After more than 3,700 protests were filed against a northern Utah water rights change tied to a proposed massive data center in Box Elder County, the owner, Bar H Ranch, has withdrawn the application with the Utah Division of Water Rights.
But the project is not abandoning this water, which accounts for a chunk of the water rights the developers plan to get.
“Bar H. Ranch intends to resubmit in a timely manner with additional supporting information and to further demonstrate the feasibility of the application,” a consultant wrote in an email to the division.
“The applicant fully intends to move forward with the project and remain committed to working collaboratively through the process,” the consultant said.
The change application sought to repurpose the water from agricultural use to industrial use for the natural-gas-fueled power plant intended for the Stratos Project data center complex. The application noted that a small portion of the water would be used for the cooling system.
Each protest costs $15 to file, and a division spokesperson said protesters will not get their money back.
Deeda Seed, a campaigner with the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, told KUER this is the developers’ way of cleaning the slate of public comment because it will be like those protests “never happened.”
Every protest is unique to the application it was filed against.
“They're going to file in a couple of months, and we'll start over again, and people may be so angry about this that they’ll file again,” Seed said with a laugh.
The proposed data center has drawn bipartisan outrage, she said.
“I've been an organizer for a long time, and I've never seen as much energy coalescing in opposition to something so quickly as I have with this.”
Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern U
