Kevin O'Leary says blocking his $100 billion Utah data center is what China wants, but distressed residents are trying anyway with a referendum

The effort, called the Box Elder Accountability Referendum (BEAR), is led by locals such as Brenna Williams, who has experience fighting big data center projects when one was in the works in Millard County (2), the rural region in western Utah where her parents live.

"A lot of women in the county who have children and are looking at our futures and our children's futures — we just coalesced into a group, and we all felt the same," Brenna told the Tribune (1). "It needed to be done. There needed to be a fight here."

Protesters were initially turned away and were told approval was a state issue, not a county one. Brenna then received a call from the clerk stating the data center's approval could be subject to a county referendum.

The county has 20 days to review the referendum. If viable, the residents would still need to secure 5,422 signatures (1) from neighbors across four different participation areas to put it to a vote.

A seat at the table

A spokesperson for Box Elder County told Fortune (3) that if the referendum moves forward, it would not necessarily stop the project.

"The project could possibly still move forward, but without the concessions, conditions, and protections negotiated by the County," the spokesperson said. "The County Commissioners worked tirelessly to secure the best possible outcome for the County, and a successful referendum could undo those negotiated protections and agreements."

Residents, however, say the project was rushed through without their consultation — and that one commissioner told the audience (3) at a community meeting to "grow up."

The Salt Lake Tribune found just two percent of crowdsourced comments were in support of the data center.

Box Elder County did not immediately respond to Moneywise's request to comment.

A growing anti-AI movement

Robert Davies, a physics professor at Utah State University, told the New York Times that O'Leary's data center would be the "equivalent of about 23 atom bombs worth of energy dumped into this local environment every single day." (4)