{"id":641137,"date":"2026-05-13T19:03:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T19:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/641137\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T19:03:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T19:03:09","slug":"irresponsible-backlash-as-utah-approves-datacenter-twice-the-size-of-manhattan-utah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/641137\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Irresponsible\u2019: backlash as Utah approves datacenter twice the size of Manhattan | Utah"},"content":{"rendered":"

A plan to create one of the world\u2019s largest datacenters, a gargantuan project spanning an area more than twice the size of Manhattan, has provoked a furious public backlash in Utah<\/a> amid concerns over its vast energy use and impact upon the state\u2019s stressed water<\/a> supplies.<\/p>\n

The Stratos<\/a> artificial intelligence datacenter footprint will cover more than 40,000 acres (62 sq miles) over three sites in Box Elder county in north-western Utah. The facility will require about 9GW of power, which is more than the entire state of Utah currently consumes, and suck up a significant amount of water in an area that has been hit by severe drought<\/a> in recent years.<\/p>\n

Last week, the project was approved by the county\u2019s commissioners, despite thousands of objections lodged by Utah<\/a> residents. Environmentalists have warned that Stratos could imperil the Great Salt Lake ecosystem, including a critical migratory bird habitat, which is already under severe stress.<\/p>\n

The lake is shrinking due to water diverted for agriculture and the impact of the climate crisis, placing inhabitants of the nearby Salt Lake City at possible risk of toxic dust clouds as the lake bed dries up<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt a time when the Great Salt Lake is already in crisis, approving a project that will consume water and energy at this scale is irresponsible and dangerous,\u201d said Franque Bains, director of the Sierra Club\u2019s Utah chapter. \u201cUtahns want to see the Great Salt Lake restored, not stripped.\u201d<\/p>\n

The proposed project is backed by Kevin O\u2019Leary, the venture capitalist who appears on the TV show Shark Tank and recently played a villainous tycoon in the movie Marty Supreme<\/a>. O\u2019Leary has claimed Stratos will deliver thousands of jobs and help the US compete with China in the burgeoning AI industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s a bigger site in the world than this,\u201d O\u2019Leary told Fox News<\/a>. \u201cIt shows the Chinese and the rest of the world we are not messing around, we are going to get this done, move it forward and provide the compute power to our AI companies that defend the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kevin O\u2019Leary attends Consensus Miami 2026 on 6 May 2026 in Miami Beach, Florida. Photograph: Romain Maurice\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

In an X post<\/a>, O\u2019Leary added: \u201cWe\u2019re not gonna drain the Great Salt Lake. That\u2019s ridiculous. We are gonna create incremental jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

But these jobs will not outweigh the longer-term impacts to Utah and beyond, critics argue. Stratos is expected to raise the state\u2019s planet-heating pollution by about 50% by consuming a huge amount of energy and water to power and cool itself, according to one impact analysis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The network of industrial-scale fans needed to cool the datacenter\u2019s hot pipes will result in so much waste heat that it could raise daytime temperatures in the surrounding Hansel valley by 2F to 5F (1.1C to 2.7C) and night-time temperatures by 8F to 12F (4.4C to 6.6C), according to an analysis<\/a> by Rob Davies, a physics professor at Utah State University.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thermal load from the proposed Stratos project is extreme,\u201d Davies said. \u201cOf course it has effects. One of those effects is this: this facility imposes substantial drying on a watershed and ecosystem already in active collapse.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Leary said the extra electricity demand won\u2019t raise residents\u2019 energy bills as new gas-fired generation will power the facility. \u201cWe are building power from scratch, from the pipeline,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are going to burn it with turbines, clean,\u201d he added, although gas is a fossil fuel that is dangerously overheating the world and isn\u2019t clean.<\/p>\n

Nearly 4,000 people have lodged objections to the project being approved, with this pushback leading to contentious public meetings<\/a> that Lee Perry, the Box Elder county commissioner, said have left him feeling \u201cphysically sick\u201d amid alleged death threats and false accusations.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Leary has claimed<\/a> in social media posts that most of the protesters don\u2019t live locally and have been paid to object to the project. \u201cThere are professional protesters that are paid by somebody, I don\u2019t know who,\u201d O\u2019Leary said in a video posted to X last week. \u201cThey\u2019re being bused in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Opponents of the project have rejected this accusation. On Monday, a group calling itself the Box Elder Accountability Referendum filed an application<\/a> for a referendum to reverse the commissioners\u2019 approval of Stratos. If the group is able to collect 5,422 signatures from registered voters in the county in the next 45 days, the project approval will go to a vote in November.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of speaking with us, Kevin O\u2019Leary went on social media saying we were out-of-state, paid protesters, and we don\u2019t want people from out-of-state making decisions for us,\u201d said Brenna Williams, lead sponsor of the referendum push.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only thing he\u2019s right about is that we don\u2019t want him, an out-of-state billionaire, making decisions for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last week, there was a further twist when the developers withdrew<\/a> their application to divert 1,900 acre-feet of water from ranching to the project. However, Stratos \u201cfully intends to move forward\u201d with a new application set to be lodged with state regulators, according<\/a> to the developers.<\/p>\n

This new process will invalidate the objections already raised by Utahns and require each person to pay $15 to file a new complaint. Opponents claim this move is aimed at skirting public disapproval of the project.<\/p>\n

People protest the construction of a datacenter on 4 May 2026 in Tremonton, Utah. Photograph: Natalie Behring\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cI keep trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, but this has all the hallmarks of an out-of-state megaproject with little to no concern for the local community,\u201d said Ben Abbott, an ecologist at Brigham Young University and executive director of Grow the Flow, a group that aims to protect the Great Salt Lake.<\/p>\n

The growth of datacenters across the US has been championed by Donald Trump\u2019s administration and the AI industry, but has been met with local unrest. Anger at growing electricity bills and fears of water depletion have helped spur several local and state<\/a> election victories<\/a> for candidates skeptical of the AI sector\u2019s unfettered growth.<\/p>\n

Faced with a similar public backlash in Utah, Spencer Cox, the state\u2019s governor, on Friday said<\/a> he will require that the Stratos project doesn\u2019t harm the Great Salt Lake or raise power bills. The developers will build the datacenter in phases, he said, initially spanning 2,000 acres before scaling up further subject to future reviews.<\/p>\n

\u201cUtahns should expect clear standards and accountability,\u201d Cox said. Last year, the governor asked<\/a> people in Utah to pray and fast to help break fierce drought conditions.<\/p>\n

\u201cIndustry is our state\u2019s motto,\u201d Cox added on Friday. \u201cAnd in our pursuit of economic strength, we must always ensure that development is thoughtful and in line with Utah values.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A plan to create one of the world\u2019s largest datacenters, a gargantuan project spanning an area more than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-641137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}