Box Elder County Data Center Faces Opposition Over Water Concerns

Community leaders, including an environmental lawyer, an ecologist, and a director for Utah Clean Energy, hosted a panel discussion regarding the Stratos Data Center, which has been approved for development in Box Elder County, Utah. The forum, held at the Salt Lake City Public Library, highlighted severe concerns about water availability in the region. Rhonda Anderson Lauritzen, a local resident whose family has lived near the Great Salt Lake since the 1960s, voiced strong opposition, stating that her property's water rights border the proposed data center site. She emphasized that the lake has significantly shrunk, making water access impossible for a decade, and that aquifers in the area are empty. Lauritzen, along with Brena Williams, is actively pursuing a citizen referendum and water rights protest against the project. Ben Abbott from Grow the Flow underscored the necessity of reducing water usage by 40% to restore the Great Salt Lake, arguing that any new water consumption by the data center would hinder this crucial environmental goal. He stressed that the region faces a hard limit on sustainably available water, a baseline that is further complicated by large-scale environmental changes.