The Pinal County Board of Supervisors has rejected a proposed 3,400-acre data center near Eloy, in the southern part of the state.

The move came after hundreds of rural protesters packed planning meetings and the board's final vote. The La Osa data center was not yet licensed to any tech company, and no tenant was named.

The land is owned by Phoenix-based developer Kuldi Verma, who owns the commercial real estate company called Vermaland.

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The La Osa data center was projected to consume nearly 196 million gallons of water a year. Antonio Ramirez, political and policy director for Rural Arizona Engagement, or RAZE, said activists pushed back on the data center given environmental and energy concerns, but also over the so-called closed loop water system that would be used to operate it.

"There's also water quality issues because the closed loop systems use PFAS, and if that water is injected back into the ground, groundwater system, then that could contaminate other people's water supply," Ramirez said.

The La Osa project proposed 11 data center buildings, a 500-megawatt natural gas plant and battery energy storage systems — enough infrastructure to generate 1 gigawatt of energy, which would power a large city.

Proponents have said the centers are necessary to keep up with growing energy and data demands, and have called their presence a matter of national defense.

RAZE Executive Director Natali Fierros said rural people are often the victims of corporate interests who fail to provide vital information to local officials in a timely manner, then watch as projects happen against their will.

"It can sometimes feel like the information that you get, you get a second too late, but the decision has already been made. In the case of La Osa, we were able to get ahead of it. We have somebody on our staff who attends these local meetings," Fierros said.

Despite developer concessions to scale back the project by 80%, and cap water consumption, Pinal County supervisors voted La Osa down 4-1.