Kevin O’Leary has committed to significantly reduce the scale of his ambitious Project Stratos data center in Utah, halving its planned 40,000-acre footprint. This decision, reported initially by local affiliate ABC4, comes in response to considerable pressure from local residents and environmental activists. The entrepreneur and 'Shark Tank' personality formally communicated his revised plans in a letter to Utah Senate President J. Stuart Adams on Thursday, stating his intention to remove 19,430 acres from the development, which is situated near the Locomotive Springs Waterfowl Management Area.
This significant adjustment follows recent appeals from President Adams, who had urged O’Leary just days prior to cut Project Stratos’s size by a more substantial 75 percent, bringing it down to approximately 10,000 acres. Adams’s recommendations also included the adoption of advanced water-minimizing technologies and the redirection of surplus water resources to the critically shrinking Great Salt Lake.
Further details from O’Leary’s letter indicate an additional reduction of 620 acres in the project’s northeast section, adjacent to the highway. He also pledged to “preserve a majority of the remaining acreage as open space,” underscoring a commitment to conservation. Despite these reductions, Project Stratos will still encompass an area of roughly 20,000 acres, exceeding the landmass of Manhattan. The environmental implications remain a key concern, as even data centers considerably smaller than this proposed facility are known to raise significant issues regarding energy consumption, ecological impact, and potential pollution.
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