Home/United States/Louisiana/Richland Parish
Data centers in Richland Parish, Louisiana: 1 project mapped
Meta's Hyperion data center is being built on former farmland at Holly Ridge, an unincorporated community in Richland Parish between Rayville and Delhi, about 260 miles northwest of New Orleans. Fox 8 put the cost at $27 billion in May 2026; Meta has since announced it will expand the campus to 5 gigawatts of computing capacity. Entergy Louisiana is building the power supply beside it, and its vice president for hyperscale execution, Troy Heytens, told Fox 8 the combined site runs "about 5-6 miles long and a mile wide" and is "the biggest customer project that Entergy Louisiana has ever undertaken." He said the first gas plants at the Franklin Farms Power Station are due online by the end of 2028 and the data center by 2030.
The parish is feeling it. Tax assessor Emmett "Lee" Brown told Fox 8 that after state incentives Meta is expected to pay the parish $30 million in property tax over three years, against $22 million the parish collected in all of last year, and that a parish of about 20,000 people now has at least 4,000 more living and working there. "A rental that might've been $600-$700/month is now $2,500/month," he said. "So, it's not affordable for the people that were here." On power bills he said: "We've been assured by the Public Service Commission that the rate increases will not happen." Joyce Piercy, 81, said: "When Meta came in, they moved some of the folks out and put in the trailer parks. Well, they had to find a place to go and some of them couldn't afford that." KNOE has reported cracked roads and heavier truck traffic on state highways.
Read more
Water comes from the town of Delhi. Mayor Jesse Washington told KNOE in July that the town will keep supplying the site after the expansion, that Meta will pay for improvements and a new water treatment plant due next year, and that "rate payers will not be affected." Margie Vicknair-Pray of the Sierra Club said the data center will "definitely compete with the agriculture in the area."
The larger fight is over electricity. Regulators approved three Entergy gas plants for the project in 2025. In April 2026 Entergy asked the Louisiana Public Service Commission to approve seven more, four in Richland Parish and three in Pointe Coupee Parish, under a fast-track process, for ten plants in all. Heytens said Meta will cover construction costs and that customers will save money. Logan Burke of the Alliance for Affordable Energy said her group worries ratepayers could be left with the plants if Meta leaves: "they're either overpaying for speed, which we'll all be on the hook for in the long run, or they won't be able to make these deadlines." Earthjustice attorney Susan Stevens Miller said the compressed timeline makes "meaningful public participation and careful regulatory review far more difficult." Paul Arbaje, an energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a party to the case, wrote that under Entergy's own numbers the plants would be only about 75% depreciated when Meta's 20-year contract ends, leaving roughly $3.4 billion that ratepayers could carry; that Entergy's projected benefit to other customers falls to $991 million, about 3.5%, if Meta leaves after 20 years, so a 3.5% rise in costs would erase it; and that the cost of the plants for the project's first phase had already risen in May from $3.9 billion to $4.4 billion. Meta said its data center represents an investment of more than $10 billion and will support over 500 operational jobs.
On August 12, 2026, three commissioners, Erik Skrmetta, Jean-Paul Coussan and Mike Francis, voted to quash a subpoena an administrative law judge had upheld that would have required Meta to document its investment, permanent jobs and electricity demand, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, one of the parties that sought it. The commission's final decision on the seven plants is scheduled for December 16, 2026.
Data center projects on record in Richland Parish
Grouped by the town each site sits in. The report above may name projects that have no record here yet.
Holly Ridge1
| Project | Company | Status | Power | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Meta HyperionHolly Ridge | Meta | Under construction | 5,000 MW |
Where this comes from
The reporting above was written from these. Open one and check it yourself.
Every project above is drawn from public records, filings and local reporting. Each row links to what it is based on. Statuses change, so check the source date before you rely on one. Found something wrong? Write to [email protected] and it gets fixed.