizers in Coachella, and one organizer actually surprised me by saying they've learned a lot from what's happening in Imperial.
Kori Suzuki: Yeah, I think that's really interesting. Since November, we've seen a really strong coalition of residents, environmental advocates and government transparency advocates come together around pushing back against this data center project.
It really started with one city in the Imperial Valley, the city of Imperial. Local officials there were the first to begin raising awareness that the project was moving forward.
But for the most part, a lot of this has really been driven by neighbors and residents in the city, people coming from Calexico, from Calipatria, from all across the valley—people who have never been involved in this kind of political organizing before.
They're using some really sophisticated tools. People are attending public meetings, doing research, filing public records requests and using social media in really effective ways to raise awareness, raise questions and really force elected officials in the area to confront the questions they have.
They've launched recall efforts as well and have been developing ballot measures.
I think there are a lot of people who have become very engaged and are using a lot of these different tactics to hold their local elected officials accountable in a strong way.
Anthony Victoria: Well, Kori, thank you so much. Thank you again for your reporting.
Kori Suzuki: Thank you, Anthony. I really appreciate your time.
