This week the Box Elder County Commission cleared the way for one of the country’s biggest data centers. The public information about it says the site covers roughly 60 square miles.
At build-out it will take more electricity than the entire state of Utah is using today. It will provide a lot of construction jobs for 10 to 15 years. Despite some big tax breaks granted by the state, it will generate significant tax revenue to Box Elder County from land that now supports a big herd of non-taxpaying cattle.
I have no idea if it — the data center or AI, for that matter — ultimately is good or bad, and suspect that nobody else does, either.
It’s an unusual piece of work. The land involved is almost entirely private property, with only about a dozen owners. It’s decent grazing land, and with irrigation, some of it produces pretty good hay.
Almost nobody lives there. The families who own it have been ranching that area for generations, living in Tremonton and just over the Idaho line. The decision to sell will disrupt the remainder of their operations. Maybe the next generation has had enough of ranch life and is just fine cashing out.
The land is so far removed from the population base of Box Elder County that it has never been zoned. So the county has minimal control over what goes on there, whether it is grazing, farming or constructing big industrial facilities. It’s in the “anything goes” zone. The county can regulate the roof trusses, fire exits and the storm water drainage. And not much more.
The county did not approve the project. They authorized MIDA, the Utah Military Installations Development Authority, to move in and assume the powers normally associated with local government on the project. MIDA is also providing a financing mechanism. MIDA will approve the project, not Box Elder County.
MIDA butted heads with local government in Summit County and Park City for years over a proposal to build a recreation hotel facility for active duty troops. They were proposing what seemed like an unworkable location along S.R. 248 back when that was a vacant as western Box Elder County.
In hindsight, with the hospital, Park City Heights and Studio Crossing are all there, and Richardson Flat looming, the fight seems kind of silly. But at the time, there was a firm belief that Park City ended at the neck in the canyon at PC Hill.
Instead, MIDA moved to Wasatch County, and the 15 or 20 beds at a former facility near Snow Basin morphed into Deer Valley’s East Village. The whole thing is being developed under regulations made by the developer and MIDA, with sort of token involvement from Wasatch County and the Jordanelle Special Service District that provides water and sewer service.
I don’t know what level of pressure MIDA applied to Box Elder County. The governor is a big proponent of data centers. His career before politics was running a telephone and internet company that serves a chunk of the center of the state. He knows a good deal more about this stuff than I ever will.
The MIDA board includes the leadership of the Legislature. When asking for “consent” to move in, there is the implicit threat that if the county said “no” to MIDA, they would never see another dime in state spending. Consent was given.
The proponents of the project say they will generate their own electricity, burning natural gas. It’s effectively off the grid. The natural gas for the generators will come from an existing pipeline that has excess capacity.
But it’s not clear that the rest of us won’t be competing with the data center for gas instead of electricity. What does that do to your heating bill? Will Rocky Mountain Power have to pay more for natural gas for its generators, which means we pay more for electricity even if the data center is technically off the grid? Nobody seems to know, or even ask.
Portions of the land are irrigated, and the irrigation water will be converted to industrial use for cooling the data center and power generation. They claim net usage is about the same if not a little less.
What gets back into the aquifer and the nearby Great Salt Lake is unclear. The state engineer will have to approve the change in the use of the water, and I guess that process will sort it out — with a fair amount of political pressure in the background.
Natural gas is not without emissions issues. What about air quality, and carbon release? Details, details. This is for national security, sort of, and a place to store all our kitten-chasing-laser videos.
The whole AI concept is so new that nobody really knows what to expect. In 10 years will all these huge data centers be replaced by some new breakthrough in chip design so it all fits into two-car garage? Who gets stuck with the debt? Is this destined to be the Segway Scooter of this generation or is it the foundation of a new industrial revolution? End of humanity?
I don’t think anybody really knows, which is why making this decision largely in secret in a very short time seems like a bad way of doing things.
Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986.