Kevin O’Leary agreed to halve the size of his planned 40,000-acre data center in Utah amid mounting pressure from residents and activists, as reported earlier by local affiliate ABC4. The Shark Tank star sent a letter to Utah Senate President J. Stuart Adams on Thursday, saying that he will remove 19,430 acres from the project, located in and around the Locomotive Springs Waterfowl Management Area.
The change comes just days after Adams called on O’Leary to slash the size of his Project Stratos data center by 75 percent, which would reduce it to about 10,000 acres. Adams also asked O’Leary to implement technology that minimizes water consumption, as well as to divert excess water to the Great Salt Lake, which continues to shrink.
O’Leary also said in the letter that he’ll cut another 620 acres in the northeast portion of the project near the highway, adding that he will “preserve a majority of the remaining acreage as open space.” Even with a smaller footprint of around 20,000 acres, Project Stratos will still cover an area larger than Manhattan — and data centers a fraction of this size still pose major concerns surrounding energy usage, impact on the environment, and pollution.