TL;DR
Utah’s governor issued an executive order setting new standards for data centres after a 9 GW project backed by Kevin O’Leary sparked protests.
Utah Governor Spencer Cox signed an executive order on Friday establishing a “higher bar for data center development” in the state. The order is effective immediately. It follows months of community outrage over the Stratos Project, a 40,000-acre hyperscale data centre campus backed by “Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary that could reach 9 gigawatts of power at full buildout.
The framework contains eight principles addressing water resources, air quality, wildlife protection, utility rate impacts, and public comment requirements. “Utahns deserve confidence that water resources, air quality, utility rates, wildlife, and quality of life will be protected,” Cox wrote on X.
The executive order directs state agencies to adopt the framework. It also requires the Stratos developers to use a phased approach, applying for new permits at every planned expansion. The project cannot proceed as a single blanket approval.
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Box Elder County commissioners approved the Stratos Project despite significant community opposition. Residents crowded council meetings, circulated petitions, and recently protested outside the Utah State Capitol. More than 2,000 questions and concerns were submitted, containing “a mix of supportive and critical feedback,” according to the project’s webpage.
O’Leary has defended the development repeatedly. Earlier this month, he suggested without evidence that “professional protesters” orchestrated the controversy. He also claimed Chinese funding was fanning the outrage. Local residents rejected both assertions.
Supporters say the data centre will create jobs and drive economic growth. Opponents are concerned about water consumption, noise, air quality, traffic, and the impact on the Great Salt Lake, which is already facing an ecological crisis from decades of water diversion.
The global race to build AI data centre capacity is intensifying. SoftBank announced €75 billion for 5 gigawatts in France this weekend. The Stratos Project alone would deliver nearly double that capacity in a single location. The scale of AI infrastructure demand is creating land-use conflicts that local governments were not designed to adjudicate.
Data centres are becoming strategic infrastructure. In the Gulf, they are being targeted by drones. In Utah, they are being targeted by petitions. The political dynamics are different but the underlying tension is the same: AI infrastructure requires enormous power, water, and land, and the communities that host it are demanding a say in the terms.
Data centres are becoming a major political issue ahead of November’s US midterms. Communities across the country are rallying against them. In February, residents in New Brunswick, New Jersey successfully blocked a data centre development entirely. The NIMBYism that once focused on housing and wind farms has found a new target.
The energy dimension compounds the tension. xAI is powering data centres with unregulated gas turbines in Memphis. SoftBank’s Ohio project plans $33 billion in natural gas-fired electricity. The Stratos Project has not disclosed its energy source in detail. For communities that care about air quality and carbon emissions, the power source matters as much as the facility itself.
Cox’s executive order is a political response to a problem that will only grow. AI compute demand is projected to increase by terawatts over the coming years. The infrastructure to deliver that compute must be built somewhere. Utah is not saying no to data centres. It is saying: not without rules, not without public input, and not without protecting the Great Salt Lake.
Whether an executive order is sufficient to balance a 9-gigawatt project against a community of a few thousand people is the question that Box Elder County will answer over the next several years. O’Leary calls the project “Wonder Valley.” The residents who live next to it have a different name for it. The governor is trying to find language that works for both.
