Promised benefits under scrutiny in Box Elder County
Residents of Box Elder County are organizing against the proposed Stratos data center, which would occupy large sections of land in the Hansel Valley area. Brenna Williams, a cofounder of the Box Elder Accountability Referendum, or BEAR, said the economic advances touted by data center developers "all sound appealing," but she believes "it's all smoke and mirrors." Williams raised the concerns during a June 16 panel on the Stratos Project at Sunset Junior High, where Brigham Daniels of the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, Rhonda Lauritzen of BEAR, Nat Williams of Stewardship Utah, and Sam Hawkins of Grow the Flow also spoke.
Researchers say the answers to residents' questions about electricity bills, property taxes, and rural job creation depend on who provides power, how rural the county is, and whether policymakers can build "the plane while you're flying it," according to reporting published Sept. 6, 2026.
Power-price outcomes hinge on the utility
Shon Hiatt, an associate professor at the University of Southern California, told the Economic Development and Workforce Services Interim Committee on Aug. 19 that electricity prices nationwide have risen over the past six years. In a study covering 2020 to 2025, Hiatt found that investor-owned utilities such as Rocky Mountain Power, which serves most of Utah, experienced no effect on power prices from data center entry during that period.
Hiatt said investor-owned utilities have the tools to absorb a large new customer without passing costs to other consumers, but non-investor-owned utilities "have no idea how to deal with" new data centers and "just raise the prices." Even for investor-owned utilities, he cautioned, "I would expect data centers coming in now, especially these larger ones, to have an impact on power prices wholesale."
The 'boomerang effect' on property taxes
Researchers describe a "boomerang effect" tied to Utah's Truth in Taxation system, which separates real property — land and warehouses — from personal property such as computer chips and servers. Under this framework, a new building counts as "new construction" and initially adds new tax revenue to a county's existing tax base, but personal property depreciates faster, and when developers challenge the valuation the resulting tax adjustments can ripple through county budgets.
The result is volatility in property tax rates that can disproportionately affect rural counties that host data centers but lack diversified tax bases. Researchers say these fluctuations create uncertainty for local governments weighing whether long-term revenue projections from data centers will hold.
Unresolved questions for rural communities
The dispute over the Stratos Project mirrors broader concerns across Utah about whether data center developers will deliver on pledges of jobs for rural communities, whether electricity bills will rise, and whether property taxes will fall and remain lower. Opponents argue that without policy guardrails, the promised benefits may not materialize for residents, while proponents point to new construction and tax revenue as near-term gains. The Deseret News reported Sept. 6, 2026, that researchers, lawmakers, and residents continue to weigh these competing claims as Utah's data center footprint expands.
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