The Pinal County Board of Supervisors Wednesday hosted a work session on data centers to learn more about how they may affect the county’s energy, water and economy.

The two-hour presentation brought representatives from Arizona State University, Arizona Public Service, Salt River Project and the Arizona Commerce Authority to give a crash course on how data centers operate.

“It was a good start … It was a good start to somewhere and I think we had some good information,” said Supervisor Rich Vitiello (R-Maricopa).

He helped coordinate the work session in an effort to help educate constituents — and his fellow supervisors — about data centers, particularly after a growing number of projects are proposed for Pinal County, including one on Porter Road immediately south of Maricopa and the Ak-Chin Indian Community.

“There are a lot of misconceptions of are they good, are they bad … To be honest, I don’t know a whole lot [about data centers] so I’m trying to learn more,” Vitiello said.

Supervisor Jeff Serdy (R-Apache Junction) said during the session the question he and other supervisors tend to hear most often is, “When is enough enough?”

“Life was good five years ago, life was good 10 years ago. How much better is our life going to be when we have a data center on every corner? That’s what the people don’t understand and don’t see,” he said.

The session didn’t answer that question but it offered an overview of data centers. Speakers highlighted how data centers are among the fastest growing industry in the world — largely driven by increased use of artificial intelligence and cloud storage — while technological improvements have reduced water and energy use.

Sarah Porter, Director of ASU’s Kyl Center for Water Policy, said their research showed “the advent of data centers has not to date caused an increase in the use of unreplenished groundwater.”

How much water a data center uses is tough to pin down, Porter said.

“The question about [data centers are] going to use so much electricity and it’s going to require a lot of water to generate is very hard to really narrow down because it’s very hard to trace where the electrons come from,” she said. Estimates vary depending on the energy source and how much water it uses, as well as cooling methods.

Meanwhile, Patrick Bogle, Director of Data Center Strategy at APS, said they’re committed to avoiding shifting energy costs to its residential customers.

“We are not going to serve more data center load in the APS service territory if we cannot do it reliably or affordably. We’re not going to put other customers at risk of having reliability issues in Arizona to serve more data centers,” he said.

Still, the session seemed to prompt more questions for supervisors, which Vitiello said is helping him better understand the issue, much like he did with battery storage facilities.

“Technology is changing just like battery storage has changed. It’s getting better and smaller and safer. That’s what I’m trying to learn about data centers,” he said.