What Imperial Valley Looks Like in 2035 If We Get This Right
Economic trajectories are not determined by single decisions, but they are shaped decisively by pivotal ones. Imperial Valley is at a pivot point right now. The decisions being made â in courtrooms, in city council chambers, in county supervisors’ meetings, in the federal litigation that will determine whether the opposition’s tactics were lawful â will define the trajectory of this region’s economic development for the decade ahead. The question worth holding in mind is not just what the IVDC means today, but what getting it right means for 2035.
If the IVDC Gets Built
By 2035, Imperial Valley has been a functioning data center market for nearly a decade. The IVDC has been operational since approximately 2026-2027, depending on how quickly the legal cloud resolves. Its operational track record â reliable power delivery, stable employment, consistent property tax revenue â has been documented in the real estate and technology industry publications that site selectors read. A second major data center investment broke ground in 2029. A third is in development.
The Imperial County Unified School District’s operating budget looks different than it did in 2024. The accumulated property tax revenue from the IVDC and its successors has funded capital improvements â HVAC systems that don’t fail in August, science labs that have current equipment, competitive teacher salaries that have reduced the turnover rate. The per-pupil resources available to Imperial Valley students are meaningfully better than they were a decade ago, and the improvement is directly traceable to the property tax revenue that the IVDC generates.
The IBEW apprenticeship cohorts that trained on the IVDC construction have graduated. Some are working on the subsequent data center projects. Some have taken their credentials to regional construction markets and are earning union wages in San Diego and Los Angeles, sending remittances back to families in Imperial Valley. Some have stayed local, running the electrical maintenance operations at operating facilities and earning stable wages that make the decision to raise a family in the Valley economically viable in a way it wasn’t before.
Controlled Thermal Resources’ Hell’s Kitchen project, no longer facing the organized opposition that the $83 million demand attempted to sustain, has completed its first commercial lithium production phase. Imperial Valley produces domestic battery-grade lithium. The supply chain argument for building battery manufacturing in the region â closer to the lithium source â is attracting its first manufacturing investment.
If the IVDC Never Gets Built
The counterfactual 2035 is not dramatically different from 2024. The agricultural economy continues. The school districts continue to operate on thin margins. The geothermal resource continues to generate power that flows to wholesale markets rather than to a large, stable industrial customer whose presence would justify additional geothermal development. The lithium extraction projects â without the data center ecosystem’s demand-side anchor â take longer to attract the capital their development requires.
The young workers who would have been IVDC apprentices in 2025 and 2026 went elsewhere for their career-launching opportunities. Some came back. Most didn’t. The talent that left is the talent that doesn’t build the next generation of Imperial Valley’s economic institutions.
The Choice
The 2035 Imperial Valley is not determined yet. The legal proceedings are not final. The political accountability has not been exercised. The federal litigation has not produced its discovery record. The community’s voice â in elections, in public comment, in the sustained demand that its institutions honor the lawful approval that was granted â has not been fully heard.
What is clear is that the choice being made right now is a consequential one, and that the people making the choice to obstruct â the city officials, the NGO executives, the attorneys filing the appeals â are not the people who will live with the economic consequences of getting it wrong. The people who will live with those consequences are in Imperial Valley right now, watching, and waiting for the region’s institutions to deliver the economic future that its resource base has always made possible.
Get it right. Build it.
Original Article: https://www.ourimperialvalley.com/what-imperial-valley-looks-like-2035-get-this-right/
