Even after approval from the Box Elder County Commission, a massive data center project in northwest Utah has to clear more obstacles before construction can begin.
A big one is obtaining water rights. The proposed mega data center needs to change a water right from agricultural to industrial use.
Opponents want to prevent that from happening. More than 3,700 people have filed protests against the change with the Utah Division of Water Rights.
Developers say the data center will use far less than the water rights they plan to buy, but Deeda Seed of the Center for Biological Diversity doubts their project can be that efficient.
“We all suffer if Great Salt Lake continues to decline, and this contributes to that decline,” she said.
And just because there’s a water right doesn’t mean there’s water. After this winter’s record-low snowpack, for instance, some farmers expect to be allocated so little water that they’re choosing not to plant at all.
Applications to change who owns a water right or how it’s used generally go through without any protests. Audra Sorensen, spokesperson for the Utah Division of Water Rights, said she hasn’t seen more than a handful filed on any application until now.
The division has its work cut out for it.
“It is the process of the state engineer's office to look at every single protest, read every single document, be very thorough, and then make a decision based on that,” she said.
The next step may be a hearing, which some protesters requested, Sorensen said. She doesn’t know when that would happen, but she noted that the thousands of people who paid the $15 fee to file official protests are now part of the process and will receive updates.
“People would be allowed to provide evidence, as it's just a regular old legal process and say, ‘Hey, I think it's going to impair my water right here,’ ‘It might impair this or that or the other,’” she said.
But the process is not subjective.
“It's absolutely just based on the law, what is allowed, what is not allowed, and if that evidence presented during a hearing or a protest determines that it shouldn't, the change application shouldn't be approved, then that's the direction it would go,” Sorensen said.
The $15 fee goes toward the division’s work processing the complaints, creating reports and doing what it’s required to do by law.
The process won’t end with the state engineer’s decision. Parties can appeal if they disagree with the outcome.
The water right that’s received so many protests dates back to 1904 and includes 1,900 acre-feet of water. Data center developers say they will buy about 2,800 and have another 10,000 on contract, so it’s unclear if or how the project could continue without this particular water right.
Every sale of rights like this must go through the Division of Water Rights, Sorensen said.
The Military Installation Development Authority, which is championing the project, also has other things on its to-do list.
“The Stratos Project Area was just created yesterday,” a spokesperson said Tuesday in a statement, referring to the Box Elder site. “We will now work with the development team to lay out next steps, required studies, state regulatory processes, etc.”
Community engagement is important, the spokesperson said, and a MIDA Design Review Committee will form and hold public meetings.
Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern Utah.
