Project dossier · Box Elder County (near Brigham City), Utah

Stratos In review

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.

Key facts

Operator
O'Leary Digital
Size
1,100 MW
Acres
40,000
Location
Box Elder County (near Brigham City), Utah
Stage today
In review

Source
read 2026-08-14

What to do next

Next step: An application is in the record. Ask the planning office for the next hearing date and request formal notice.

Build an action pack for this project →

What has happened so far (15 events)

  • 2026-04-24vote
    MIDA's board of directors approved four resolutions and a tax ordinance creating the Stratos Project Area, before Box Elder County had formally consented; critics later alleged MIDA also signed a development agreement the same morning. · source
  • 2026-05-04vote
    Box Elder County Commission approved Resolutions 26-11 and 26-12 consenting to the MIDA Stratos Project Area and an interlocal agreement, at a contentious meeting at the county fairgrounds in Tremonton with hundreds of opponents present and sheriff's deputies controlling the crowd. · source
  • 2026-05-07withdrawal
    The holder of an 1904-vintage water right withdrew a change application seeking to convert 1,900 acre-feet from agricultural to industrial use for the Stratos project, after more than 3,700 formal protests were filed at $15 each; the developer stated it fully intends to refile. · source
  • 2026-05-12coverage
    Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz said he did not attend the meeting Kevin O'Leary described on Fox News and only learned of the project in early April 2026; the Deseret News reported the project's estimated cost exceeds $100 billion. · source
  • 2026-05-14protest
    Approximately 400 to 500 people rallied at the Utah Capitol against the Stratos project, delivering an opposition letter signed by over 7,500 people calling on Governor Cox, House Speaker Schultz, and Senate President Adams to order independent water and fiscal studies. · source
  • 2026-05-18environmental
    Grist reported the project would raise Utah's carbon emissions by 64 percent and that a physics professor calculated 16 gigawatts of waste heat could spike Hansel Valley nighttime temperatures by as much as 28 degrees Fahrenheit. · source
  • 2026-05-19announcement
    O'Leary Digital released renderings of the proposed Stratos campus in Box Elder County; state environmental approvals were estimated at roughly two years, with air monitoring required for one year before a permit application. · source
  • 2026-05-23protest
    Hundreds of Utahns rallied at the state Capitol a second time demanding a halt to the Box Elder data center plan, calling on state leaders to protect water, air, and land. · source
  • 2026-05-28denial
    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
  • 2026-05-28coverage
    Governor Spencer Cox declared the Stratos project will 'never' run solely on natural gas, stating the first phase would use gas but subsequent phases should use nuclear, geothermal, and solar power. · source
  • 2026-06-03lawsuit
    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
  • 2026-06-03lawsuit
    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
  • 2026-06-04announcement
    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
  • 2026-06-10moratorium
    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
  • 2026-07-29coverage
    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

Find the paper trail

Find the paper trail (0 filed · 11 places to look)

State environmental permits

Backup generators, water withdrawal and stormwater are permitted by the state, usually earlier and in more detail than anything filed locally.

County & town filings

The rezoning application, site plan, traffic and noise studies, staff report and every revision.

Utility & grid records

The electricity request is filed with the grid operator and the utility long before the town hears about it — and states the real load.

  • No organised market covers this statenoteThere is no public queue to read. The record is the utility's integrated resource plan and its filings at the PUC — plus FERC eLibrary for anything federally docketed.
  • Utah Public Service Commission — docket searchSpecial contracts, large-load tariffs and rate cases are docketed here. Testimony and exhibits are public, and are usually more candid than the press release.
  • FERC eLibraryFederal filings: transmission agreements, interconnection service agreements, and co-location disputes.
  • Search the serving utility for a will-serve lettersearchThe will-serve or load-service letter is the utility's own written commitment. Ask the utility and the PUC for it by name — it is frequently the first document to exist.

Federal databases

Works anywhere, and covers the operator's record at its other sites.

  • EPA ECHO facility searchEvery federally-reported air, water and waste permit at a facility, plus its inspection and violation history. Search by address or draw a radius around the site. This project's locality centres on 41.510, -112.020 — search that point with a 5-mile radius.
  • EPA EnvirofactsThe same underlying records, queryable by county — useful for 'what else is permitted near this site' rather than one facility.
  • EPA Facility Registry ServiceResolves the shell LLC on a permit to the facility it belongs to. Worth a look when the filing name means nothing locally.

These are places to look, not evidence that anything has been filed. Links were checked on 2026-08-21; search links are queries, not records. What to ask for.

Around here

Other tracked projects in Utah

Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “Stratos”, aigridwatch.com/projects/stratos-box-elder-ut, retrieved 2026-10-11.

As of August 2026 (2m ago) · changes weekly — re-check before citing

A working set of identified proposals a community can track, not a census — most of the country's activity is not in here yet. Pennsylvania is the exception: its rows are synced from PA DEP's own data-center permit tracker, so the state's coverage is close to complete and carries the permit trail with it. **Each row carries its own provenance.** Rows showing a verification date link to reporting or the governing body's own record and were read on that date; rows marked *unverified* have no source on record — a lead to check, not a fact to cite. **Stage is derived, not asserted.** *Hearing scheduled*, *Awaiting decision*, *Approved* and *Withdrawn* are computed from each row's milestone dates on every rebuild, so a hearing date that has passed stops reading 'scheduled'. Hearings get moved and projects re-file under new names — treat a scheduled date as the earliest to act by, and confirm with the clerk before relying on it. Leads are mined into data/project_candidates.json and promoted here only after a human reads a primary source.

Part of the data center project tracker — open data, CC BY 4.0 (JSON · CSV).

Toolkit States Tracker Search