Alert to Box Elder County residents — natural gas and petroleum products contain benzene, a known carcinogen. In California, they have Prop 65 —The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986 — which requires the governor to publish a list of chemicals known to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm, and requires all businesses to warn the public quarterly of exposures their businesses pose to the public through their operations.
The Stratos “hyper scale” data center would use twice the amount of natural gas as currently is used by the whole state of Utah. And powered 100% by that Ruby Pipeline into Box Elder County. How much exposure to benzene would this data center cause to the lovely Hansel Valley and its living organisms?
The Box Elder Accountability Referendum — “BEAR” — organizers should be informing all voters of this threat to our health as they seek the signatures needed, and insist that benzene and other carcinogen exposures be tabulated into legal opposition against approval of the data center plan.
Will our governor or our state be ready to protect us from such a “Stratos-pheric” cancer threat?
Laurie Rich, Bountiful