The small, quiet town of Mona, Utah, is known for being antidevelopment — or at least it was, until a massive data center was approved for the county.
The data center — the size of 20 Costcos — was zoned two minutes outside the town on county land. No one in Mona formally opposed it.
On April 15, the county held a public hearing where citizens could raise concerns about the pending data center permit.
The hearing started at 7:05 p.m. and ended at 7:09 p.m. Not one concerned citizen attended, asked a question or shared an opinion.
It wasn’t because the people of Mona didn’t care. It was because few residents knew the data center was being built.
The letters that were never sent
Taylor Flake and his family live on a quiet, 100-acre ranch, just minutes outside Mona.
About three weeks ago, Flake was sitting in his home, working remotely, when a representative from Williams Gas knocked on his door and asked Flake’s permission to run a gas pipeline across various acres of his backyard.
“‘Well, why would you need a gas line?’” Flake said he asked as he recalled the conversation in an interview with the Deseret News.
“‘Well, we’re building another gas power plant about the same size as the one you already have,’” the man replied, according to Flake.
“‘OK, why do we need another power plant?’” Flake pressed.
The man then told him it was to “‘support the new data center that’s going in across the street from you,’” Flake said.
Flake soon learned that the data center was being built so close to his house he could throw a rock and hit it. Costing at least $10 billion, the “Nebo North LLC” data center project is 29 times more expensive than the county’s next largest project, a $350 million power plant.
After speaking with Juab County’s Zoning Commission, Flake confirmed the 3 million square-foot facility’s conditional use permit was approved at the April 15 meeting.
There’s a difference between a CUP and an agricultural-to-industrial zoning change. The three-page, conditional use permit document lays out no rules or regulations in regards to alerting neighbors. The other zone-change process requires letters to be sent in the mail to landowners within 1,000 feet of the project before a final decision is made.
Tiffanie McAfee, a Mona resident, found that in 2024 and 2026 a total of 14 regular zone-changes were approved for various projects. In the same time frame, seven CUPs were approved — and all but one were in the Mona area.
“It appears to me that all of those conditional use permits are usually only applied to Mona. So that’s obviously very concerning,” she said. “It paints a picture that we’re not really well represented here. Everybody has this great representation — in Levan, in Dog Valley, in Rocky Ridge — but when it comes to Mona ...”
The Deseret News tried to reach out to a member of the zoning commission but did not receive a response.
Mona residents point to Dog Valley as a prime example. Dog Valley — located 8 miles outside Nephi, Utah — is another sparcely populated area. In November, a land-use change was approved to rezone agricultural land to industrial land for a data center.
Residents within 1,000 feet were notified. Many of them showed up to oppose the project at a public hearing for the county. That’s what McAfee said infuriates Mona citizens: the inconsistency of the process.
Flake — and many other Mona residents — believe the process stopped them from being able to have a say.
“I think everyone knows that the conditional use permit is incredibly significant because once it’s granted any discussion about whether the project will happen is over,” said Flake. “All that’s left is to discuss how to mitigate the harm it will do.”
What’s a citizen to do?
Days after discovering the plans for the data center, Flake created an advocacy group titled “Mona Cares: Neighbors for Responsible Development.” The group quickly gained traction. Over 300 residents joined a Facebook group.
“I want to be clear. I’m not anti-data center,” Flake said in the interview.
But given how close the data center will be to his house, he has concerns.
“No one is more impacted than I am because I’m across the street,” said Flake. “If this goes through, my house is unlivable. I will have a constant hum. I will have the lights, I will have the congestion, I will have the heat.”
Many residents worry about the traffic, as well. Mona has one intersection — a simple stop sign — that could be bustling with work trucks and construction vehicles for years to come as the center is built.
But not everyone agrees.
Troy Shelley, the Utah state representative for the town of Mona, believes environmental concerns from data centers are less extreme than many may assume.
“A lot of the information that’s out there about data centers is just plain not correct,” he said. “There’s no evaporation. There’s no water loss.” After touring the state’s second largest data center, Shelley said data center developers say the only water that will be consumed is to flush toilets and fill drinking fountains.
Shelley also said claims of constant humming are an exaggeration. On his tour, Shelley visited “the noisiest place in the entire data center,” and stood in front of large fans, listening to a presenter. “He stood in front of that fan and spoke to the group and we could hear perfectly fine what he was talking about,” he said.
Shelley fought back on the heat allegations as well, saying data centers “recirculate their heat” by capturing the escaping heat and circulating it back through a cooling unit.
His advice to Mona residents isn’t to create an ultimatum, it’s to “offer solutions to the county commissioners.”
The meeting where Mona showed up
On Tuesday morning, at least 100 Mona residents gathered in the City Center with hand-drawn signs, preparing to attend the county commission meeting taking place later that morning.
The small room was packed with county residents, eager to share their opposition to plans for the data center.
Clint Painter, commission chairman, was quick to clarify one point: Juab County doesn’t have a say in which permit a landowner requests. “That is up to the land. That is not up to the county,” he said.
In Mona’s case, the land was sold from a private owner to the developer.
Jonathan Vanica, co-founder of The SetSquare Capital Group, the developer behind Mona’s data center, told the Deseret News the company is “committed to being a good neighbor to the community’s residents.”
“Project Nebo is in the early planning stages, and plans include direct community engagement including information sessions and opportunities for questions and input as the project progresses,” he continued. “We look forward to working with local stakeholders in an open and transparent manner as we advance a project that will bring significant investment in digital infrastructure, create local and regional jobs, expand the local tax base, and deliver long-term benefits to the community including upgraded infrastructure.”
At the county meeting, after an hour of discussion the county commissioners sounded no closer to a decision on what to do next.
When asked what the county’s plan of action is moving forward, Painter said: “As far as like undoing revoking the conditional use permit, I just don’t know if it’s even legally possible without incurring millions of dollars in lawsuits from a developer.”
Painter and the commission plan to hold another public meeting in the future to answer residents’ questions, though at this point the project is moving forward as planned.