Penelope Hull doesn’t care that the road in front of her elementary school leads to what will be the largest data center in the world. She just misses the playground in front of Holly Ridge Elementary School.
It’s shut down this year because it faces the roads where, every day, thousands of dump trucks and 18-wheelers thunder toward “Hyperion,” Meta’s $27 billion data center being built less than a mile away.
Holly Ridge is a town of fewer than 2,000 in Richland Parish, in the northeast corner of the state, where nearly a quarter of residents live below the poverty line. Before Meta broke ground last December, the town’s two-lane roads were quiet, scenic routes mostly used by locals.
Now, the noise from the trucks lined up outside the elementary school shakes the classrooms.
“You can’t pay attention,” Hull, a fourth grader, said. “And then you get off track and you lose what the teacher was telling you to do.”
The school sits tucked in the corner where Highways 80 and 183 meet. At that intersection alone, there have been at least three big truck crashes this year.
“They wrecked into the gate, and then they had to build a whole new gate,” Hull said. “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.”
On the roads surrounding Meta’s construction site, vehicle crashes have gone up by more than 600%. There have been 64 crashes between January and mid-September this year, compared to just nine for all of 2024, according to police records obtained by the Gulf States Newsroom.
In one crash, two dump trucks collided head-on. The driver who caused it had an expired Mexican driver’s license, and his injuries were so severe, he had to be airlifted to a hospital — with the helicopter landing in a field behind the school.
In a statement to the Gulf States Newsroom, Meta said it sets strict guidelines about speed and safety, but did not respond to questions about specific crashes.
Interviews with residents and crash reports tell a different story: careless, reckless and sometimes unlicensed drivers rumbling through the rural town, endangering everyone.
Hull said she’s heard about trucks colliding and killing a driver, and described a near-miss when she and her grandmother “almost got killed” by an 18-wheeler.
“On the school bus, the trucks make you feel anxious that they’re gonna wreck,” the nine-year-old said. “It’s really bad. I don’t like it.”
He ‘never had a license’
The Hyperion project came together over the course of 2024 through a whirlwind of negotiations and non-disclosure agreements between Meta, Entergy, and state officials who rewrote laws and created new tax exemptions to win the deal. While Meta estimates employing about 5,000 construction workers at the peak of the project, the 4-million-square-foot data center is expected to employ about 500 permanent workers once completed in 2030.
Crashes in Holly Ridge are surging in conjunction with the explosion in traffic around the Hyperion site. Traffic data from Louisiana’s Department of Transportation and Development (LaDOTD) gives a clear picture of how much it’s increased since Meta started construction.
LaDOTD installs temporary traffic count devices on state highways that record the total traffic volume over a 24-hour period. One of those locations is right in front of Holly Ridge Elementary School on Highway 183, which only has three recorded counts in the last 10 years.
A count taken on a school day in February 2022 recorded 1,817 vehicles in one day. The next available count from the same spot was taken in July 2025, showing a jump to 5,224 vehicles — nearly triple the previous count, despite being in the summertime with no school traffic.
In a statement, LaDOTD said Meta has not violated any permits or agreements. But documents obtained by the Gulf States Newsroom show Meta — through its developer Laidley LLC — agreed it was responsible for ensuring public safety and minimizing work zone impacts.
Police crash records suggest that isn’t happening — many of the crashes appear to be caused by drivers in transit to the Meta construction site.
Some happened because the large trucks couldn’t see the smaller vehicles or hear their horns before backing or turning into them. Some, because the driver, who was en route to his workplace at the Meta site, was tired.
Others are more alarming: A hit-and-run where the dump truck left the scene; an 18-wheeler trying to beat an oncoming train across the railroad tracks before deciding against it and backing into another vehicle; a driver leaving the scene, abandoning his wrecked vehicle in the median, so he wouldn’t miss a morning meeting at the Meta site.
In August, a dump truck hauling dirt drove off the road and crashed into a tree, killing the driver, according to Tracy Morris with the Richland Parish Coroner’s Office.
In September, an 18-wheeler collided with a dump truck turning onto the road leading to the Meta site. In the report, the driver told the deputy that “he does not and has never had a driver’s license.”
Greg Fischer, with the Louisiana Highway Safety Commission, said it was “shocking” to hear that one of the drivers heading to Meta’s site was hired without any license, much less the specialized license required to operate large, heavy vehicles like an 18-wheeler or dump truck.
“I don’t understand how that could even happen,” Fischer said. “You would think that a company would vet their drivers — at least to the extent that they have a commercial driver’s license before they put them out on the road.”
Unlicensed drivers operating dump trucks and 18-wheelers, Fischer said, create a “dangerous situation” to both themselves and the community.
“The worst case scenario is a fatality — a fatal crash,” he said.
‘They think they run this road’
In a statement to the Gulf States Newsroom, a spokesperson for Meta said the company strives to be “good neighbors” and to mitigate disturbances to the community. But around a dozen people who live on the roads surrounding Hyperion interviewed by the Gulf States Newsroom say otherwise.
All of them say they’ve never been contacted by the company or any officials — even after filing complaints with the city and law enforcement officials.
“Nobody hadn’t come talk to me about nothing,” said Dorothy Lively, who lives at the corner of Highway 80 and Jaggers Lane, one of the main entrances to the construction site.
Workers park their trucks in her yard without asking. Dust, dirt and sand kicked up from the site get into her home, irritating her sinuses.
She’s “scared to death” about trying to pull out of her own driveway and said she feels trapped in her home.
“It looks like a train, one after another,” she said of the line of trucks that can sometimes stretch for miles on the road in front of her home.
Nearby, on Highway 183, Tatjana Thompson said she waits to walk to her mailbox until the evening, when the traffic slows down, because she’s worried about being hit by one of the trucks bound for Hyperion. She lives directly across the street from the site and workers park in her yard, too.
“They think they run this road,” Thompson said. “I don’t know where they done their driver’s license.”
About a month ago, she said a new 45 miles per hour speed limit sign was put up in front of her home. But the trucks ignore it, she said. The sign is bent at an angle after being hit by a passing vehicle.
‘It’s incumbent of them to be a good steward’
State and parish officials are aware of residents’ concerns.
In June, Gov. Jeff Landry visited Holly Ridge and met with the Richland Parish Sheriff’s Office to discuss complaints. In an interview with TV station KNOE News, he acknowledged the traffic concerns and promised control measures. “I know that it’s causing a lot of traffic problems around this area,” he said. “We’re going to start looking into making sure that we have the proper traffic control to handle the amount of work that’s coming.“Because guess what? That project is transformational for this area, but like all good things, it comes with good problems.”
Landry has called the project a “game-changer” for the state that will bring thousands of jobs and cement Louisiana’s place as a hub for artificial intelligence.
“This facility is a great example of how Louisiana is quickly becoming one of the best states in America to do business,” Landry said, standing at the Meta site, in a video posted on Facebook, the social media site owned by Meta.
Landry’s office and the Richland Parish Sheriff’s Office did not respond to questions for this story. But following Landry’s visit, LaDOTD announced plans to convert three intersections along Highway 80 to “all-way” stops to help control traffic, including the intersection in front of Holly Ridge Elementary School.
But many of the crashes this year occurred after Landry’s visit and the installation of additional all-way stops, including the 18-wheeler racing a train, the helicopter landing at Holly Ridge Elementary, the dump truck driver who died and the unlicensed Freightliner semi-truck operator.
Despite rumors circulating in the community, both Meta and the Richland Parish School Board told the Gulf States Newsroom there are currently no plans to relocate the school.
Meta says it’s investing more than $200 million in local infrastructure improvements. But the fault for the increase in vehicle crashes, according to Brian Wolshon, a researcher who studies highway safety at Louisiana State University, doesn’t lie with the infrastructure. It lies with the drivers and Meta.
“Just because you’re Meta and you’re this trillion-dollar company, and you roll into West Yahoo, Louisiana, and we’re rolling out the red carpet,” Wolshon said, “I think it’s incumbent of them to be a good steward of the public trust.”
While old state highways like 80 and 183 may have been unprepared for a massive influx in heavy truck traffic, even the safest road in the world, Walshon said, can’t prevent careless or reckless drivers from causing crashes.
’They’re constantly turning off the power’
It’s not just increased traffic and crashes that are frustrating residents.
Joseph Williams and his wife, Robin, are also “pissed off” about the data center’s impact on water and electricity.
Though construction won’t be complete until at least 2030, Hyperion will use about three times the amount of power than the entire city of New Orleans uses in a year. To feed the behemoth’s energy demand, the power company, Entergy, plans to spend $3.2 billion to build three new gas-powered plants.
Meta signed a contract with Entergy that has not been publicly disclosed, so it’s unknown how much the international company, worth trillions, is paying for the additional infrastructure.
In a statement to the Gulf States Newsroom, Entergy said that factoring in the “various costs and benefits, Meta coming to Louisiana means customer bills will be lower than they otherwise would have been,” through Meta contributing large cost-based payments to the energy company.
Those payments, Entergy said, would effectively offset grid upgrade and storm-related costs — reducing what regular ratepayers would otherwise have to pay.
Grid upgrades and storm-related costs are imposed by Entergy, a company that reported earnings of more than $1 billion last year, and contribute to a higher energy burden for ratepayers. Advocates warn the additional costs of building new gas plants to power Meta’s data center could be passed on to Entergy customers across the state as well.
The Williamses live across from the site on Caston Road, and said they’re already being affected.
Since Meta began construction, they said their water sometimes turns “rust-colored” and their electricity cuts off with no warning.
“Entergy goes out here all the time. I guess with them now, they’re constantly turning off the power,” Joseph Williams said, pointing to the expanse of dirt, trucks and heavy construction equipment at the Meta site — what was once trees and fields in front of their home.
In one recent instance, they said their power was out for three days. And they tried contacting Entergy for information.
“I blew Entergy up,” Robin Williams said. “They said it’d be back up by 12, by 2, by 4, 8 o’clock the next morning.”
Entergy denied any power outages in the area caused by construction. But the couple said they ended up staying at a friend’s house for the next few days until their power was restored.
The lack of notice and delay, they said, makes them feel “unimportant.”
This story was produced by the Gulf States Newsroom, a collaboration between Mississippi Public Broadcasting, WBHM in Alabama, WWNO and WRKF in Louisiana and NPR.