As data center disputes rage across the country, with communities pushing back against mammoth facilities that require chunks of energy, water, and land to fuel the international artificial intelligence race, few places can compare to the debate happening in the northwestern corner of Utah.

Locals and scientists say the Stratos Project, backed by celebrity Canadian investor Kevin O’Leary of “Shark Tank” fame, stands out not just for the way in which it was approved, but also for its size. Initially planned to sprawl across 40,000 acres (the size of Washington D.C.) in Box Elder County, the project would consume up to 9 gigawatts of electricity, which is more than double what the state of Utah uses per year. Mr. O’Leary has boasted that it would be one of the biggest data centers in the world.

Opposition has grown over the past few weeks, after the approval process was fast-tracked by a special state commission called MIDA (Utah’s Military Installation Development Authority) and unanimously approved by the three-person county commission in early May. Many locals say they have had no opportunity for input. In response, Republican officials in the state have softened their previous full-blown support for the project. Gov. Spencer Cox issued an executive order last week requiring “careful consideration” of data centers’ environmental impacts. Utah Senate President Stuart Adams, who chairs MIDA, called for a 75% reduction in Stratos’ acreage footprint in a letter to Mr. O’Leary on Monday. 

Why We Wrote This

The Stratos Project near Utah's Great Salt Lake has scaled back its planned footprint. But scientists still see big risks for the local environment.

Despite initially calling Mr. Adams’ request for such a “haircut” of the project “outrageous,” Mr. O’Leary announced on Thursday that he would cut the footprint of the project in half, removing about 20,000 acres from his plans.  

But thus far this has done little to quell pushback. Scientists say a compromise over acreage does little to alleviate concerns over the ecological impacts that such a project would bring to the Great Salt Lake Basin, a nationally renowned site facing a megadrought.  

“It’s performative,” says Robert Davies, a physics professor at Utah State University, of the promised acreage reduction. He has concluded from his own calculations that the 9 gigawatt project would only require 5,000-7,000 acres. Even still, he says, the energy usage would be 20 times more than what is used by “hyperscale” data centers.

Dr. Davies has also found that such a project could raise the nighttime temperature in the area by up to 12 degrees, which he says would be “transformative.” Among other impacts, that sort of temperature rise would suppress nighttime condensation levels that the already water-stricken ecosystem relies on. “This would be one of the largest single site heat sources on the entire planet,” he adds, “[and] that includes volcanos.” 

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Although he has only committed to a reduction in square footage, and not energy consumption, Mr. O’Leary told the Salt Lake Tribune that the project will no longer be the largest in the world. “That’s off the table,” he said. In his letter to Mr. Adams, Mr. O’Leary cited “incorrect assumptions” for all the alarm around the project, and he has previously claimed that opposition groups were backed by the Chinese Communist Party. But at the same time, Mr. O’Leary has  acknowledged the real political pressures on the ground in Utah, where the Box Elder County project has become an issue even within Mr. Adams’ own GOP primary contest. 

“[Adams] did this for political reasons,” Mr. O’Leary told the Salt Lake Tribune. “He had to. What other choice did he have? He had to answer to all these people.”