To listen to some, Meta’s Death Star-scale data center in Richland Parish spells nothing but doom. They say it’s going to use too much power and water, it doesn’t pay enough taxes and it won’t employ enough people.
There is some merit to these arguments.
But that probably matters little right now to Richland Parish’s elected officials. In March, they saw the first Meta deposit into local coffers: more than $22 million, in a parish where normal total sales tax collections have hovered around $20 million annually.
The transfer came as part of Meta’s payment in lieu of taxes, or PILOT, agreement with the state. Part of the incentive package the state used to lure the company, that agreement allows Meta to pay far less in sales and property taxes than other businesses do.
Almost $12 million will go to the school system (normal yearly sales tax revenue: $7.9 million, per 2024 audit), about $8 million will go to the police jury (normal yearly sales tax revenue: $6.4 million) and roughly $2.6 will go to the sheriff’s office (normal yearly sales tax revenue: $2.3 million).
The school money is earmarked for salaries and benefits, as well as maintenance and operations. Most of the police jury’s money will be used for roads and drainage, and some will go to the parish’s ailing courthouse.
Regular sales tax collections have also skyrocketed. Three quarters into the fiscal year, local officials project more than $50 million in collections for this year, due to the increase in business for local mom-and-pops and a number of new businesses that have sprung up to support the construction.
In other words, Richland Parish is likely to collect north of $70 million between the PILOT and actual sales taxes, almost four times the amount from before Meta decided to build the center, which it has called Hyperion.
“I’ve never seen anything like it … there’s no context for it,†Shreveport-based attorney Mike Busada, who worked on the incentive package, told me.
And that’s the tension. The promise of big money — and it is really big for Richland Parish — is almost enough to distract from the fact that this is just couch change for Meta. The company is valued north of $1.5 trillion, and last year it reported more than $200 billion in revenue. It has more than 3.5 billion users.
But without Louisiana giving up those incentives, the deal probably doesn’t get done.
It’s possible that in the future we will regret what the state gave up to get the data center. Maybe the AI economy will go belly up or Meta will decide to go in a different direction. Maybe the same concerns that have led other communities around the country, even those in relatively business-friendly states like Texas, to push back against data center development will also take root here.
Maybe a lot of things will happen. What is certain, though, is that three years ago, Richland Parish was in the same bleak spiral that much of rural Louisiana faces: poor, declining population, few prospects for a turnaround.
Meta can’t and won’t solve all those problems. It may even create some new ones. But for now, it’s brought a word rarely heard in those parts: potential.