{"id":244713,"date":"2026-05-12T17:24:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T21:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/12\/metas-27-billion-ai-data-center-is-transforming-rural-louisiana\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T18:05:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T22:05:11","slug":"metas-27-billion-ai-data-center-is-transforming-rural-louisiana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/12\/metas-27-billion-ai-data-center-is-transforming-rural-louisiana\/","title":{"rendered":"Meta\u2019s $27 billion AI data center is transforming rural Louisiana"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox8live.com\/2026\/05\/12\/metas-27-billion-ai-data-center-is-transforming-rural-louisiana\/\">Meta\u2019s $27 billion AI data center is transforming rural Louisiana<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox8live.com\/2026\/05\/12\/metas-27-billion-ai-data-center-is-transforming-rural-louisiana\/\">https:\/\/www.fox8live.com\/2026\/05\/12\/metas-27-billion-ai-data-center-is-transforming-rural-louisiana\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-05-12 17:24:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.fox8live.com\">www.fox8live.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">RAYVILLE, La. (WVUE) &#8211; A rural Louisiana parish known for farming, small towns and quiet roads is now at the center of one of the largest artificial intelligence infrastructure projects in the world.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is building a massive data center in Holly Ridge, a Richland Parish community about 260 miles northwest of New Orleans. The project is expected to cost $27 billion and help power Meta\u2019s artificial intelligence ambitions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Many people born and raised in towns like Rayville, Dunn, and Holly Ridge are used to a slower pace of life.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cI\u2019m not for change. I don\u2019t change my furniture around or nothing. I stay just like it is,\u201d said 81-year-old Joyce Piercy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cWe\u2019ve been a simple farming community. It\u2019s a great place to raise your kids. It\u2019s quiet,\u201d said Emmett \u201cLee\u201d Brown.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">You won\u2019t find much quiet in certain parts of Richland Parish anymore.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Throughout the rural parish in northern Louisiana, there seem to be construction zones along all the major roads. Entergy Louisiana is building power infrastructure to support the data center, including two gas-fired power plants at its Franklin Farms Power Station project in Holly Ridge.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cThis is the biggest customer project that Entergy Louisiana has ever undertaken,\u201d said Troy Heytens, vice president of hyper scale execution at Entergy Louisiana. \u201cThe only thing that is a similar scale that we\u2019ve done in the past is building brand new nuclear power plants.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Heytens said the power plant is expected to be online by the end of 2028. Meta\u2019s Hyperion data center is expected to be operational by 2030.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cThis site that we\u2019re on in Richland Parish is about 5-6 miles long and a mile wide, including both the Entergy facility as well as the data center that\u2019s just south of us,\u201d Heytens said.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"caption-text\">Meta announced it will build a 4 million square foot data center in Richland Parish.<\/span><span class=\"caption-credit\">(Source: Meta)<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Meta did not allow Fox 8 access to its construction site. Entergy&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox8live.com\/2026\/05\/12\/metas-27-billion-ai-data-center-is-transforming-rural-louisiana\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Meta\u2019s $27 billion AI data center is transforming rural Louisiana https:\/\/www.fox8live.com\/2026\/05\/12\/metas-27-billion-ai-data-center-is-transforming-rural-louisiana\/ Publish Date: 2026-05-12 17:24:00&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":244714,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/gray-wvue-prod.gtv-cdn.com\/resizer\/v2\/WAO3QRZEXJDSLA75R2ZAB4FSRQ.jpg?auth=95fd801de1f2f791fab9d7d3a341193469e06dca3610b127f78cbd1c2d90b24d&width=1200&height=600&smart=true","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244713"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244713"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":244715,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244713\/revisions\/244715"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}