Meta Builds AI Center the Size of 70 Football Fields. Residents Near Similar Facility Say They're 'Scared to Drink Our Own Water
“It feels like we’re fighting an unwinnable battle that we didn’t sign up for,” said Beverly Morris, who lives near Meta's data center in Georgia
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg; the Richland Parish Data Center.
Credit : David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty; Meta
NEED TO KNOW
- A massive AI data center is being built in rural Louisiana by Meta, as residents in Georgia say they're navigating a poor water supply after the company began constructing a similar facility in 2018
- Beverly Morris said she's "scared" to drink water from her well
- Meta has promised 500 new jobs will be created because of the project in Louisiana, and plans to be "water positive" by 2030, ensuring its facilities restore more water than they consume
In a rural Louisiana farming community of 20,000 people, Meta is building a 4-million-square-foot artificial intelligence data center, even as some 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 some residents of Newton County, Ga., issues with their water supply began as Meta started building a $750 million data center in 2018, 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, 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."
Still, 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.
In a statement shared with PEOPLE, the company maintained that an independent study found the center doesn't use groundwater for any purpose and water flows away from the homeowners' well, making it "very unlikely" that the facility's activities were impacting them.
Instead, the Meta site sources water for construction from more than 10 miles away from the Morrises' house, the company said.
The spokesperson did not dispute Meta's data centers use large amounts of water but said it has taken steps to be sustainable.
Meta's facilities use a "cooling technology that is significantly more water efficient than the industry standard" and reuses water multiple times, the spokesperson said. Meta's sites also use natural vegetation to help reduce "irrigation demands," and capture rainwater.
The company said it uses an equal amount of "clean and renewable energy" as the electricity it consumes, and plans to restore more water than its facilities use by 2030.
The 2.5-million-square-foot data center outside Atlanta 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. Ben Sheidler, 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.
“I wouldn’t want to speculate that even the construction had something to do with it,” Sheidler told the paper of the water issues the two families are facing. “One thousand feet away is a pretty significant distance.”
Recently, other companies have applied 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.
Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., wears a pair of Meta Ray-Ban Display AI glasses during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, US, on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025.
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta.
David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty
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."
Trucks pass by the site of Meta's Richland Parish Data Center in Holly Ridge, La., Monday, Aug. 18, 2025.
Trucks pass by the site of the Meta data center in Richland Parish, La.
AP Photo/Sophie Bates
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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.”
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