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I'm standing at the site of Meta's new
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10 billion dollar data center in
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Richland Parish, Louisiana. It'll be the
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largest data center the company has ever
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built. About the size of Manhattan, the
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project is already bringing about big
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changes to this small town way of life
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A lot of folks are on their own and if
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they are on a very strict budget, they
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they're going to have to adapt and if
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they don't, they won't make it. I don't
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know that gutting 2500 acres of land
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just so we can mine data so that we can
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better market and sell people stuff. I
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feel like it's it's getting carried
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Why are the data centers coming to the
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small rural towns? They're coming here
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to benefit themselves. They're not
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coming here with intentions on
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benefiting the community.
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Our farmers around here really rely on
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the water system for irrigating their
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crops and stuff like that. They deplete
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the water system. You know, that's going
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In a sense, it feels like, well, yeah,
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they come take advantage of us. poor
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dumb rural folks, you know.
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So, this data center is going to use
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about three times the energy that New
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Orleans uses in a year. I'm curious how
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if electricity bills go up for people
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here, how that might impact them.
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We're we're a poor area there. It's a
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huge amount of people that have trouble
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paying their electric bill. Currently,
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there are people who don't own vehicles.
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They don't have health care. I just
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think about the people that I know that
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it that they won't be able to keep their
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This is a large farming community here
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in Northeast Louisiana. We're giving our
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most valuable resource, which is
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farmland. I want to know what is Meta
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doing to give back to the community.
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There's a fear like, well, you know,
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who's going to get what they need? It's
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going to be the people with the most
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money and the most power. I I've worked
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a very short time in the oil field,
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South Texas, and working down there. You
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would be working in a boom town, but you
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would drive through a different old boom
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town that is where the oil used to be,
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but it isn't no more. And it would just
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it was just a ghost town. Because all
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that happens when a place like this
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comes in is the rich, they just get
