By BRIAN DAGGY & JIM LOVE
Guest Columnists
Daggy
Love
Another large data center is slated to come to Indiana, but can Hoosiers really afford it?
In late August, the Lebanon Planning Commission approved Meta’s 1,500-acre data center. The project would be the largest data center ever built in Indiana. The company will break ground inside the LEAP District this fall, endorsed by state leaders as the crown jewel of Indiana’s economic development.
But beneath the headlines about the unspecified number of jobs and hefty corporate tax breaks lies an even bigger story, one that Hoosiers can’t afford to ignore.
Meta’s new facility is projected to consume more than 1,500 megawatts of electricity each day, which is an almost unfathomable amount of energy. To put that into perspective, that is more power than many utilities currently deliver to all their residential customers combined. According to the Citizens Action Coalition (CAC), Indiana simply does not have the resources available today to meet this demand. New grid infrastructure and new power plants will need to be built to support this single development.
And who pays for that buildout? Not Meta. It’s us, the ratepayers.
Utilities are already filing for major rate hikes across the state. Families are struggling to keep up with rising utility bills, yet now we’re being asked to bankroll the infrastructure needed for some of the wealthiest corporations in history to expand their operations. These billion-dollar tech giants reap the benefits of generous tax incentives, while everyday Hoosiers foot the bill through higher monthly costs.
The risks go far beyond our pocketbooks. Utilities have signaled that serving the demands of AI and hyperscale data centers could mean keeping old coal plants open longer, building new natural gas power plants, and rushing to expand grid capacity with little regard for environmental consequences. That means more pollution, more greenhouse gas emissions, and more coal ash dumped into our waterways – all to support Big Tech’s insatiable appetite for energy.
There is already an impact. The CAC says Wabash Valley Power Alliance, which supplies electricity to Boone REMC, is increasing spending on local transmission projects by 1,300 percent, primarily to interconnect the massive new Meta data center in the LEAP district. The $627 million in transmission upgrades will need to come from somewhere, and it’s a safe bet that ratepayers will eventually be the ones holding the bag.
And energy isn’t the only concern. Anyone who lives near a data center will tell you about the constant hum of equipment, backup generators, and cooling fans that never shut off. Noise pollution around the clock is not an abstract possibility; it’s a reality that communities across the country are grappling with. Yet our officials seem unwilling to have an honest conversation about what this means for the quality of life of Boone County residents.
These data centers also consume enormous amounts of water to cool the server hardware – often millions of gallons each day. One city official tells us that the Meta site will use approximately five million gallons of water per day when it’s completed. The consumption for data centers can be equivalent to that of entire towns and deplete local water resources. Officials tell us they’ve got a plan, but what happens if more companies move into LEAP? What happens if there’s a drought in Indianapolis where the water will be piped from? We need long-term, sustainable solutions.
At the Boone County Preservation Group, we know it’s too late to stop Meta’s data center from being built. But that doesn’t mean it’s too late to ask hard questions or to demand accountability. We still don’t know the full environmental impact of this project, nor do we have assurances that future projects won’t follow the same pattern of secrecy and subsidy.
The bottom line is this: Meta may get the data center it wants, but Hoosiers will be left paying the bill for new grid infrastructure, higher utility costs, environmental damage, and the erosion of our community’s natural resources. The LEAP District was sold to us as progress, but progress should never come at the expense of long-term sustainability.
We urge our fellow citizens and elected leaders to think carefully before greenlighting the next massive data center. Once the infrastructure is built and the farmland is gone, there’s no turning back. Boone County deserves responsible development that protects our land, our resources, and our people — not a future where a corporation’s profits come at our expense.
Brian Daggy and Jim Love are members of the Boone County Preservation Group, an organization formed in opposition to the LEAP project. The group’s mission is to create a unified community voice focused on preserving local farmland and natural resources, while supporting responsible land development. You can follow the Boone County Preservation Group on Facebook or find out more on their website.