Kevin O'Leary agrees to cut Box Elder County data center project area in half

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Kevin O'Leary has agreed to essentially cut the Box Elder County data center project area in half, from around 40,000 acres to 20,000 acres.
• He outlined the proposal in a letter to Utah Senate President Stuart Adams, who on Monday called for a reduction in the project area.
• The plans have sparked opposition from many, worried about its environmental impacts.

SALT LAKE CITY — Businessman Kevin O'Leary, the force behind the controversial Box Elder County data center proposal, has agreed to cut the project area in half, from around 40,000 acres to around 20,000 acres.

In a letter Thursday to Utah Senate President Stuart Adams, O'Leary said he'd remove two of the three proposed project areas from the data center initiative, one measuring around 19,430 acres in the Locomotive Springs area, another measuring around 620 acres abutting I-84. That would leave the third, more southeasterly parcel in the Hansel Valley, measuring around 20,000 acres.

"We agreed to remove the 19,000-plus in Locomotive and the 600 or so by the highway," said Paul Palandjian, chief executive officer of O'Leary Digital, chaired by O'Leary and the business entity pursuing the initiative. "I think (that) addresses a lot of people's concerns."

On Monday, Adams called for a dramatic reduction in the project expanse, from 40,000 acres to 10,000 acres. He also called for the use of the latest technology to reduce the project's water consumption and to capture the heat it generates, among the chief concerns of project opponents.

As Palandjian now envisions it, the data center and proposed power-generation facilities serving it would take up around 10,000 acres, with another 10,000 or so acres around it being "preserved" land. "If you want to reconcile it with what President Adams had asked for, it's effectively getting him what he wanted," Palandjian said.

A spokeswoman for Adams said the senator was reviewing O'Leary's response and would likely issue a formal reaction later Thursday.

In the letter, O'Leary also committed to using the latest technology to conserve water and working with state environmental regulators, echoing prior comments and promises.

The data center plans are touted by proponents as key to national security and an economic development driver. Over the long haul, the data center facilities — called the Stratos Project Area — would be accompanied by the development of up to 9 gigawatts of power-generation capacity to serve them.

Critics worry the data center operation would adversely impact air quality and tax already dwindling water supplies, placing additional pressure on the Great Salt Lake, already drying. They also say the proposal hasn't received enough study and was rushed.

On Wednesday, opponents of the project filed suit to challenge the decision rejecting their efforts to force a vote on the future of two Box Elder County measures allowing the proposal to proceed.

Box Elder County commissioners approved resolutions 26-11 and 26-12 on May 4, despite the opposition of many, paving the way for the project. The action followed approval on April 24 of four other resolutions and a tax ordinance key to project development by Utah's Military Installation Development Authority, or MIDA, a state entity that's teaming with O'Leary Digital in the initiative.

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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.

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UtahPoliticsNorthern UtahEnvironmentBusiness

Tim Vandenack

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Tim Vandenack covers immigration, multicultural issues and Northern Utah for KSL. He worked several years for the Standard-Examiner in Ogden and has lived and reported in Mexico, Chile and along the U.S.-Mexico border.