Note to readers • This story is made possible through a partnership between The Salt Lake Tribune and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.
Another ranch in Box Elder County’s Hansel Valley is looking to transfer water to Kevin O’Leary’s massive Stratos data center project.
Murray Hollow L.C. submitted a change application to the Utah Division of Water Rights on April 28, seeking to convey water historically used for domestic and livestock use to industrial use for a natural gas plant and associated data center, according to the application.
The new application for roughly 11 acre-feet per year is far smaller than a previous change request filed by Bar H Ranch last month that would have transferred roughly 1,900 acre-feet to the Stratos project developers.
The Bar H application was pulled earlier this month after it had amassed nearly 4,000 protests. Bar H’s representative indicated that they plan to refile the request at a later date.
The protest period for the new water right application begins Wednesday, a division spokesperson confirmed, although it has already received around 30 protest letters since Monday.
The primary owner of the Murray Hollow water right lives in Holladay. The application notes the water will help meet the needs of a 7.5-gigawatt natural gas power plant. Utah’s current statewide power consumption is around 4 gigawatts.
Eleven acre-feet of water is enough water to meet the basic needs of about 20 Utah households.
The water comes from an unnamed spring, with a diversion point about 9 miles north of the Great Salt Lake’s exposed lakebed on its northernmost tip.
A “portion” of the water will supply the data center’s closed-loop cooling system, the application says. Water will periodically get flushed from the system, returned to the environment before eventually reaching the Great Salt Lake, the document says. It does not clarify how water will be used at the natural gas plant, or what kind of power generation the plant will use.
The power plant is called “Wonder Valley” in the change application, another name used for the Stratos Project, which is backed by celebrity investor Kevin “Mr. Wonderful” O’Leary.
Protests filed so far come from residents in Box Elder, Weber, Davis, Salt Lake, Summit, Wasatch and Millard counties. Several cite concerns about Utah’s drought and the declining Great Salt Lake. Utah Sen. Nate Blouin (D-Millcreek), a candidate for Utah’s newly drawn 1st Congressional District, also filed a protest.
“My constituents are directly and disproportionately affected by the continued decline of Great Salt Lake through degraded air quality, toxic lakebed dust, the public health costs that follow, and the loss of the lake’s ecological and economic value,” wrote Blouin, who represents parts of Salt Lake County.
O’Leary has previously said opponents of the project are paid actors bused in from other states.
Under a new policy passed by state lawmakers this year, House Bill 60, the state engineer, who helms the Division of Water Rights, cannot consider protest concerns handled by other state agencies like air quality, wildlife and recreation. Her office also does not make decisions based on the quantity of protests received, a spokesperson confirmed.