- It’s still under investigation whether a new data center in Utah will use 16 billion gallons of water a year and be 2.7 times the size of Manhattan.
- Putting exact numbers on the proposal is difficult, experts said, because the developers of the data center — financed by billionaire investor Kevin O’Leary — have not provided estimates for water use and have repeatedly walked back claims or changed plans following public outrage.
- A preliminary May analysis from Utah Clean Energy, a nonprofit group that promotes clean, renewable energy, determined that the proposed Stratos data center in Box Elder County could use between 2 billion and 16.6 billion gallons of water a year, depending on how it generates its power.
- The developers said they will use new technologies that will drastically reduce water consumption, but experts are skeptical that the technology is ready and are reluctant to believe developer claims without reviewing specific, detailed plans. There’s no evidence those plans exist.
- Furthermore, while the entire project area encompasses 40,000 acres — which is about 2.7 times the size of Manhattan — O’Leary agreed to scale back the project to 10,000 acres following protests and a demand from Republican Utah Senate leader Stuart Adams.
- In an emailed statement, the Stratos development team said their plans are “still under design” and they could not yet estimate how much water the data center would use.
In spring 2026, social media users spread a rumor that a new data center in Utah would use about 16 billion gallons of water a year and that the center would be 2.7 times the size of Manhattan.
Posts on X, Instagram and Reddit raised alarm about the allegedly massive footprint of the proposed artificial intelligence data center — a physical facility used to house computer systems.
Utah has, in fact, approved a contract for the “Stratos Project,” a plan to build a large-scale AI data center backed by billionaire investor Kevin O’Leary of “Shark Tank” fame. It is difficult to determine exact numbers regarding the data center because its developers have not provided enough information and have repeatedly walked back claims or changed plans following public outrage.
As such, we have not rated this claim, even though the numbers come from credible sources producing estimates with the information available. In an emailed statement, the Stratos development team said their plans are “still under design and prescribing any amount of water with hard numbers is probably too early.”
“We will in time and post-engineering of a final solution we will have a proper study and water amounts,” the team said.
Here’s what you need to know:
Developers scale back plans
When the project in Box Elder County, Utah, was first announced, developers and the state claimed it would be 40,000 acres, produce 9 gigawatts of power annually and run on natural gas.
Manhattan is 22.7 square miles, equivalent to 14,528 acres. Dividing 40,000 by 14,258 results shows the initial Stratos proposal would have been about 2.75 times the size of Manhattan.
However, following public protest and a letter from Republican Utah Senate leader Stuart Adams, O’Leary agreed in early June 2026 to scale back the proposed data center project area’s size by 75%, despite calling the demand “outrageous” just a few days earlier.
Water usage depends on what tech gets used
To understand estimates of water usage for the Stratos center, you first need to know that there are two major uses of water related to data centers: water for cooling the computers inside the data center, and water used in the process of power generation itself.
The developers and supporters of the project have promoted a plan to use a “closed-loop” system for cooling the computers, which will use less water.
“Because the cooling systems reuse water internally, ongoing water demand at the campus is projected to be similar to that of a large office complex, with most water use limited to everyday needs such as restrooms, sinks, and employee facilities,” Republican Utah Gov. Spencer Cox’s office wrote in an FAQ about the center.
But that fails to address how much water the facility might use for power generation, said Logan Mitchell, a climate scientist and energy analyst at Utah Clean Energy, a nonprofit group that promotes clean, renewable energy.
Utah Clean Energy’s preliminary May analysis (archived) is where the claim the data center would use 16 billion gallons of water a year originated from: The organization estimated it could use 16.6 billion gallons of water a year if developers use one of two common designs for power generation via natural gas called a “combined-cycle combustion turbine.”
The other design, a reciprocating internal combustion engine, would use 2 billion gallons of water, according to the Utah Clean Energy analysis.
For comparison, Utahns as a whole use about 847 billion gallons of water a year, per a 2023 estimate by Utah Foundation, a nonpartisan research organization.
“Utah Clean Energy is simply saying, ‘Look, you say you’re not going to use much water, but you haven’t provided any details as to how you’ll follow through on that, so until you do we’ll do an analysis for the standard technology,'” Rob Davies, a physics professor at Utah State University who researches sustainable environment systems, said in an email.
Mitchell noted that high demand for combined-cycle combustion turbines means they’re sold out for years, so it’s more likely that developers will go with the option that uses less water. However, that option is far more expensive and creates an “enormous amount of air pollution,” Mitchell said in a phone call.
“This is why it doesn’t make sense to me at all to even propose a 9-gigawatt data center,” Mitchell said. “It’s kind of preposterous, from a purely economic standpoint, without even getting to the environmental impacts.”
According to Box Elder County officials, the developers said they’ll use air-cooled heat exchangers for power generation — also known as Allam cycle plants — which have “zero evaporative loss” from the atmosphere. However, experts are skeptical that the technology is ready. (It’s worth noting the FAQ from the governor’s office makes no mention of Allam cycle plants, instead focusing on the closed-loop cooling system.)
“The world’s largest Allam cycle plant is in Texas and it’s 400 times smaller than a 9-gigawatt plant,” Ben Abbott, an ecology professor at Brigham Young University, said in a phone call. (He was referencing the NET Power demonstration plant.)
The developers told Snopes in an email that they were going to “design a waterless power generation solution,” are “getting close to finalizing that system” and will “disclose this solution when the design is fully baked.”Abbott and Mitchell said nuclear or renewable energy, like solar and wind, would be far more efficient than using natural gas. O’Leary has been a vocal proponent of natural gas, calling it the most “scalable,” but he and state officials have also shared conflicting information about whether the center might use a mix of natural gas and renewable energy.
Breaking down the math
Utah Clean Energy’s water consumption estimates came from simple calculations using publicly available data, Mitchell said. Utah Clean Energy looked at power plant data published by PacifiCorp, a utility company that serves customers in Utah. Per table 7.2 on PDF Page 167 of a 2025 report from PacifiCorp, the combined-cycle combustion turbines use 210 gallons of water per megawatt-hour.
Nine gigawatts is equivalent to 9,000 megawatts. If it’s running for a year, 9,000 megawatts an hour multiplied by 24 hours a day and 365 days a year is equal to 78,840,000 megawatts per year. Multiply that by 210 gallons of water per megawatt-hour, and you have about 16.6 billion gallons a year.
Mitchell did a similar calculation with information from that same table for the other estimate, too.
Abbott said he found Utah Clean Energy’s estimate to be “absolutely plausible” and vouched for the organization, which he said was staffed by scientists who do “serious analysis.” He also pointed out that the analysis used state-specific information and not generic national numbers, which means it’s comparable to what already exists in Utah.
“In general, I find Utah Clean Energy’s estimates to be defensible,” said Abbott, who also heads Grow the Flow, an organization focused on Utah water policy and restoring the state’s Great Salt Lake. “I think the worst-case scenario is far beyond [their estimate].”
The bottom line
The environmental impact of the Stratos data center is not yet definitively calculable. There may be indirect effects, too, that simple calculations of water use can’t determine: Davies, the physics professor, determined that the heat generated by a 9-gigawatt plant could result in a permanent daytime temperature rise and suppress the condensation cycle, resulting in even more water consumption.
Many of these calculations become irrelevant under the assumption that O’Leary keeps his promise to scale back the data center. Until developers provide a detailed blueprint for the Stratos project — or actually build the center — there’s just no way to know how much water it will consume, how big it will be and what its overall environmental effect might look like.
“They really need to come with an actual plan rather than a concept of a plan,” Mitchell said.
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