Donald Trump · US Senate · Republicans · Ars Technica
Environmental activist Erin Brockovich recently published another resource, which follows where data centers are pending
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Although reports indicate—and Adams said was the case in Utah—that communities have genuine concerns fueling the rise in opposition, not everyone agrees that the immense community backlash in the US is rational or proportionate.
Key facts
- Many locals paid a $15 fee to register comments to block the transfer of 1,900 acre-feet of water from a ranch to the hyperscale data center
- Initially, he planned to build the project on 40,000 acres, but now he’s reduced that to about 20,000 acres
- As Utahns moved to defend their resources and demanded more information, Utah Senate President Stuart Adams, who is a Republican, sent a letter to O’Leary, asking him to cut the project’s scope by 75
- Elizabeth Hutchings, the communications manager for the Alliance for a Better Utah, mocked the Montreal-born O’Leary, defending the group’s 15-year history and saying, “the only foreign interest in this data center is Kevin from Canada
Summary
One of the world’s biggest data center projects was designed to be nearly three times the size of Manhattan, stretching across multiple Utah sites. Residents’ top concern was the Stratos data center project draining local waters, and they were willing to pay to protect them, most especially the vulnerable Great Salt Lake. Venture capitalist Kevin O’Leary, chair of O’Leary Digital and Shark Tank investor, is behind the construction of the project. “We screwed it up,” O’Leary said, while confirming that he “was not expecting this kind of intense blowback from the public.” He claimed that he and state officials anticipated that “people would be excited” about the major local investment and “made huge mistakes” by not involving the public more in discussions, based on that “assumption.” “We pissed off a lot of people, and that’s not the way I do business,” O’Leary said.