Victory for Transparency & Accountability at the Utah Legislature

After public criticism of a new bill that would hide the water use of individual data centers from the public, the bill sponsor substituted a new version in committee during week one of the Utah Legislature. The substitute provides more transparency on the massive water use of large data centers in Utah. HB 76 now takes a step forward for transparency in Utah by requiring large data centers to report their water usage.

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Utah is the second driest state in the country, and yet our municipal water is the least expensive in the U.S. Large institutional water users like data centers want to take root in local communities who are receptive to their desires, and cheap water is one asset for massive corporations to locate these water-draining facilities in the Great Salt Lake Basin.

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A large data center can consume as much water in a year as a town of 45,000 residents, so when a new data center is approved, it can dramatically strain water supplies to the Great Salt Lake. The original bill would have hid each specific facility’s water usage from the public by aggregating and anonymizing the data before making it public. By not knowing a data center’s water-use, residents and local governments wouldn’t be able to keep new water hogs out of the Great Salt Lake Basin.

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Utahns have a right to know how much water data centers are using, and we joined others in criticizing the secrecy around the water use by data centers in Utah. An in-depth KTVX story probed the issue more which led to awareness and public concern about the bill. The bill’s sponsor acknowledged the public’s concerns and improved her bill by making water use data more transparent and by requiring smaller data centers to also disclose their water use records.

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