Construction on Meta's largest data center brings chaos to rural Louisiana

Both issues are presumably temporary since they’re related to construction.

It seems like Meta did pay to build power plants to meet their power generation needs. They use 3x the power of the town but that’s not saying a whole lot in a town of 2,000.

I hate to side with Meta here because there’s a lot of sketchiness seemingly involved, but I’d have to say that the 500 permanent jobs coming to the town are potentially transformative to a place with only 2,000 residents. Even if local residents aren’t directly employed, that’s 500 relatively well-paid people moving in or nearby and patronizing the local economy.

I just hope the state didn’t over-incentivize Meta just to secure 500 jobs.

One of the things that can turn you into a NIMBY is that it’s really hard to imagine the alternative in a situation like this. Is it better to keep the factory out of town or have a lack of economic activity? That question is actually something of a difficult one sometimes.