Local residents are revolting against a $100 billion Utah data center project backed by Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary that would use more electricity than the entire state does in a year.
Commissioners in Box Elder County—a rural county of just under 60,000 residents in the northwest corner of Utah—unanimously voted to advance the 9-gigawatt project last week, even as a crowd of people gathered at the county fairgrounds to protest and demand more information.
Residents are concerned, among other things, about the facility’s 40,000-acre footprint—roughly the size of Washington, D.C.
The meeting grew unruly and one commissioner told the audience to “grow up” before the elected officials went to a private room to approve the project while attendees watched on a livestream, CNN reported.
Following the vote, a small group of residents filed an application seeking to put a referendum on the ballot to stop the project, the Salt Lake Tribune reported. The Box Elder County attorney is reviewing whether the application is viable. If so, the effort would still require more than 5,000 signatures from residents across the county to be put to a vote, the outlet reported.
A spokesperson for Box Elder County said in a statement that the referendum application was received last week, and the county now has 20 days to review it.
“If the referendum moves forward successfully, it would void the consent and agreement approved by the Box Elder County Commissioners — not necessarily stop the project itself,” the statement said. “That means the project could possibly still move forward, but without the concessions, conditions, and protections negotiated by the County. The County Commissioners worked tirelessly to secure the best possible outcome for the County, and a successful referendum could undo those negotiated protections and agreements.”
A spokesperson for O’Leary did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
O’Leary, a Canadian businessman known for his role as an investor on Shark Tank, has argued the Utah project will create thousands of local jobs and that it is important for national security and America’s efforts to beat China in the AI race. He suggested in a Fox News interview that opposition to the project may be driven by online misinformation from China.
“At the end of the day, who would want us to stop building our electrical grid? Who would want to stop us from having compute capacity to develop AI? Which adversary would want that? There’s only one: it’s China,” O’Leary said in the interview.
In a social media post following the vote last week, he also claimed without evidence that more than 90% of the people protesting the project were paid to protest and were bussed in, including from outside the state. Reporting by the Salt Lake Tribune disputes this claim.
The Utah data center, known as the “Stratos Project” or “Wonder Valley,” is being developed through West GenCo, which formed a joint venture with O’Leary Digital Limited in February to advance the effort. In Alberta, Canada, O’Leary is backing another $70 billion data center under the name “Wonder Valley” that claims it will deliver 7.5 gigawatts of computing power when complete.
The Utah controversy is part of a broader national backlash against data center development. In Festus, Mo., voters last month replaced every incumbent up for reelection after the town council approved a $6 billion data center project. Also last month, Maine lawmakers passed an 18-month ban on data center development before Gov. Janet Mills vetoed it.
Yet, in some cases, local opposition has made little difference even when elected officials vote against data center projects.
In Saline Township, Mich., both the planning commission and the township board voted against a data center that is part of OpenAI and Oracle’s Stargate initiative. But the project started construction anyway after the township settled a lawsuit brought by Related Digital, the developer, and the data center site’s landowners, Fortune reported.
The Utah data center would require more than double the electricity the state currently consumes in a year, CNN reported, although O’Leary has said the project will avoid straining the local electric grid by generating its own power with natural gas.
Still, residents also worry the heat and emissions generated by the campus could worsen climate change’s effects locally. And the water needed to cool the facility could further strain the nearby Great Salt Lake, they claim, even as the body of water continues to shrink. Its water level has fallen 22 feet since 1986, partly due to human activity, according to NASA.
Their water concerns may be well founded. A 615-acre data center in Fayetteville, Ga. allegedly drained 30 million gallons of water without paying for it, initially, and contributed to low water pressure for the town located some 20 miles south of Atlanta, Politico reported.
