Comments on Wastewater Discharge Permit Proposed for Tooele County
The Utah Division of Water Quality held a public hearing July 27, 2026 on permit UT0026409. The permit is needed to run a reverse osmosis treatment plant that would discharge up to 252,000 gallons a day of concentrated industrial brine — undiluted, with no water quality baseline ever established — into a channel feeding Class 5E wetlands and Gilbert Bay. This permit isn’t a side issue. It’s the required precondition for the whole Interstate Business Park development: a 200-acre data center campus, a 500-megawatt gas plant, and a truck stop/hotel complex, all backed by an estimated $234 million in public financing through the Utah Inland Port Authority. Without this permit, none of it can legally operate.
UPHE’s comments at the July 27, 2026 are below:
This room is full of citizens because they recognize the threat this permit represents to our environmental, our health, our quality of life, and our future.
On May 29, Gov. Cox issued an Executive Order wherein he stated, “WHEREAS, Utahns have expressed legitimate concerns regarding the potential impacts of large data centers on water resources, air quality, utility rates, local communities, and quality of life, and those concerns must be carefully considered.”
“WHEREAS, protecting the quality of life of Utah residents requires careful consideration of potential impacts on noise, heat, lighting, traffic, air, water, and other circumstances associated with large-scale development. And WHEREAS, Utah is committed to saving the Great Salt Lake.”
He then ordered the creation of a “framework” that included these principles.
“Protect the Great Salt Lake and other water resources across the state by ensuring that water consumption is not increased and that water quality is protected.” This permit does neither.
The developer claims he will add water to the lake, but his water source is almost certainly hydrologically connected to the lake.
Gov. Cox’s executive order requires, “Protect air quality and airsheds across the state, including not impacting existing non-attainment areas.” This permit will not do that.
And “Mitigate wildlife impacts.” That is extremely vague, but it’s pretty hard to make a case that this permit would “mitigate” wildlife impacts.
There is a reality that for years the governor and the legislature has been loath to accept. It includes the reality of an accelerating climate crisis, and all its associated environmental stressors. But also just the limitations of pushing continued economic and population expansion in a state that has significant, inherent, environmental limitations beyond the climate crisis. The reality is that we live in a desert, and water in a desert is a significant, economic limitation. That we live in a geographic bowl that traps air pollution. That we are inflicting on ourselves even more environmental hazards by not accepting our natural resource limitations.
You are looking at this permit in isolation. But there are about two dozen other data centers in various stages of the approval process in Utah. Individually each one may not be a catastrophe, but it’s death by a thousand cuts.
In other states, in counties and cities across the country, moratoriums on data centers have been established.
If the DWQ grants this permit, it will be a clear signal that the Governor’s Executive Order was hollow and meaningless.