BRIGHAM CITY – Advocacy groups united against the proposed Stratos Data Center in Box Elder County will rally on Wednesday, May 27 to voice their continuing opposition to the project.
That gathering in northern Utah is slated for 11 a.m. at 1 South Main Street in Brigham City, where organizers hope to equal the earlier success of the huge May 4 demonstration in Tremonton against the project.
The May 27 rally will also provide an opportunity to opponents to gather voter signatures on a pair of proposed referendums they hope could prevent the data center from coming online.
That effort, led by the recently organized Box Elder Accountability Referendum group (B.E.A.R), is facing tight deadlines in their effort to head off the project.
The group has just 20 days to get its ballot applications to County Attorney Stephen Hatfield, followed by 45 days to gather nearly 5,500 local voter signatures to get a referendum on the data center on the ballot in November, according to economist Brenna Williams, one of the leaders of B.E.A.R.
If their signature gathering effort fails, Williams says that B.E.A.R. will pursue other options, including litigation.
As envisioned by developer Kevin O’Leary of “Shark Tank” fame, the Stratos Project would be the world’s largest artificial intelligence hyperscale data center, covering a 40,000-acre campus in the Great Salt Lake watershed.
In addition to B.E.A.R., advocacy groups on record as opposing the Box Elder data center include Elevate Strategies, the Alliance for a Better Utah, the Center for Biological Diversity, Grow the Flow, Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, the Great Salt Lake Audubon Society and the Utah Democratic Party, among others.
In their call for attendees at the May 27 gathering, rally organizers cited the unsubstantiated claim that the energy footprint on the proposed data center in Box Elder County would be comparable to 40,000 Wal-Mart supercenters.
At a May 13 gathering of project opponents in Salt Lake City, Williams also cited concerns about emissions from possible natural gas power plants associated with the Stratos project and as well as the projects’ potential to divert water from the already shrinking Great Salt Lake.