Louisiana Residents Push Back as Data Center Deals Move Forward Under Secrecy

Construction has started on a 300-acre data center site in Boyce, Louisiana, a small town in Rapides Parish, after nondisclosure agreements kept the deal between Dallas-based Applied Digital Corp. and Louisiana officials hidden from the public, NPR reported on August 27, 2026.

Nondisclosure agreements, or NDAs, are legal contracts that prevent parties from sharing information about a deal. In Boyce, residents said they did not learn about the project until construction was about to begin, according to NPR. Shannon McManus, a former sheriff's deputy and local resident, objected to the NDAs at a public meeting. Foster Hensel, a beekeeper near Boyce, raised concerns about utility bills and environmental changes, citing the lack of public information about the project.

The use of NDAs for data center negotiations is common across the United States, according to experts and industry sources cited by NPR. David Cuillier, director of the Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida, said data center developers control information closely to gain an edge when negotiating with multiple counties and parishes at the same time. Eric Bonds, an environmental sociology professor at the University of Mary Washington, found that NDAs were used in at least 25 of 31 data center projects his team studied in Virginia.

The Boyce project is part of a broader wave of data center expansion in Louisiana. State officials signed NDAs as Amazon's $12 billion data center projects moved forward in secret, WWNO reported on July 24, 2026. More than 100 Louisiana state employees signed NDAs with Governor Jeff Landry's office, according to the same report. WWLTV reported on July 27, 2026, that at least 121 employees within Landry's office signed confidentiality agreements limiting what they can share about their work.

The Louisiana Illuminator reported on March 29, 2026, that the NDAs signed with Louisiana Economic Development use identical, broad language that defines "Confidential Information" in sweeping terms. WRKF, the NPR affiliate in Baton Rouge, reported that records show a company signed a nondisclosure agreement in connection with the data center push.

Louisiana's data center ambitions extend beyond Boyce and Amazon. Governor Landry announced in December 2024 that Meta selected North Louisiana for a $10 billion artificial intelligence data center. President Donald Trump said during a cabinet meeting on August 26, 2025, that Meta's planned Louisiana AI data center will cost $50 billion, Reuters reported, a figure far higher than the initial announcement.

Entergy Louisiana announced on March 5, 2026, that its data center agreements have delivered $5 billion in customer savings, and it issued a "Fair Share Plus" pledge, according to a filing posted by the Louisiana Public Service Commission on March 15, 2026. Louisiana House Bill 26RS-2671, introduced in the 2026 Regular Session, would require data centers to provide information so the state can assess whether a water source can meet a project's needs.

Lawmakers in other states have moved to restrict the practice that drew Boyce residents' objections. Bills to ban NDAs for data centers have been introduced in Michigan, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Ohio, NPR reported. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro banned the use of NDAs on data center projects by agencies he oversees, effective in 2026.

The broader context here is a tension between economic development and public transparency. Developers and state economic development agencies argue that confidentiality is needed to compete for projects that bring investment and jobs. Residents and transparency advocates say the agreements prevent communities from weighing the costs, environmental effects, and utility impacts of large-scale data center construction before it begins.

Cuillier's point about information asymmetry is relevant: when a developer can negotiate with multiple localities at once under NDA, each locality sees only what the developer chooses to share. That weakens the public's ability to weigh in and limits officials' ability to compare terms. The Virginia survey by Bonds, covering 31 projects, provides the most systematic evidence to date of how common the practice is within a single state.

Louisiana's experience shows the transparency challenge at a moment of rapid data center growth tied to demand for AI infrastructure. The Boyce project, the Amazon developments, and the Meta site together represent billions in planned investment. The state's use of NDAs has drawn scrutiny from residents, from legislators who introduced water-disclosure requirements, and from the governor's own office, where the scope of confidentiality agreements covering state employees became a subject of public reporting.

For residents like McManus and Hensel, the issue is immediate. Construction in Boyce is already starting, and the window for public input that the NDAs closed off has shut. Whether the legislative proposals in other states, or Shapiro's ban in Pennsylvania, signal a broader shift toward mandatory disclosure in data center negotiations is an open question.