Meta’s next massive bet isn’t in an app or a social network — it’s in physical land, power lines, and water pipes. The company is currently constructing a mammoth 4 million-square-foot AI data center in Richland Parish, Louisiana — a campus as large as 70 football fields.

On paper, it’s a showcase of ambition: $10 billion in investment, thousands of jobs, new infrastructure, and a boost for a rural region that’s long felt overlooked. But the locals in Georgia—near an earlier Meta facility—say the lived reality is more complicated. Water issues, environmental concerns, and worries about footing the bill are now part of a tense conversation about how “progress” gets built.

Let’s dig into what makes this project so huge — and why it’s stirring both excitement and alarm.

The Scale: Not Just Big — Monumental

4 million square feet is not a throwaway number. It’s equivalent to 70 full-size football fields laid side by side. To put that in context: many major shopping malls, office complexes, and stadiums don’t come close to that footprint.

Meta describes the site as a “campus,” with server halls, cooling systems, support buildings, and energy generation capacity. It’s expected to create 5,000 construction jobs at peak build time, and about 500 permanent roles once operational. The investment also includes hundreds of millions committed to local infrastructure — roads, water, transmission lines.

Already, regulators have greenlit plans to build three natural gas–fired power plants and a $550 million transmission line to support the center’s energy demands. Without that power backbone, the servers don’t run — and the cooling doesn’t happen.

Promise vs. Problem: What Residents in Georgia Say

While Louisiana’s project is new, experience from Meta’s earlier facility in Georgia gives a sobering preview. Residents near that data center began noticing issues shortly after construction began:

Brown, sediment-filled water began flowing from taps.
Appliances started failing repeatedly, apparently from contaminated water.
Water pressure dropped; filters needed replacing far more often than before.

Some neighbors say they now feel unsafe drinking from their own wells. “It feels like we’re fighting an unwinnable battle we didn’t sign up for,” one Georgia resident told People.

Meta and local utility providers have denied there is a direct link between the new center’s water usage and ground-water changes, calling such connections “unlikely.” But locals remain unconvinced — especially when a data center of this size could easily consume millions of gallons daily to cool its systems.

In Georgia, one facility alone used water equal to 10% of the county’s daily usage. That’s a heavy burden on local hydrology — especially in rural areas where water is often drawn from aquifers or private wells.

What the Louisiana Deal Looks Like — and Where It’s Risky

In Richland Parish, the stakes are high — both in potential and peril.

The Economic Pitch

Officials and Meta claim this project could transform the area. For a region struggling economically, the promise of thousands of jobs is powerful. The state touted it as a “transformational investment,” highlighting how a rural area might finally get access to cutting-edge infrastructure and opportunity.

Meta is also committing over $200 million to local infrastructure improvements, including roads and water systems. The logic is: if you’re going to build a facility this size, you might as well upgrade the region too.

The Power Bills & Hidden Costs

But the devil lives in the details. Meta is paying for about half the construction of the gas plants over 15 years — but thereafter? Maintenance, fuel, and the long tail costs could fall on local ratepayers. Because of the contract structure, if Meta decides to scale down or leave, the community could be stuck with a giant, expensive infrastructure legacy.

Critics point out that data centers have a boom-and-bust risk. If technology or geography shifts, a facility this massive might no longer be needed — yet the energy plants, transmission grid, and environmental impact would remain. Some worry that Louisiana could become another example of resources being drained to support tech that might not last.

There is also concern about transparency. Many of the contract terms, tax breaks, and infrastructure agreements are shielded by nondisclosure agreements, making it difficult for the public to fully understand what they are committing to.

Environmental & Sustainability Tensions

Meta has made net-zero and renewable energy promises. But how does that square with three new gas power plants? That’s a tension environmental advocates are watching closely.

Critics say it’s contradictory: if you claim to be green, why rely on fossil fuels at such scale? Senate environmental leaders have already requested more transparency about how the energy will be sourced and what the emissions will be.

The Real Concern: what if climate policy shifts, or natural gas becomes less viable over the 30- or 50-year lifespan of these plants? Communities could face stranded assets — expensive infrastructure with decreasing utility.

Bigger Picture: The AI Arms Race & Rural America

Meta isn’t alone in this push. As AI demands skyrocket, tech giants are hunting for cheap land, power, and tax incentives — often in rural, low-population regions. The pattern is showing up across the U.S.

Those rural communities are caught in a bind: promise of investment, but exposure to big risks. Who bears the burden? Who reaps the gain? Local governments often lack the leverage to negotiate robust protections.

In some states, new laws are imposing guardrails: requiring that infrastructure costs not fall to ratepayers, or demanding environmental impact reviews before approval. Louisiana is wrestling with these questions now, as regulators weigh Meta’s plans.

These trends raise uncomfortable questions: if AI infrastructure becomes essential, will our physical landscapes — our water, our power, our environment — be the ones paying the price quietly?

What Happens Next

Regulatory scrutiny: The Louisiana Public Service Commission and state legislators will face pressure to ensure the burden isn’t unfairly shifted to residents.
Monitoring from environmental groups: Expect legal challenges, public disclosures, and pushes for more transparency on water, emissions, and contract terms.
Economic dependence: The local economy may become tied to Meta’s presence — and if that presence shrinks, the fallout could be serious.
Technological evolution: If AI designs move to more efficient architectures, or decentralize, massive physical centers may become less necessary. What happens to a 70-football-field center then?

Final Thoughts: A Monument to Progress—or a Monumental Gamble?

Meta’s 70 football fields of servers, pipes, power, and pipes is a future-casting statement: AI is not just code and cloud, it has land, water, and power. It is physical, and that brings big stakes.

The questions are urgent: Can the economic benefits outbalance the environmental and financial risks? Can a rural community negotiate from a position of strength — or will they ultimately carry more of the risk than reward? And finally, in a world rushing toward AI, do we slow down and ask whether the ground beneath our feet is still ours?

Whatever the outcome, this project is not just about Meta’s ambition. It’s about how we build the future — and who gets to decide which pieces of America will be transformed first, for better or worse.