Drought fears spur big fight over Utah data center

0:00Macy Lipkin:Support for Here and Now Anytime comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com. WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

0:20Robin Young:Just a couple of housekeeping things. As last Monday, there will be no public comment, period.

0:30Macy Lipkin:During this meeting. Enough! Enough! Quiet down right now!

0:42Jesse Keenan:The data center revolt has a new front in Utah.

0:56Jesse Keenan:It's Thursday, May 7th, and this is Here and Now, anytime from NPR and WBUR. I'm Chris Bentley.

1:05Jesse Keenan:Today on the show, an urban planner at Tulane says New Orleans needs to come to grips with its grim climate reality and discuss a future that includes at least some people abandoning the city.

1:19Robin Young:In private conversations, it's a daily part of our communications. But in public conversations, it's extraordinarily rare.

1:28Jesse Keenan:Also, Saturday is Birding's Big Day, when you can help crowdsource sightings for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Our own Robin Young stopped by the lab to learn more about Merlin ID, eBird, and BirdNet, apps which have made it easy to identify and log sightings and help the new generation of birders take flight. While she was there, she stopped by the feeder cam.

1:54Macy Lipkin:Are people watching you do this? Yes, so I'm always a little self-conscious. Oh, wait, I have to. I am on the camera. I can't believe I'm on the camera.

2:04Jesse Keenan:The Cornell Lab of Ornithology adds another robin to its collection in about 15 minutes. But first, Utah is the latest stop on a nationwide tour of contention over data centers. After hundreds of people turned out and thousands more submitted online comments against a mega project in the northwest corner of the state, Commissioners of Box Elder County approved plans for a data center and power plant covering some 60 square miles of mostly privately owned, unincorporated land. A lead investor in the project is Shark Tank's Kevin O 'Leary. KUER reporter Macy Lipkin has been covering the issue. She told Robin Young the rage comes from far beyond rural Box Elder County.

2:56Robin Young:Yeah, people are really angry. And a lot of them are not from the county, but from other parts of the state. I live a county or two south of there, and I know people who were at the meeting. There's people from Salt Lake who went up. And this is a bipartisan issue. I know people who are on both sides of the political aisle who are equally riled up about this. Utah is a really dry state, and there are really big concerns about how much water this would use. But then also air quality is really troubled in the Salt Lake Valley. Utah is not known for good air quality. So this idea of having a nine gigawatt power plant generated with natural gas is concerning a lot of people in terms of air quality.

3:38Macy Lipkin:Well, and you mentioned water. This project now approved still needs to get water rights. And as you alluded to, this is a big deal in a Western state. I was in Utah recently and it was like 80 degrees in March and there was no snowpack and there's nothing to melt and feed reservoirs. So this is a great deal there. And also the Great Salt Lake is drying up.

4:01Robin Young:Mm-hmm. And this year, we are just, Snowpack this year has been abysmal. We're record low for Snowpack. And yeah, like you said, Great Salt Lake is drying up, and that's something that people are super concerned about. Yeah.

4:14Macy Lipkin:Tell us more about this project. Yeah.

4:17Robin Young:So this would be a data center slash power plant, like you said, occupying 40 ,000 acres. I did talk with a developer about the water issue because that's central to so many people's concerns. And he said that, you know, activists are wrong about how much water it will use. They expected to use far less water than the water rights they planned to get for it. He couldn't give me an exact number because the plans are still kind of in development, but it would use a closed loop cooling system, which does use a lot less water than evaporative cooling. So that's one big concern where I think people are hungry for more information.

4:54Macy Lipkin:Well, and what reasons are the commissioners giving for approving it?

4:58Robin Young:They gave their consent for a state board to include private land in their county in this project area. Private landowners themselves have already consented, and the county just had to give them the thumbs up. And I got the sense from them that they were doing what they think is best for the county, because when they approved it this way, they could set up some guardrails, some conditions where they see the county getting things in return for doing this.

5:24Macy Lipkin:Well, and supporters of these kinds of data centers across the country say they're in the U.S. national security interest to stay competitive on AI, you know, with rivals like China. Are there vocal supporters coming out as well?

5:38Robin Young:Yeah, that was a big point that our governor, Spencer Cox, made. He had a monthly press conference at the end of April and said that this is a national security issue where we don't want China to get too far ahead in this kind of AI arms race. So the governor is a vocal supporter.

5:55Macy Lipkin:I'm wondering, are there any concerns? It's a huge tourist state, all sorts of outdoor activities. Are there people who are concerned about this massive, you know, edifice plopped in the middle of a county?

6:12Robin Young:Yeah, I haven't heard that concern about tourism because this isn't a place that many people go. Like, I've heard from residents that it's beautiful and they appreciate how quiet it is, but it's not a place that gets a lot of tourism as far as I know.

6:28Macy Lipkin:Well, we said it's waiting water rights. What does happen next, though? It's been approved.

6:34Robin Young:More than 3 ,700 protests were filed. Basically, people protesting to the Division of Water Rights against this water right being transferred. The Division of Water Rights says that they do consider every protest, that they're not a subjective decision maker, that they consider the complaints that people lodge and whether this would violate any rules or laws or infringe on anybody else's water rights. The military board that's kind of behind this project has said that they need to work on next steps like required studies or regulatory processes and that there will be community engagement and a design review committee will go forward with public meetings.

7:14Macy Lipkin:Well, there have been plenty of protests, but noting you tell us that that water rights application that drew 3 ,800 signatures has been withdrawn. That's Macy Lipkin, reporter for KUER in Utah. Thank you. Thank you.

7:32Jesse Keenan:Before we continue with the show, we need your help with a segment that we're planning soon. I'll let my colleague Ashley Locke explain how it came about.

7:42Robin Young:In prepping for an upcoming story, I talked with a mother yesterday who said her daughter is about to graduate from college. She has an English degree. She is a great student, very excited to get into the job market as a teacher, has come very close to getting a job three times only to be rejected. The mother told me it's really hard to see her cry and she doesn't know how to help her.

8:05Jesse Keenan:We want to hear from you. Are you a recent grad looking for work? Do you know one? If you're on the job hunt, what's been working for you? And what have you been struggling with? We're talking to a career coach about job interviews, the hunt for work, and how AI is complicating everything. What do you want us to ask them? Go to hereandnow.org slash jobs and record a short message for us. That's hereandnow.org slash jobs. And thanks. Hopefully we can answer some of your questions. Coming up next on today's show, Robin talks to the urban planner who says New Orleans is in a terminal state because of climate change.

8:49Jesse Keenan:and says he and his fellow New Orleanians need to reckon with what that really means. That's after the break.

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9:34Macy Lipkin:Well, New Orleans may not be savable. That's the stunning conclusion from a group of researchers whose analysis of rising seas and sinking land was published in the journal Nature Sustainability. They pull no punches. They say that in paleoclimate terms, looking back thousands of years, New Orleans is gone. The patient is terminal, and it's just a matter of time. That the question now isn't how to protect the city, but how to start a large-scale relocation of people living there. Jesse Keenan is a professor of sustainable real estate and urban planning at Tulane University in New Orleans, one of five co-authors of the paper.

10:08Macy Lipkin:Jesse, Professor, you say to understand why you reached this conclusion, you first have to understand what's happening to the land and water around New Orleans right now.

10:18Robin Young:It's some of the fastest rates of sea level rise anywhere in the world. Now, this is a combination of several things. Vertical land motions, that the land is sinking at the same time that the seas are rising significantly. New Orleans is no exception. New Orleans is sinking. It's already a bowl. 80 % of the land area of New Orleans is below sea level rise. New Orleans is functionally surrounded by water as it stands today. And so in that context, New Orleans, its lifespan as a place, at least a place above water, is limited and term limited. And in recent years, we've seen a lot of master planning and significant planning associated with coastal protection, and coastal erosion.

11:08Robin Young:But at the end of the day, all of those projects were more or less buying time for New Orleans.

11:13Macy Lipkin:And you say that's all foreclosed now. That's over. You need to talk about moving people. You know what you're saying. As many American cities are, this is a cultural thing as well as a place with buildings. And it's even far more than that. This is New Orleans that you're talking about, your base there. How do you tell people for whom culture is life to move?

11:40Robin Young:So I would argue culture is life everywhere in different forms or fashions, but certainly New Orleans represents a unique place in time, a unique set of cultures, pan-Caribbean cultures, and it's an important historical marker. It's also an enormous component of American infrastructural investment. Significant amounts of grains, cereals, fuels, petrochemicals flow through New Orleans. It is a resource for the global economy in that regard. But I think it's also worth reflecting that people are already leaving New Orleans and leaving the state of Louisiana. There's already a domestic outflow in terms of population migration.

12:23Robin Young:And this comes from a lot of different reasons. But the market economy is adapting very fast to climate change. And we see this in insurance market, mortgages, real property, property taxes, utility rates. And the rate of adaptation is imposing a form of economic stress on households that is exacerbating existing challenges that we have with affordability, inflation, and cost of living. And that's shaping people's mobility decisions. So the exodus has already begun.

12:55Macy Lipkin:Look, you've said that you know people love where they're born, and that's going to be a difficult sell. But you feel, you and the other scientists on this paper, obviously feel the need to stand up and say this. Are you worried about panicking people?

13:11Robin Young:I think in New Orleans, we don't run the risk of a panic. I think this is, and I would say I would more know in terms of my own experience. Let me just say it this way. People privately understand and discuss the precarity of our lives. Our power goes out all the time. We boil our water every other week. that we see the erosion of our infrastructure and our government services, and we see the state of the city. And it is very rare that in private conversations, it's a daily part of our communications. But in public conversations, it's extraordinarily rare. And I think it's very important that we come to terms in a very public way to talk about what comes next and provide a vision for the collective in the future.

14:02Robin Young:This is impacting people all around this country, whether it's a wildfire zone, a flood zone. It is shaping how and where we lead our lives, and it's really pushing people in a certain direction. When you look at New Orleans and when you talk to people in New Orleans right now, one of the first things they'll tell you about is the price of insurance or the fact that they can't even get insurance. That is shaping their business decisions. It's shaping how they view building a community in the future. And it's a clear signal that there is a terminal state that we face in New Orleans.

14:35Macy Lipkin:Yeah. Jesse Keenan, director of the Center on Climate Change and Urbanism at Tulane University in New Orleans. By the way, his book, North, the Future of Post-Climate America. And as we've been hearing, he thinks in at least, you know, by the end of the century, he and other scientists feel that future will have to include moving people from New Orleans. Jesse Keenan, we're going to keep this conversation going. Thank you.