TOOELE, Utah — It was a passionate meeting Monday night.
“I hate feeling powerless to protect the land that my kids rely on, so I’m looking you in the face with all the mama bear fury that I can muster and demand that you deny this proposal,” one resident said during public comment, which was followed by applause.
Residents spoke out against a permit managed by the Utah Division of Air Quality that would allow the Tooele Valley Public Infrastructure District to establish a wastewater treatment plant near the edge of the Great Salt Lake.
Teri Durfee from Stop the Polluting Ports Coalition is a lifelong Tooele resident and lives close to where the plant is expected to go.
“The discharge, it would have arsenic in it, it would have very high salinity, and it would have a lot of things that you definitely wouldn't want back in the system. And they're talking about putting it in the wetlands that would go into the Great Salt Lake,” she said. "There's already troubles with what's already on the lake bed, so to add all of this extra is very concerning.”
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This is just one permit connected to an overall industrial development project backed by the Utah Inland Port Authority. Executive director Ben Hart said they want to add rail access and bring the best businesses and jobs to the area, and knows that one developer is advocating for a data center.
“There's a moratorium on data centers in Tooele County. We 100% support that moratorium,” Hart said. "The board's not going to be doing anything to further the objectives of any type of data center development until we receive our cues from the county and from the state of Utah that everybody is comfortable with this moving forward.”
However, those against the project have concerns about the discharge that would end up back in the Great Salt Lake and fear the project would take up more water than what the state already has to offer with the severe drought.
“This is about our longevity in this state. If we want to live there, we need to act like we live in a desert,” another resident said during public comment, which was also followed up by applause.
“Until those concerns are met and addressed, the port's not going to be doing anything to further this development, and certainly not furthering any data centers either,” Hart said.
There were about two hours of public comment during Monday night’s meeting. The Division of Air Quality extended public comments until midnight, and a decision will be made at a later date.
