#KevinOLeary’s Massive #DataCenter Project in #Utah Gets the Greenlight, Locals Are Furious

The project would be more than twice the size of Manhattan and could consume more electricity than the entire state currently uses.

By Bruce Gil
Published May 6, 2026

"The Box Elder County Commission voted on Monday to move forward with a proposed 40,000-acre #AI and #CloudComputing campus in a rural part of northern Utah near the #GreatSaltLake. The site would span more than twice the size of Manhattan.

"The project, backed by O’Leary Digital, the infrastructure arm of O’Leary Ventures, is expected to eventually produce and consume up to 9 gigawatts of power. That’s roughly double the amount of electricity the entire state of Utah currently consumes, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.

"The campus is expected to be built in phases and overseen by Utah’s Military Installation Development Authority (#MIDA). O’Leary proposed a similar project in Canada in 2024 and has referred to both developments as '#WonderValley.' "

[...]

"For his part, O’Leary has claimed, without evidence, that much of the opposition to the project was 'paid' and that the meeting was filled with 'professional protestors.'

" 'We think that over 90% of the protestors are actually not people that live in Utah or Box Elder County. They’re being bussed in,' O’Leary said in a video posted on X.
He also claimed backlash on social media surrounding the project was AI-generated.

"O’Leary Ventures did not immediately respond to a human-issued request for comment from Gizmodo."

Full article:
https://gizmodo.com/kevin-olearys-massive-data-center-project-in-utah-gets-the-greenlight-locals-are-furious-2000755168

Archived version:
https://archive.ph/Q9tF4

#OLearyDigital #OLearyVentures #SharkTank #Datacenters #AIDatacenters #LocalOpposition #NoisePollution #AISucks #MilitaryIndustrialComplex

Alberta Water Council among several environmental advisory groups being eliminated for minimal savings

https://archive.ph/8t9hK

The UCP government pulled the plug on an independent council that provided expert advice to the province on water policy.

Canadians are basically being told we can’t be scared of what we don’t know. And, we don’t know what we don’t know, right?

Danielle Smith’s UCP is cutting off our ability to assess and track the environmental impacts of 3 major datacentre projects that are proposed for Alberta in Wonder Valley, Mihta Askiy, and Synapse. With the Federal Government also signalling a pull back on Environmental Assessment, experts rightly sound the alarm to state the obvious:

You can’t manage what you don’t measure.

Worse, these projects are not traditional infrastructure projects that provide critical “Public Goods” to society. They’re in many ways long-term investments in data management technologies that may prove to be bad gambles. As of 2026, in the midst of an on-going US-Iran conflict, and what most observers expect will lead to $150 per barrel oil, fuel shortages, fertilizer shortages, and worse, data centres are enormous investments in time, energy, water, and space. In exchange, these Data Centres may lead to contributions in “Artificial Intelligence”, but the reality of the technology is uneven adoption and even less productivity than hoped for.

As the world develops these “AI” products, there’s also an expectation that they become leaner, more efficient, and more performant. When these efficiencies are developed, and become industry changing, whole markets rattle wondering if the existing data centres and their investments were wasted. For example, Canadians can just look at the 2025 release of DeepSeek, which essentially introduced a new competitor to the AI sector, and a model that was indeed more efficient and performant at the same time. At that moment, NVIDIA stocks lost $600 Billion in value.

With additional developments in this space, Canadians can see that the markets continue to rattle in 2026, costing Billions more in losses.

https://www.upgrad.com/blog/chinese-ai-returns-to-haunt-markets-one-year-after-deepseek/

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-ai-models-rattling-markets-42ee512e

https://archive.is/iFbbd

As each year passes, and new models are released, these Data Centres have regular maintenance schedules that require regular replacement of spent chips and all of its components - much like a vehicle. Under the present geopolitical situation in the Middle East, the massive volumes of natural gas and precious water that will be spent feeding these centres pose a real risk that Albertans can be holding the bag to some extremely destructive Data Centres without appropriate security or collateral.

Some of these projects will be within ear shot of residential areas. You don’t have to search very far for people complaining about the noise from the power generators on site to figure out these Data Centres can literally alter the way entire communities are built

So, it’s true, Canadians cannot manage what we don’t measure. But, we can also see what’s happened already to know we’re not even managing the risk of when these Data Centres go wrong.

https://kopitalk.net/c/canada/p/426197/impact-assessments-not-required-for-olds-mihta-askiy-data-centres-expert-says-legislatio

Should Canadians be disturbed that Assessments are being set aside for these very slap dash projects that are considered Natural Gas Plants, and are presented as “infrastructure”? Of course.

Should Canadians be worried about what little we already know? Let’s take a peek at Wonder Valley: From the National Observer’s Marc Fawcett-Atkinson, Albertans are also aware that the Wonder Valley project is not just about power generation. Specifically, the Wonder Valley project alone is expected to consume enough water to match that of 460,000 people over their entire lifetimes….

The plan is outlined in a heavily redacted land sale contract signed on March 25, 2026, between O’Leary’s company and a rural municipality of fewer than 9,000 people north of Edmonton.

Under the agreement, the Municipal District of Greenview will transfer a large part of a planned industrial park developed by the district to O’Leary’s company in three phases as it builds out the 7.5-gigawatt Wonder Valley project. But there’s a catch: before the sale goes through, the municipality must “act as an agent” for O’Leary’s company by securing provincial water licences that give the facility access to up to 24 million cubic metres of water annually.

That’s enough water for about 460,000 people over their lifetimes, drawn from a municipality that last year declared an agricultural emergency because of drought.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2026/04/20/news/kevin-oleary-pins-water-licence-70-billion-data-centre-project-small-alberta

The Politician may like the prospect of pleasing Oil and Gas incumbents with a solid source of demand for Natural Gas. But no one seems to give a damn about where the costs are landing - seems to be on everyone else’s backs.

"If the project is entirely powered by natural gas and doesn't capture any of those emissions, it will set Canada back 20 years in carbon emissions reductions"

This is unconscionable

#abpoli #cdnpoli #climatecrisis #datacenter #ai #artificialintelligence #wondervalley

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2026/04/03/news/alberta-scraps-environmental-assessment-kevin-olearys-worlds-largest-data-centre