Noisy, energy-hungry, and dangerous — if there’s one thing small town Americans have quickly learned, it’s that a new data center is a seriously unwelcome neighbor.
First announced in December of 2024, construction on Meta’s new Hyperion data center is already well underway. With a price tag of $27 billion, the massive project has an expected computing capacity of five gigawatts, enough to power over a million US homes. Assuming the project’s convoluted financial situation doesn’t force Meta to adjust its plans, it will be the largest data center in the world when it comes online in 2030.
Sure to be a noisy, resource-guzzling behemoth, the massive installation is already giving one Louisiana town less than a mile away a brutal preview of its final form.
As reported by the Louisiana Illuminator, construction on Hyperion has contributed to a massive rise in traffic in the rural town of Holly Ridge. Each day, the local outlet reports, thousands of heavy construction rigs barrel up and down the town’s once-quiet streets, contributing to a 600 percent increase in crashes.
Compared to just nine auto accidents in all of 2024, local police have responded to 64 crashes between January and mid-September of 2025 alone.
For students at Holly Ridge Elementary School, the construction traffic and its consequences have become a staple of everyday life. Over the summer, the school shut down a playground on its front lawn indefinitely, after three nearby crashes involving construction vehicles prompted safety concerns.
Penelope Hull, a local fourth grader, told the Illuminator that she and her grandmother “almost got killed” by an 18-wheel semi truck.
“They wrecked into the gate, and then they had to build a whole new gate,” Hull told the publication. “And that’s why they’re saying we shouldn’t go out there… because there’s too many wrecks and Meta trucks. And they could crash.”
There are numerous other tales, like a hit-and-run by a Meta dump truck, and the story of a driver abandoning a wrecked construction vehicle so he wouldn’t miss a meeting at the Hyperion site. In one crash involving an 18-wheeler and a tipper truck, the Illuminator reports the driver responsible told police he “does not and has never had a driver’s license.”
Local residents describe Meta drivers who “think they run this road,” often colliding with street-adjacent fixtures like signs, mailboxes, and gates.
Of course, like so many other data centers, Hyperion is also impacting local residents’ access to water and electricity, with “rust-colored” tap water and intermittent blackouts already rearing their heads. Unfortunately for the 2,000 residents of Holly Ridge, Meta is just getting started.
More on data centers: First Responders Are Being Overwhelmed by Data Center Fires
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