Meta Hyperion data center, Holly Ridge, Louisiana

Meta's Hyperion data center campus is rising near Diane Cobb's home in Holly Ridge, Richland Parish, Louisiana, where she has lived since 1961. "It's not Holly Ridge anymore," Cobb said. "It really isn't." She said residents found out when the digging started: "Nobody told us anything. They supposedly had a big meeting. The whole community was supposed to come. Nobody knew anything about it. Ever."

"You can't get information," said Joe Williams, who lives across from the site, "and they did not send no letters out, no nothing before they ever started this." His wife, Robin Williams, said, "No one come knocked on our door." Residents told WWNO their water sometimes turns brown and their electricity shuts off without notice, sometimes for days at a time. The nearest state air quality monitor is 30 miles away, in Monroe.

Meta announced the project, a $10 billion investment, in December 2024. The campus covers 2,250 acres of former farmland, and Meta has since bought roughly 1,400 more acres next to it for a second phase. In October 2025 Meta brought in Blue Owl Capital as a joint venture partner to finance, build and operate the campus, pushing the target cost toward $27 billion.

As of March 2026, about 3,700 construction workers were on site, Fortune reported, with a peak of roughly 5,000 expected within a couple of months; some residents say they have heard estimates as high as 8,000. On July 13, 2026, Meta said it was expanding the campus again, to 5 gigawatts of computing capacity, its largest data center anywhere, in an investment of more than $50 billion, with over 7,500 jobs at peak construction and 1,000 once it is running.

Chris Holyfield supplies septic services and restroom facilities for the workforce, 58 units so far, after construction company leaders told him "this area's about to explode." "No one believed it at first," Holyfield said. "Now we're all feeling the difference."

Katie and Logan Stewart put more than $40,000 into a food truck to feed construction crews, then lost much of that business when DPR, one of the main contractors, brought in an out of state catering company. "You talk about supporting the local community, but then you outsource the work," Katie said. "It felt like a slap in the face."

In nearby Monroe, 34 year old Erika James said her rent kept rising and she was given five days to vacate her mobile home after paying rent one day late. "We are now having to entertain the idea of leaving the area completely," she said. "There is nowhere to go if you can't pay triple prices."

Meta says it has put more than $1 billion into local roads, water and wastewater systems, and that Richland Parish teachers' yearly bonus checks were 400 percent higher this year because of tax revenue tied to the project. On August 12, 2026, the Louisiana Public Service Commission voted 3 to 1 to overturn a judge's recommendation that Meta turn over the data behind its projected job creation, economic impact and electricity demand, according to BT News.