‘We’re headed in the wrong direction’
UPHE gathered at the steps of the State Capitol with allies and friends on a rainy Sunday last weekend to speak out on developments happening at the detriment of our communities.
UPHE board member, Dr. Sara Johnson, spoke at the Earth Action Rally. She told ABC4, “You really can’t separate what’s happening with our environment with adverse health outcomes. Long-term consequences of the dust in our air: we have issues with endocrine disease, reproductive disease, cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease.”
She spoke about the state’s recent and aggressive push for nuclear energy, calling for a slow down to evaluate the potential health risks, and where the demand is coming from, which is largely AI data centers. Should Utahns be risking our health and communities for development that poses even more risks to our quality of life?
Dr. Brian Moench, UPHE cofounder and president told ABC4, “It doesn’t appear that our leaders have any sort of caution at all about trying to bring a network of heavy industrialization of areas throughout the Great Salt Lake and throughout the state as well, and this last announcement yesterday about this hyper-scale data center that is projected to use more electricity than the entire state of Utah just seems like a preposterous detail.”