In an atmosphere that was unruly at times, hundreds of Utahns packed the Box Elder County Fairgrounds Fine Arts building to protest a proposed massive data center and energy campus in the county. Box Elder County Commissioner Tyler Vincent struggled at times to calm protesters as they yelled, "People over profit!”
“For Hell’s sakes, grow up,” Commissioner Boyd Bingham called into the microphone. After being met with more boos and jeers, the three commissioners got up and left — saying they would move to a video call projected at the front of the room. That was met with shouts of “Cowards!”
From that new remote room, the commission voted yes.
“Our vote today is not a vote for or against the data center,” said Commissioner Lee Perry. “Our vote is about personal property rights and whether we can put any guardrails on this issue.”
Box Elder County officially entered the agreement with an LLC under O’Leary Digital, owned by investor and Shark Tank celebrity Kevin O’Leary, and Utah’s Military Installation Development Authority, which promotes economic development and military initiatives.
The northwest rural county found itself at the center of the decision because state law requires local governments to sign off on any MIDA development where public or private land is part of the deal. The project site is more than 50,000 acres — about the size of St. George — not far from the northern tip of Great Salt Lake.
Lifelong county resident Keith Holdaway sat quietly in the back row, not shouting or booing, just trying to listen to the meeting.
“This is one of the biggest projects I think Box Elder County has entertained, and there's a lot of questions and a lot of information that I think that we wanted to know, and what, what the data center is all about, and where it’d be built and, you know, the infrastructure and what would be there,” he said.
Holdaway is against the project, and he hasn’t been happy with how his local government has handled the process.
“I think they had made up their mind before they even come into this meeting,” he said.
However, he said that he respected the democratic process and would support the commission’s decisions.
Deeda Seed, a campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity, doesn’t believe the developers’ claims that the project won’t use much water. She said it made her hopeful to see how many people were against it.
“They're worried about their water, they're worried about air quality, they're worried about the Great Salt Lake. They're worried about government overreach and abuse.”
The data center, which will be Utah’s largest, will generate electricity with natural gas to power itself. Its first phase would produce about 3 gigawatts of power, and it’s expected to scale up to 7.5 or 8 gigawatts.
The entire state uses about 4 gigawatts of electricity a year. Utah is sixth in the nation for planned data center growth.
More than 1,500 people have filed protests with the Utah Division of Water Rights on an application to change the use of one of the project’s planned water rights from agricultural to industrial.
The county commission was supposed to rule on the data center last week, but postponed the decision, telling MIDA representatives they felt they were brought in at the last minute.
The state is invested in the project. Speaking at his April monthly news conference, Gov. Spencer Cox told reporters that AI development is basically a new arms race and “every state has an obligation” to build these data centers.
“We can't just say no and shut the doors and go home and let China win this, this technology race, so that just can't be an option,” he said.
The national security argument has been a key point around AI regulations and data. It’s also been a source of tension as Utah wants to be part of the development and construction bonanza, and institute state regulation at the same time. The Trump administration, however, has resisted state-level AI rules. Only this year, the White House sent a short memo calling for a state AI transparency bill sponsored by Republican Rep. Doug Fiefia to be killed.
But for Seed, national security is no justification.
“Those are some of the most ridiculous and absurd arguments I've heard so far,” she said. “There's no substantiation for that.”
Utah’s deteriorating drought and water woes after a historically bad winter have also contributed to public perception of the project. The governor has acknowledged both a brewing drought emergency and what he says is misinformation circulating about the data center’s water impact.Paul Palandjian, co-founder and CEO of O’Leary Digital, the private enterprise investing in the project, told KUER that opponents are overstating the project’s water use.
The developers plan to purchase 2,800 acre-feet of water rights and use just a fraction of it, though with the project still in what he called pre-development, Palandjian couldn’t say how much. They would also have another 10,000 acre-feet available to use if needed.
“There's some rough order of magnitudes that if you go in your AI and ask, on a zero water solution power gen and on a zero water solution closed-loop system, on average, how much acre feet water we use, you'll get as good a number as I could give you right now,” he said.
Palandjian said the Box Elder data center would use a closed-loop chilling system to keep its computers cool. The system would consist of a mixture of water and polyethylene glycol circulating through tubes that wind through the computers. Water use would be limited to the amount needed to fill the system and small amounts to top it off for maintenance, he said.
“We're not dependent on continuous water consumption from evaporative cooling.”
The water would cool down by being exposed to ambient air before cycling back through, Palandjian said, noting it would need to work harder in the warmer months.
Kerri Hickenbottom, associate professor of chemical and environmental engineering at the University of Arizona, said it’s “pretty rare” that a data center would be able to cool its system 100% of the time using outside air. She thinks the system would need water or electricity to cool.
The system isn’t fully designed yet, but Palandjian said it will be the most sustainable technology available now.
Beyond that, he said the project would have a way to treat brackish water and send whatever it doesn’t use to the Great Salt Lake.
“We are going to be adding water to the Great Salt Lake. Why do you need any more information than that?” he said.
And Gov. Cox assured people that Great Salt Lake will not suffer from this project.
What happens next? Seed with the Center for Biological Diversity said lawyers, alongside regular citizens, are protesting the state’s transfer of water rights. If the state proceeds with the change, she said advocates could follow up with litigation.
The first stage of development is expected to start in the next few months.
