Data centers in Salt Lake County, Utah: 4 projects mapped

Records that The Salt Lake Tribune obtained from municipal water providers for October 2024 to September 2025, published in partnership with Grist, show how much cooling design matters. Novva's chief executive Wes Swenson said its closed-loop system took 55,000 gallons to fill once, and estimated evaporative cooling would need about 250 million gallons a year. Aligned's West Jordan site used 47.4 million gallons, and eBay's South Jordan data center 19.5 million. "Water is extremely cheap," Swenson said. "And cities have generally accommodated that."

The Legislature responded in 2026. HB 76, from Representative Jill Koford, requires new large data centers to report their expected water sources and use to the state before construction and their actual withdrawals every year after they open, with the figures published online. "We live in a desert," Koford said before the session.

HB 507 generally bars local governments from offering incentives to large data centers outside designated regionally significant development zones, and generally caps property tax incentives at 60 percent of the new county revenue a project brings, 80 percent at most. A 2025 law, SB 132, already requires separate accounting for the costs of serving very large loads. According to the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, Utah has 48 operating data centers with more than 920 megawatts of capacity, and seven under construction are expected to add about 2,600 megawatts.