CEDAR CITY, Utah — The western outskirts of Iron County may look barren, but there are plans in place to make the area a hub of AI data.
"1.5 gigawatts is a lot of power. I have a hard time seeing how they're going to be able to contain the noise, the air pollution, the water pollution," shared Cedar City resident Jesse Harris.
Harris is a local IT expert with 30 years of experience, half of which is in cybersecurity. His concerns are that the Antelope Data Center planned in the open desert about 20 miles west of Cedar City may be too powerful.
"The history of data centers being constructed over the last several years is that there are a lot of promises that get broken again and again and again," he said. "I'm looking at feasibility from a lot of angles, and I'm seeing, I don't think they're going to do what they say."
Pronghorn Development, the developer of the data center, did not respond to FOX 13 News inquiries, and neither did county officials. They've previously said the natural gas power plant that will be part of the data center will keep it from tapping into the power grid, and after initially using the equivalent of what six homes use in a year for cooling water, it will recycle that water indefinitely.
Utah legislature seeks to force data centers to report water use:
"A few regional planners [have been asked], do you regret having data centers in your communities? I think overall, the answer, both from the regional planner side and the developer side, is no one regrets [them]. I think the tax benefit is significant and sometimes maybe underrated," explained University of Michigan professor of regional planning, Xiaofan Liang.
At 640 acres, the data center will be more than three times the size of Southern Utah University.
A standing-room-only meeting of the Iron County Planning Commission on March 5 drew about 350 people in the chambers and adjoining rooms. Among the more than 15 speakers over two hours, only one offered support for the project.
And for those saying the complaints are people crying, "not in my backyard," it's not like there are many backyards in the area.
"I hope that what the public questioning will help them understand is that the fire department, the health department, they need to be on their toes. They need to make sure what chemicals they're using out there. And how they're managing and mitigating those chemicals. They need to make sure that there's earthquake protection in place so that there is no spills," said Cedar City resident Jeff Kaiser.
The county says the area where the data center will be located has already been zoned for industrial, so there's nothing they can do to stop what people are doing with their land, but added that they can at least provide guidelines for how they operate.
