Meta Builds AI Data Center as Critics Warn that Locals May Be Affected

In a rural Louisiana farming community of 20,000 people, Meta is building a 4-million-square-foot AI data center, even as locals in Georgia grapple with a dwindling and discolored water supply following the construction of a similar facility that began in 2018.

The new builds are part of a larger trend in which everyday residents are caught in the path of tech companies seeking to build infrastructure in new areas with few regulations. Regions are drained of important resources, with citizens often paying some of the cost.

For locals in Newton County, Ga., issues with their water supply began as Meta started building a $750 million data center, The New York Times reported. However, Facebook’s parent company previously said that its existing centers have had “positive impacts” in the local communities and economies where they’re built.

That wasn’t the case for Beverly and Jeff Morris, who live about 1,000 feet away from the Georgia facility. Their problems began shortly after Meta broke ground on the center in 2018, according to the Times. Months after construction began, a number of their appliances that use water stopped working — and Jeff told the newspaper that a buildup of sediment in the water was to blame.

Since then, they’ve had to replace their appliances three times, per the Times. Even now, the couple told the newspaper they only have one working bathroom, which they share with their adult son with Down syndrome.

“It feels like we’re fighting an unwinnable battle that we didn’t sign up for,” Beverly told the outlet, adding that she’s “scared to drink our own water.”

A Meta spokesperson told the Times that a connection between the groundwater supply and the data center is “unlikely.”

The Morrises aren’t the only ones noticing a drastic shift in their well water. Their neighbor, Chris Wilson, told the Times that he has had issues with poor water pressure since construction began. To keep his water flowing, he now replaces his filters every month instead of annually. At times, the water gets “so brown, you’d think it came from a creek,” Wilson told the paper.

The 2.5-million-square-foot data center uses about 10% of the county’s total water use a day, the Times reported. On average, such facilities can consume 500,000 gallons of water on a daily basis, mostly to cool computer servers.

If the local water authority can’t upgrade the current facilities, locals in Newton County may have to ration their water. A spokesperson for the Joint Development Authority, which oversees the industrial park in which the center is located, told the paper that the cause of the county’s water problems is unknown. That hasn’t stopped other companies from applying to build data centers in Newton County, some of which requested 6 million gallons of water a day, according to the Times.

“Water is an afterthought” for tech companies, Newsha Ajami, a hydrologist and director of urban water policy at Stanford University, told the paper. “The thinking is, ‘Someone will figure that out later.’”

Last December, the social media giant announced that it was constructing a $10 billion data center in Richland Parish, Louisiana, according to Reuters and the Associated Press, which put the square footage in terms that are easier to understand: the center is as big as 70 football fields.

“Meta is building the future of human connection and the technology that makes it possible. And this data center will be an important part of that mission,” said Kevin Janda, Meta’s director of Data Center Strategy, in December 2024.

What isn’t clear is how much the parent company of Instagram will pay to cover the more than $3 billion in new infrastructure to power the center, the AP reported. 

This summer, Louisiana’s Public Service Commission voted to expedite the approval for the construction of three natural gas turbines that will run the center on more than 2 gigawatts of energy, WIRED reported.

Critics protested the rushed process, claiming there was no time for changes in the deal filed by Meta and Entergy Louisiana, the utility company that will oversee the plants, according to the outlet. Members of the public also expressed concerns that their energy bills would increase and there would be water shortages, according to WIRED.

The infrastructure plan was approved in a four-to-one vote, after Entergy promised to increase protections to stop a potential increase in the rates residents will pay, the AP reported. 

Nondisclosure agreements have ensured that Meta doesn’t have to share how much it will pay towards the project, the AP reported. The company will also benefit from a state law that exempts it from paying sales tax, which could have resulted in “tens of millions of dollars or more each year” in revenue, according to the AP.

For Public Service Commissioner Davante Lewis, the only person to vote no, there is a lack of transparency about how much energy the data center will consume, if Meta’s 500 promised jobs will come to fruition and if the gas-powered turbines were the best option.

“There’s certain information we should know and need to know but don’t have,” Lewis told the outlet. 

Meta has agreed to pay for about half of the cost of the turbines over the first 15 of the 30-year period, but the $550 million transmission line will be funded by all grid users, the AP reported. 

When contacted by PEOPLE, Entergy said in a statement that “Meta is directly paying for the infrastructure required to interconnect and serve them, which protects other customers from paying that cost.”

The utility company also claimed that “Meta’s electric payments to Entergy will lower what customers pay for resilience upgrades by approximately 10%,” in addition to a reduction in storm charges once the facility is running.

“Meta coming to Louisiana means customer bills will be lower than they otherwise would have been,” Entergy said.

When the AI center was announced in December 2024, the Louisiana Economic Development called it a “transformational investment” that was projected to create 500 or more new jobs and 1,000 “indirect jobs.” 

“Meta’s investment establishes the region as an anchor in Louisiana’s rapidly expanding tech sector, revitalizes one of our state’s beautiful rural areas, and creates opportunities for Louisiana workers to fill high-paying jobs of the future,” Gov. Jeff Landry said in a statement at the time. 

In its own statement shared with PEOPLE, Meta touted the same number of jobs — plus an additional 5,000 construction jobs — and said that they’re investing “over $200 million in local infrastructure improvements, including roads and water infrastructure.”

“Richland Parish is our home, and we are committed to playing a positive role and investing in the community’s long-term vitality,” the company said in a statement.

“Meta has worked closely with Entergy from the beginning to plan for our energy needs, and we will cover the utility’s cost to serve this data center,” their statement continued. “Meta worked with Entergy to ensure we cover the costs associated with our energy load without shifting costs onto other Entergy Louisiana customers.”

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Despite these promises, there is concern that the Meta site will impact locals in a negative way. (In September, The Shreveport Times ran the headline “A Meta data center is coming to Louisiana. Why it will use up state’s water, electricity”.) Critics say that Meta could step away from or not renew its contract, leaving the public to fund the power plants for the remainder of the 30 years, the AP reported. 

“My general fear is that too many data centers are being built,” Susan Stevens Miller, a lawyer for the Union of Concerned Scientists and Alliance for Affordable Energy, which opposed the application for the turbines, told WIRED. “That means some of the data centers are just going to be abandoned by the owners.”