The data center fight in Box Elder County, Utah
As of September 27, 2026, Box Elder County, Utah has a data center moratorium in force (action taken Jun 10, 2026; documented end date 2026-12-07).
Status is derived, not stored — a pause with a documented end date flips to Expired on its own — and the source is right next to the claim.
Status today
180-day moratorium on new data centers and data center power plants on unincorporated land, unanimous (3-0). Does not reach the Stratos project: the county had already ceded land-use authority over that site to Utah's Military Installation Development Authority for 50 years
SourceNews
read 2026-09-05
An expiry date is the earliest a pause could have ended — extensions are common, so confirm with the clerk before citing it.
The project on the table
Stratos — In review
Operator: O'Leary Digital · Size: 1,100 MW · Acres: 40,000
O'Leary Digital, chaired by Kevin O'Leary, proposes the Stratos campus in unincorporated Box Elder County near Brigham City: eleven 100 MW data center buildings plus a 7.5-9 GW natural gas plant and a 500 MW solar array on roughly 40,000 acres across three sites. Renderings were released 2026-05-19; the county commission approved an interlocal agreement with the Military Installation Development Authority in early May 2026. State environmental permitting could take about two years, with a 30-day public comment period and hearing required, and over 40 protests have been filed on its water rights application.
Next: An application is in the record. Ask the planning office for the next hearing date and request formal notice.
Latest in the record
- 2026-07-29 — Kevin O'Leary said design work on the Stratos data center is 'full steam ahead' while MIDA remains on 'pause' awaiting permit requests for the project. · source
- 2026-06-10 — Box Elder County commissioners unanimously approved a 180-day moratorium on new data centers and power plants on unincorporated land, but explicitly exempted the Stratos project whose land-use authority had been transferred to MIDA for 50 years. · source
- 2026-06-04 — O'Leary agreed to cut the project area from roughly 40,000 acres to 20,000 acres, removing the Locomotive Springs and I-84 parcels and keeping only the Hansel Valley parcel, with 10,000 acres designated as open space. · source
- 2026-06-03 — Alliance for a Better Utah and five Box Elder County residents filed suit in Utah's 3rd District Court challenging MIDA's constitutionality and seeking to void the Stratos approval, also alleging Senate President Adams had a conflict of interest from a $135,000 PAC donation. · source
- 2026-06-03 — Box Elder Accountability Referendum (BEAR) filed an appeal in Utah 1st District Court in Brigham City challenging the county attorney's rejection of referendum applications on Resolutions 26-11 and 26-12, arguing the approvals were legislative acts subject to voter referendum. · source
- 2026-05-28 — Box Elder County Attorney Stephen Hadfield rejected three referendum applications challenging the May 4 commission vote, ruling the resolutions were irrevocable administrative actions rather than newly created laws and thus not referable to voters. · source
Full dated timeline on the project tracker.
Source. Read 2026-08-14.
What to do next
- Questions to ask at the hearing — force specific answers onto the record.
- Estimate the impact — electricity, water, and rate pressure for any facility size in Utah.
- Model CBA clauses — copy-paste language communities have actually won.
- Utah briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts, and every fight in the state.
Nearby in Utah
- Cache County (18 mi) — Enactedexpires 2026-12-20
- Logan (19 mi) — Enactedexpires 2026-12-27
- Clearfield (28 mi) — Enactedexpires 2027-03-07
- Wayne County (216 mi) — Enactedexpires 2027-01-17
- Milford (221 mi) — Enactedexpires 2026-12-13
- Grand County (242 mi) — Enactedexpires 2027-01-03
- Iron County (270 mi) — Enactedexpires soon — 2026-11-22
All 8 tracked actions in Utah are on the state page.
As of August 2026 · changes weekly — re-check before citing
Illustrative rather than exhaustive — dozens of localities churn weekly, and this tracks the ones we have read a source for. **Each row carries its own provenance.** Rows showing a verification date link to the ordinance, the enacting body's own page, or a datable report of the vote, and were read on that date. Rows marked *unverified* came from bulk compilation and have not been checked against a primary source — the locality, the year, and the status may all be off. Verify one of those with the town clerk before citing it as precedent. **Expiry is derived, not asserted.** A row with a documented end date flips to *Expired* on its own once that date passes. A time-limited moratorium whose start date was never documented keeps showing as enacted — that is a known gap, not a claim that it is still in force. Moratoriums are also routinely extended, so an expiry date is the earliest it could have ended, not proof that it did.
Part of the U.S. data center moratorium tracker — open data, CC BY 4.0.