The Sierra Club will host a town hall meeting at 6 p.m. Nov. 17 at Johnny’s Pizza in Rayville to discuss the proposed Meta data center in Holly Ridge.
There will be a LDEQsponsored meeting in Rayville o n Tu e s d a y to look at air permits for the Entergy Louisiana, LLC - Franklin Farms Power Station that is planned for the area. Its construction is part of a plan to build out three gaspowered power stations to supply the heavy electricity demand of the data center.
The Sierra Club is reaching out as part of a coalition of community, worker, and environmental groups.
“Our coalition has been monitoring statements and press releases about the new facility since the announcement of the facility last year,” Sierra Club Conservation Coordinator Margie Vicknair-Pray said. “We have met with citizens from other states where similar, but smaller, data centers have already been built.”
Meta’s 2.5 million square foot data center outside of Atlanta uses about 10% of the county’s total water use a day (500,000 gallons) as reported by The New York Times. The Richland Parish facility is touted to be ‘as big as 70 football fields’ – four million square feet.
“Knowing what we know – and don’t know – we would like to bring members of the community, interested groups and elected officials together to discuss it further before the state-sponsored air permits meeting,” Vicknair Pray said. The environmental group wants to work with members of the community to get answers to their questions about how the data center will affect local residents in relation to everything: jobs, water supplies, air quality, traffic and electricity rates for the public.
“Meta, under Mark Zuckerberg’s leadership, has made significant commitments to green energy and sustainability - EXCEPT that is, here in Louisiana,” Sierra Club Delta Chapter chair and manager Dr. Angelle Bradford Rosenberg said. “Meta and Louisiana officials and utilities have proposed gas-powered and even nuclear reactors as the energy sources for Zuckerberg’s grand plan. Not much on solar or wind, although just upriver in Mississippi’s Tunica County, the first utility-scale wind farm, Delta Wind, is providing power to data centers as part of a larger $10 billion investment by Amazon. We want that kind of commitment from Zuckerberg in Louisiana.”
More information about the town hall meeting and a form to RSVP can be found at: https://bit.ly/ MetaDataCenter
More information about the town hall meeting and a form to RSVP can be found at: https://bit.ly/MetaDataCenter
