Local officials in Utah recently approved an agreement with the developer of a data center complex nearly the size of Washington, D.C., with enough natural gas power generation to power the state of Oregon.

During a Monday meeting at a local fairgrounds, hundreds of people chanted “Shame!” at the three Box Elder County commissioners who voted unanimously to approve the deal with Project Stratos, backed by Shark Tank celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary and Utah’s Military Installation Development Authority. The approval allows the authority to offer incentives for the project, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

Project Stratos involves installing 9 gigawatts of power generation, likely from natural gas – roughly equivalent to the average power demand of the state of Oregon. This electricity would power a data center complex of 40,000 acres, slightly smaller than the land area of Washington, D.C.  

Stratos is one of the larger (though not the largest) proposed data center projects drawing local backlash across the U.S., where companies are racing to build more computing power to support artificial intelligence models. In the arid West, one serious concern is water use, with Stratos securing enough water rights to supply the indoor water needs of 20,000 Utah homes, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.

Box Elder County commissioners faced an irate crowd Monday, eventually leaving the room and finishing the meeting via videoconference. Their approval allowed the county to impose several conditions on the project, including noise limits, building height restrictions, and compliance with “dark sky” rules, according to a county news release.  

O’Leary pushed back against protestors on social media, saying that he is the “only developer of data centers on earth that graduated from environmental studies,” referring to his bachelor’s degree in environmental studies an psychology from the University of Waterloo.