After manufacturers passed over a patch of farmland in Louisiana for nearly two decades, Meta Platforms scooped up the nearly 3,000 acres of flat rice fields last year for what would be its largest-ever data center. As The Wall Street Journal writes, the deal is part of a larger trend of tech companies pressing into unexpected areas of the country—rural America.
At 4 million square feet, or 70 football fields, Meta’s data center will cost $10 billion and sit on more acreage than LSU in Baton Rouge.
To meet the high power needs of the project, Entergy’s Louisiana business intends to spend about $3.2 billion to build three natural gas-fired power plants—two of which will be built near Meta’s site, if approved by regulators.
The project stands to be transformative for the rural town it will call home. In Holly Ridge, an unincorporated community with one blinking traffic light, hundreds of pieces of construction equipment are rolling across rice stubble left from the fall harvest. Eventually 5,000 construction workers will arrive.
While the financial rewards—and risks—stand to be enormous, concerns are mounting that the project also threatens to burden electricity customers across much of Louisiana with higher costs if demand from the tech giant eventually dries up.
