A Box Elder County group wants voters there to decide proposed data center's fate
Brenna Williams paused to fight emotion on a stage in Salt Lake City Wednesday as she talked about the effects she’s worried a massive data center could have on the Great Salt Lake and its Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. And that was before she got into her concerns about her grandchildren, who have asthma, and others in her wider rural county, down to the cows and the bees.
“I have like 15 reasons why we shouldn’t do this, and I think it’s crazy that we’re even considering it,” Williams told an audience during a panel discussion on the proposed Stratos data center.
The plan to bring a 40,000-acre data center to a valley dotted with ranches in Box Elder County has met intense public outcry in northern Utah and has frustrated voters who said they didn’t get a meaningful chance to weigh in. Now Williams and fellow organizers with the Box Elder Accountability Referendum, or BEAR, are pursuing a pair of local referendums they hope could prevent the fast-moving project from coming online.
They’re citing concerns about emissions from a possible natural gas power plant for the project and, as well as the water that could be diverted away from the Great Salt Lake and toward the data center that would span 40,000 acres once fully built, among other issues.
https://utahnewsdispatch.com/2026/05/14/box-elder-county-group-wants-referendum-on-proposed-data-center/