Kevin O’Leary agreed to halve the size of his planned 40,000-acre data center in Utah amid mounting pressure from residents and activists, as local affiliate ABC4 previously reported. shark Tank Starr on Thursday spoke to Utah Senate President J. Stuart Adams, stating that he would remove 19,430 acres from the project located in and around the Locomotive Springs Waterfowl Management Area.
The change comes after Adams asked O’Leary to reduce the size of his Project Stratos data center by 75 percent, which would reduce it to about 10,000 acres. Adams also asked O’Leary to implement technology that would reduce water consumption, as well as divert excess water toward the Great Salt Lake, which was continuing to shrink.
O’Leary also said in the letter that he would cut another 620 acres of land in the northeastern part of the project near the highway, adding that he would “preserve the majority of the remaining acres as open space.” Even with a smaller footprint of about 20,000 acres, Project Stratos will still cover an area larger than Manhattan — and a small data center of this size still raises major concerns about energy use, environmental impact, and pollution.
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