A Data Center Four Times the Size of Meta's Kuna Site Is Proposed South of Boise

A Nevada company wants to build a data center on federal land along the Ada County and Elmore County line, south of Boise. The applicant is Rhea Data, a subsidiary of Arevia Power, and the Bureau of Land Management says the proposal is in its early application stage. That's according to CBS2 News, which drew on earlier reporting from BoiseDev.

The size is the part that stopped me. As proposed, the Rhea Data Center would run 4 million square feet. That's roughly the footprint of Julia Davis Park, and more than four times the size of the Meta data center that just opened in Kuna.

On Wednesday, Boise Mayor Lauren McLean came out against it. In a written statement she said "sell offs of public lands to build mega data centers is shortsighted," and made the case that easy access to open space is one of the things people who live here value most. She went further than this one site, too. Her position is that no data center this large should be considered anywhere in Idaho until there's a statewide framework in place to protect residents and natural resources.

A few things are worth keeping straight. This is an application, and BLM is early in reviewing it. The reporting doesn't say what the company would pay, how much water or power the site would draw, or what the timeline looks like. Those are the details that will matter most, and they aren't public yet.

I moved to Boise in 2017, and the valley has changed a lot since then. New rooftops, new businesses, new people who found this place the same way I did. For the most part I've been glad to see it. Growth has been good for a lot of people who build and run things here, me included.

So I don't come at this reflexively against it. Idaho has room, and companies clearly see it as a place worth investing in. Meta chose Kuna. Now someone is looking at the county line. That tells you something about where the state sits on the map right now.

What gives me pause is the combination of scale and land. A project four times the size of the biggest one we have would be a lot to absorb on its own. Putting it on public ground adds a second layer. If federal land gets sold for something like this, it doesn't come back. The open desert south of town belongs to everyone right now, and that's a hard thing to trade away.

Where I end up is close to the mayor's second point. Whatever you think about this particular site, a set of statewide rules for projects this size seems like homework Idaho should finish before the next application shows up, and I expect there will be a next one. Water, power, where these facilities can go and what they owe the communities around them: those are questions better answered once, in daylight, than one proposal at a time.

I'm curious how people who have lived here longer than I have see it. If you remember what the valley looked like twenty or thirty years ago, I'd like to hear whether this feels like the same kind of change you've already watched happen, or something new.