'Data Center Revolt' tour stops in Brigham City, stressing importance of public involvement
by Tim Vandenack ksl · KSL.comKEY TAKEAWAYS
- Humans First stopped in Brigham City on Wednesday as part of its nationwide Data Center Revolt tour.
- The group advocates for increased public involvement in data center planning across the country and more guardrails in the expansion of artificial intelligence.
- Box Elder County is home to a large data center proposal, which prompted the Brigham City stop.
BRIGHAM CITY — As data center proposals pop up around the country, those with questions and concerns in some locales can feel intimidated trying to go up against the deep-pocketed forces pressing for their development.
"A lot of these towns are very small where these are going in, and they don't have the opportunity or the monetary backing to be able to fight these data centers," said Kylie Kremer, a senior advisor for Humans First, a group taking aim at unfettered data center development and artificial intelligence expansion.
Unease with data centers is common, though, and in a bid to let those with concerns know they aren't alone, Kremer stopped in Brigham City with a contingent from her group with a pointed message. The Data Center Revolt bus tour that Kremer is helping lead is taking its message across the country, and Wednesday's stop in Box Elder County was the 29th since the trip started in Texas on Sept. 12.
Many have publicly voiced their opposition to the data center proposal in Box Elder County, still in the development stage, and "we're trying to elevate these stories and give people hope that it's not over until it's over," Kremer said. "They're still finding technicalities to sue on. They're voting out their electeds. We're seeing county commissioners being voted out or recalled in different areas."
Cathy Latham, the director of Humans First in Texas and part of the traveling group, got involved because of her concerns with artificial intelligence — enabled and supported by data centers. Humans First calls itself a "conservative organization" dedicated to making sure "American AI intelligence delivers a better life for everyday people."
"We want the people to have a say," Latham said. "We've heard it across the country. I hear it every day in Texas — people are tired of not being part of the discussion."
A Humans First press release on the Data Center Revolt tour notes the strong public backlash the Box Elder County data center proposal has sparked from many. During her stop in Brigham City, though, Latham focused more broadly on what she believes to be the importance of involving the public in data center planning, not the specifics of the Box Elder County plans.
At any rate, O'Leary Digital chief executive officer Paul Palandjian expressed accord with the importance of public input in response to the Data Center Revolt stop in Brigham City.
"We agree that public sentiment matters, and we have said so," he said in a statement to KSL, noting varied elements of the Box Elder County proposal aimed at addressing some of the public clamoring.
He further called for dialogue "based on facts," noting some of the animosity the proposal has generated stemming from misinformation.
"Over the past several months, local ranchers, landowners and county commissioners, along with people associated with the project, received threats of violence, driven by misinformation about the project," Palandjian said. "Nobody's sentiment is well served by that. We are committed to a project Box Elder County can be proud of, and to earning that over time."
'Should not be getting tax breaks'
Those taking part in Wednesday's action insist they aren't trying to halt all data center development or freeze expansion of artificial intelligence. Rather, they're pressing for more public involvement as the development unfolds and more guardrails, in particular, on artificial intelligence to keep the technology from running amok.
"We're not anti-AI, we're not anti-tech, and we're not even anti-data center," Kremer said. Rather, she maintains that data centers "are being shoved down communities' throats without having any input by locals," and she wants the public to have more say in the matter.
Brigham City and Box Elder County were included in the list of communities on the Data Center Revolt tour, given the national publicity the uproar over the Stratos Area Project there has received across the country. Kevin O'Leary and O'Leary Digital are the main forces behind the Box Elder County proposal, one of many percolating around Utah, and Kremer held a cardboard cutout of the celebrity businessman as she spoke with KSL.
Group members included Brigham City and Box Elder County on the list of communities on the Data Center Revolt tour because of the national publicity surrounding the Stratos Area Project.
Later Wednesday, the tour bus was to make a stop in Cedar City in Iron County before continuing to Flagstaff, Arizona. Iron County planners in June approved a conditional use permit for a data center proposal west of Cedar City. The month before, in May, they imposed a 180-day moratorium on other data center proposals in the county to give officials time to review guidelines governing their development.
Aside from wanting to make sure local communities have a voice in data center planning, Kremer stressed the importance of transparency among elected officials in the process. She expressed particular unease with the granting of tax incentives to data center project developers, given the potential toll the facilities take on the communities where they're located.
"These corporations are the wealthiest in the world. They should not be getting tax breaks where the locals get nothing and their land is being taken away," she said. She singled out the potential adverse impact of data centers on local water and power supplies, depending on specifics of the plans, as well as the potential pollution they can cause.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.