Utah’s great salt lake revival clashes with data center boom as water wars intensify

Utah faces a stark contradiction: Governor Spencer Cox wants to save the dying Great Salt Lake while simultaneously transforming the drought-stricken state into a data center hub. Standing beside the shrinking lake in September, Cox unveiled an ambitious plan to raise water levels by over six feet before the 2034 Winter Olympics. Yet his administration has also welcomed at least 15 new data center projects since 2021, facilities that have historically consumed massive amounts of water for cooling.

The water usage varies dramatically between facilities. The NSA’s Bluffdale data center alone consumed 126 million gallons in one year—enough to supply nearly 800 Utah households. Meanwhile, newer facilities like DataBank’s campus used just 7.7 million gallons over the same period, demonstrating that water-efficient alternatives exist but aren’t universally adopted. Republican State Representative Jill Koford is pushing legislation requiring data centers to publicly report their water consumption, noting the lack of transparency around these massive facilities.

The debate highlights a broader national tension as communities from Arizona to Virginia push back against water-intensive data centers. Nearly $64 billion in data center projects faced local opposition in 2024, with one-third of existing facilities located in water-stressed regions. While some companies have adopted closed-loop cooling systems that dramatically reduce water use, they require significantly more electricity—creating another environmental trade-off in a state racing to double its energy generation through “Operation Gigawatt.”

As Utah’s legislative session approaches, the question remains whether Cox’s promise that data centers won’t conflict with water conservation will translate into rising lake levels or remain merely political rhetoric.