Voters in Box Elder County may have a chance to overturn the county commission’s decision to approve the development of a “hyperscale” data center if enough support is gathered to create a land use referendum — although the county’s top elections official cautions the legality of such a referendum is still being reviewed.

On Tuesday, a small group of voters filed an application with the county in an effort to potentially halt the project, Box Elder County Clerk Marla Young told The Salt Lake Tribune in an interview on Wednesday.

The application was filed one day after the county commissioners — despite widespread public opposition — unanimously approved creating the project area for the Military Installation Development Authority to develop.

The county’s approval was needed to include private land in the MIDA project.

The data center project is expected to generate and consume more power than the entire state and is backed by celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary of “Shark Tank” fame.

Originally, Young said she was told by county attorneys that the project could not be subject to a county referendum. The attorneys originally said it was a state issue given the data center project was originally approved by MIDA.

But not long after the voters came into her office, Young said, the county attorneys reached out to her to say it was possible that the project could, in fact, be subject to a county referendum.

“I contacted [the group of voters] to come back in and do an actual application,” Young said.

The voters already had the required five sponsors for their application — five Utahns registered to vote, she said — and filed Tuesday. That application is now being reviewed by the County Attorney Anne Hansen, who is, Young said, combing through county code to figure out how exactly a referendum on the project could — or could not — be considered by Box Elder County voters.

Hansen did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday morning. A spokesperson for MIDA, Kristin Kenney Williams, said the authority had no comment on a possible referendum “at this time.”

“I’m not positive [how it could proceed] at this point yet, because they’re still reviewing it,” Young said.

The question of whether the commissioners’ decision could be subject to a ballot referendum likely hinges on Resolution 26-11, which they passed Monday and officially gave the county’s consent for MIDA to move forward with the project.

“[T]he Commission hereby irrevocably consents to the inclusion of the private land described … in MIDA’s proposed Stratos Project Area,” the resolution reads.

Should the county attorney determine that the resolution may be subject to a referendum, Young said, it would likely be a land use referendum.

The application would then go to the county for approval, and, in order to get the referendum on the ballot, its backers would need to collect signatures from 16% of active, registered voters in Box Elder County — which the clerk said her office calculated as 5,422 voters in the area.

Those signatures would have to come from each of Box Elder’s “voter participation areas,” in order to ensure signatures come from across the county.

“It’s a big deal,” Young said, but it’s an open question as to when any decision on the legality of a referendum will be made.

“Our attorney’s office is going bit by bit through the code,” the clerk said, “to make sure we don’t miss anything.”

This story is breaking and may be updated.