Editorial Team
7 min read
Imperial Valley Computer Manufacturing is asking a California court to overturn Imperial Irrigation District’s denial of water for a proposed 330-megawatt data center. The developer says it can offset cooling demand by fallowing nearby farmland, but IID policy places conserved water under the district’s control and requires a separate review of industrial service.
Imperial Valley Computer Manufacturing, a California limited-liability company proposing a 330-megawatt data-center campus at Aten and Clark roads, has sued the Imperial Irrigation District after the district denied its industrial-water request. The company asks the court to undo the May 1 denial and recognize several claimed rights to obtain and transfer water. Its verified petition is a set of allegations and requested remedies, not a ruling that the project is entitled to service.
The central question is more specific than whether a data center should use Colorado River water. Sebastian Rucci, IVCM’s managing member and the lawyer representing the company, says a leased 160-acre farm next to the proposed 75-acre industrial site would be permanently fallowed, offsetting water used for server cooling. IID is the public district that delivers Colorado River water in the valley and also supplies electricity to more than 160,000 customers in the Imperial and Coachella valleys. That makes it the essential utility counterparty for a project that needs both water and a large new power load, as coverage of the suit explains.
Company-reported petition figures compare the requested annual cooling volume with the cited historical and 2025 farm apportionment. Source: Verified petition for writ of mandate and declaratory relief.
IVCM’s April application requested 880 acre-feet a year for construction and operations, describing that as about 750,000 gallons a day. The petition says that volume is comparable to a 160-acre farm and equals 0.0284% of IID’s stated 3.1-million-acre-foot annual entitlement. Those are the developer’s comparison bases; they do not establish that the project has a water supply or that a conservation credit will be granted.
The underlying figures are not interchangeable. The petition says the farm’s 10-year historical average was 803.7 acre-feet, while its attached 2025 apportionment notice lists 733.6 acre-feet for 141.4 farmable acres. IVCM says the gap to 880 acre-feet would be covered by water associated with the smaller parcels at the project site. The application separately describes an estimated 5.5 acre-feet per acre, or about 880 acre-feet, for the 160-acre parcel. Those are alternative measurements and forecasts in the company’s filing, not a completed water balance accepted by IID.
The public reporting uses a different unit: roughly 260 million gallons a year. That estimate and the 880-acre-foot request point to the same order of magnitude but are not identical conversions, so the petition’s 880-acre-foot request is the clearest figure for the litigation. Rucci has characterized the plan as having “zero” impact on the river; his account to local television says the company could also seek an assignment from another landowner. Neither route has been approved in the material available here.
IVCM’s strongest legal theory is that a landowner may assign an apportionment for use inside the district and that IID cannot favor agricultural users over industrial ones. Its petition also argues that the district’s clearinghouse should be open to qualified industrial users and that the rule limiting directed transfers to the same user category conflicts with state law.
But the attached IID rules give the district significant levers before an industrial project receives water. The Adaptive Water Supply Policy reserves up to 25,000 acre-feet a year for potential non-agricultural projects; the policy recorded a balance of 18,620 acre-feet in October 2025. It also says a developer may propose conservation, storage or another supply, but IID decides in its reasonable discretion how much credit, if any, to give that alternative against project demand.
That discretion is especially important to the fallowing argument. IID’s Temporary Land Conversion Fallowing Policy says the district calculates the conservation yield from its own historical data, subtracts the project’s water use, and has “total and absolute control” over resulting conserved water. When an apportionment is in effect, the policy says the conservation is automatically assigned to IID. The policy does not rule out an agreement with a landowner, but it does not automatically give a developer the saved water either.
This is why a physical reduction in farm irrigation is not, by itself, a legal offset for an industrial cooling load. IVCM must first prevail on its claims about service, transfer categories and fallowing credit, or reach an agreement the district accepts.
The petition presents the denial as a mistaken use of IID Regulation 21, which governs small-parcel service. It says IVCM applied for general industrial service and untreated water, rather than potable water. The company also alleges that its 5-acre and 46-acre parcels have independent service rights because of existing service or water-availability charges.
IID’s May 1 letter, reproduced in the court filing, gives a different account. It says the site is within the City of Imperial’s sphere of influence, a 14- to 16-inch city water pipeline is within 300 feet, and the North Date Canal Gate 44 connections have no water-use history for the referenced parcels and would be removed as part of a related pipeline project. The letter directs the city to seek supplemental water through IID’s non-agricultural policy if it serves the project.
That puts the court’s immediate task before the broader policy debate: whether the regulation and the stated service-connection facts lawfully supported the denial. It will also have to assess IVCM’s claim that the policy’s fees and industrial-service process are unlawfully discriminatory. The petition says a new industrial applicant could face $1,109.74 per acre-foot at the highest tier, including an $85 industrial water rate, a development fee and a reservation fee. That is the petitioner’s challenge to IID’s pricing structure, not an established project cost or a court finding.
Rucci and IVCM had publicly said the project would use reclaimed municipal wastewater instead of Colorado River water. IVCM now says it sought arrangements with Imperial and El Centro, offered to pay for wastewater-treatment upgrades and planned to send excess reclaimed water to the Salton Sea before the cities withdrew. The company says that left IID water as a last resort.
The record does not support describing those arrangements as completed. The City of El Centro’s December 2025 statement, included with the petition, said it had not entered an agreement, authorized reclaimed-water use or committed infrastructure for a data center. A later report on the dispute likewise describes the reclaimed-water effort as rejected and relays Rucci’s claims of 1,688 construction jobs, more than 100 permanent jobs and $2.95 billion in economic improvement over 30 years. Those projected benefits are attributed to an economic study cited by the developer; the study itself is not in the retained record.
The same reporting carries the countervailing concern raised by water-policy specialists and local advocates: taking farmland out of production can redistribute economic effects beyond the landowner. That does not settle the legal dispute, but it explains why an accounting of river withdrawals alone may not resolve the public question.
The pending case must first resolve whether IID had a lawful basis to deny this application and whether IVCM has the service, assignment, clearinghouse and fallowing rights it claims. A win for IVCM would still leave the project subject to the policy’s review and any required agreements; it would not establish a power commitment. IID’s materials in the filing say technical studies do not equal approval or a commitment to serve power, and that large loads must meet reliability, cost-recovery and infrastructure requirements.
If IVCM does not establish the claimed rights, the next evidence needed is a water arrangement that the relevant provider approves, with a defined conservation credit and service terms. Until one of those paths produces an enforceable agreement or court order, the proposal to turn fallowed farm water into data-center cooling remains a contested plan rather than an available supply.
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