New water rights application filed for data center plans; details of proposed facility emerge

SALT LAKE CITY — As the Box Elder County data center debate simmers, another application to transfer water rights to the development has emerged, along with renderings depicting what the sprawling multibuilding facility would look like.

The water would come from an unnamed spring in the Hansel Valley, one of the three expanses totaling 40,000 acres where the data center would be developed. The proposed water right transfer totals 11 acre feet — much smaller than an earlier application for 1,900 acre feet, withdrawn on May 7.

"It is a smaller amount. It's 11 acre feet, but it's for the same purpose," said Deeda Seed of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of many environmental groups that has raised concerns with the data center proposal. "What we think is going to happen is they're going to work to accrue these small water rights."

A chief concern for data center opponents has been the amount of water the data center and parallel power-generating system would use, especially as water levels in the nearby Great Salt Lake dwindle.

The application to the Utah Division of Water Rights to transfer the Hansel Valley water right, though, minimizes the potential for waste, echoing the assertions of proponents of the project, spearheaded by Canadian businessman Kevin O'Leary and O'Leary Digital. The water would mainly be used in connection with power production, while a portion would be used in a closed-loop system serving the proposed data center.

"Under normal operations, the data center use will not result in a consumptive loss to the water right," reads the application, filed April 28. The closed-loop system would be periodically flushed for maintenance and "any water discharged during flushing will return to the natural hydrologic system and ultimately to the Great Salt Lake."

At any rate, the first protest against the proposal was filed on Monday, and Seed said her group also plans to file a protest. The earlier application for 1,900 acre-feet had generated around 3,800 formal protests before it was withdrawn.

"This application lacks sufficient detail about proposed water consumption. Approval of this application would increase depletion, impair existing water rights and impair the more beneficial use of preserving Great Salt Lake," reads the protest, filed by a Box Elder County woman, Marcia Wendorf. "There is no evidence that the proposed plan is physically or economically feasible."

An O'Leary representative didn't immediately respond to a query seeking comment.

The proposal, which has the support of Utah's Military Installation Development Authority — a state entity that promotes economic development tied to military initiatives — calls for a data center complex and 7.5 gigawatts to 9 gigawatts of power-producing capacity at full build to serve it. Proponents have minimized its potential environmental impacts, a concern for many, and touted its importance to the U.S. military and national defense as pressure to build more data centers around the world grows.

'A beautiful, poetic design' of 60 buildings

A rendering of the proposed development — alternately called Stratos Project Area and Wonder Valley Utah — was published last Friday by Dezeen, an architectural publication. It depicts 60 data center buildings, 10 clustered at each of six sites, and a 3,000-acre solar array, all located in the Hansel Valley on the most southeasterly of the three Box Elder County sites where the initiative is envisioned.

Paul Palandjian, the O'Leary Digital CEO, told Dezeen that the proposed architecture is meant to stand in contrast to the typically drab style of data centers.

"We want a beautiful, poetic design that belongs to the West Desert. ... Art and architecture are a real passion of mine, and I wanted to bring out-of-the-box thinking — pun intended — to a category that has almost none. Our job is to honor the place it sits in and to be poetic about it," Palandjian said.

Other renderings of an office-type building show a two-level, glass-fronted structure amid the scrubland typical of the undeveloped area. An "innovation district" meant to serve the area would sit at the northern end of the development.

The first phase of development would also potentially include housing for workers, but not warehouse-style facilities. "We want this to be the sexiest, coolest construction posting in America. It's a recruitment strategy toward building a culture of excellence," Palandjian told Dezeen.

The first phase of development, according to the rendering, calls for a natural-gas-fired facility paired with a battery storage system that can generate 1 gigawatt of power. Thirty data center buildings are depicted within the footprint of Phase 1, with another 30 on the Phase 2 section abutting it to the west. The 3,000-acre solar array, capable of generating 500 megawatts of power, abuts the south side of the phase one parcel.

"Wonder Valley reimagines the data center as civic infrastructure, a place that not only powers global innovation, but also supports new opportunities, economic growth and long-term regional resilience," reads the O'Leary Digital narrative accompanying the rendering. Gensler, a global design firm assisting with an O'Leary Digital data center project in Alberta, Canada, is helping plan and design the Box Elder County proposal.

Meanwhile, the debate on social media over the development continues.

Kevin O'Leary published a post on X on Friday, stressing the importance of developing data centers in the United States as a means of countering China. The nation with the most extensive artificial intelligence capabilities will be poised to lead the globe, he said.

"While America debates permits, regulations, and protests over data centers, China is rapidly building power infrastructure and scaling compute capacity as fast as possible. This race is no longer theoretical. Whoever has the most compute, the best models, and the strongest infrastructure will shape the next era of global power," O'Leary wrote.

The Military Installation Development Authority board approved the proposal in late April and the Box Elder County commissioners approved two resolutions allowing the plans to proceed on May 4. The initiative has prompted questions and concerns from an array of groups due to environmental concerns, worries about government overreach and more.

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