In Utah on Wednesday, State Senate President J. Stuart Adams—one of the most powerful Republicans in the state—lost his primary election after supporting a major data center development near the Great Salt Lake, in one of the clearest signs yet of the growing political risks tied to the industry.
Utah has 2 or 3 of the largest wildfires in the US right now. We are also out of water. Literally they said of one of the fires that they ran out of water on the mountain and to stay away until they could manage to find more. The data center in question was proposed to be the size of Manhattan. And use more power then the entire state currently does. One idiotic building. This dude was a piece of shit before, but the idiot voters in his district still supported him. But once this came out even they broke. Fuck these assholes. Vote them all out.
This is foreshadowing that hubris ignores. A wildfire will take out the huge data center and it will have used up all the water to cool itself instead of quench the fire.
God that would be amazing.
Its worth noting that even if that data centre used closed loop cooling, generating all that power requires lots of water (like most generating stations, including coal and gas) or use combustion turbine generators that pollutes like crazy.
what about all that groundwater the mormons are pumping out of heber? like 180,000 gallons a day for their clubhouse? they use ALL of that?
Heber is pretty far from this particular fire.
oh i thought we were also highlighting state mismanagement of water, withdrawn
I mean that’s a given. It infuriated me last year when we had one good winter and the state threw out all it’s plans and demands for water management. Then this winter hit and I said to many people that the fires were going to be very bad. We have reservoirs that are sitting under 20% full for years now. But it sounds like you may live here as well and are aware of this.
used to live there, keep up with news to see how old friends are doing. one of the places they hold one of the big festivals out by heber is my family’s old farm. it’s a godsdamned golf course now.