The president of the Utah State Senate, who championed a huge data center beside the Great Salt Lake, was defeated in his Republican primary on Tuesday night, one of the most high-profile signs of the voter backlash to data center projects. … Mr. Adams did not directly represent the 40,000-acre proposed site of the data center in Box Elder County, a fast-growing farming and industrial area about 60 miles north of Salt Lake City. But he became the focus of an anti-data-center groundswell because he served as chairman of a Utah agency that approved initial plans this spring to build the data center, known as Stratos. … They [voters] worried about how much energy it would consume and how its water usage would affect the drought-stricken Great Salt Lake.

Other data center water use news:

• FOX13 (Salt Lake City): Why Utah incumbents learned a hard lesson on primary election night
• Colorado Public Radio: Residents appeal approval of data center in Colorado Springs
• CalMatters: Newsletter: He wants to build Calif.’s biggest data center, and he’s not backing down
• JD Supra: Blog: When the well runs dry: How water scarcity may limit data center development