Amazon says it will limit water use, pay for power at $12B NW Louisiana data centers
2nd March 2026 · 0 Comments
By Elise Plunk
Contributing Writer
(lailluminator.com) — Confetti and fireworks lit up the inside of the Shreveport Municipal Auditorium Monday afternoon as Gov. Jeff Landry unveiled Amazon as the company behind the construction of three new data centers coming to Northwest Louisiana.
The company said it plans to invest more than $12 billion into three interconnected campuses across the region, promising to pay for its electricity and limit its water use while also investing in local infrastructure.
“This is not going to cost the people of Louisiana any more on their utility rates,” Landry said. “You can go find some bad stories in other states, but those stories are not gonna be replicated here.”
Amazon plans to hire 540 employees with wages 50 percent more than the state’s average salary. The latest figures from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics placed Louisiana’s average annual pay at $63,804 as of first quarter 2025.
The company will spend $400 million on public water systems in the Caddo-Bossier area, according to the governor.
Roger Wehner, vice president of economic development for Amazon, said the company’s data centers planned for Northwest Louisiana will use water for cooling purposes “less than 13% of the year,” during the hotter days of summer. Wehner also touted the water-efficient design of the data centers, claiming to be 80 percent more efficient than the average for the industry.
“Trust is a function of time,” Wehner said. “We look forward to earning your trust.”
Amazon has promised to pay “100 percent of its own electricity costs” for its data centers, said Brett Madison, president Southwestern Electric Power Co. The utility is not expected to build a power plant specifically for the data centers, but Amazon has committed to pay for upgrades to SWEPCO’s infrastructure, including substations, transmission lines and specialized equipment.
American Electric Power, SWEPCO’s parent company, has said no costs associated with the Amazon data centers will be passed along to utility customers.
State officials and Amazon representatives were not made available for reporters’ questions after the announcement.
The data center industry has come under scrutiny for a lack of transparency in development decisions, including their reputation for high water use and electricity needs. In Louisiana, local and state officials have used nondisclosure agreements to conceal the economic development process, with consumer advocates lamenting the lack of community input on how data centers will meet their water and power needs.
Last month, the New Orleans City Council voted to ban data centers in the city in a one-year moratorium, citing murky zoning definitions within the city.
The Caddo Parish Commission, however, recently decided against a vote on a one-year moratorium on developments such as data centers using water from Caddo Lake. The proposal also called for a study on whether the lake’s environment could handle large water withdrawals.
Amazon’s data centers are in partnership with Stack Infrastructure, a Denver-based company that will also own the facilities. Construction of the centers will support up to 1,500 jobs, according to Stack, which lists 23 data center locations globally.
Last week’s announcement in Shreveport marks the third major data center project planned in Louisiana.
In West Feliciana Parish, Anthropic plans a $10 billion center to help meet the soaring data-handling demand driven by artificial intelligence.
Construction is now underway on the Meta data center in Richland Parish, a project first pegged at $10 billion that is now approaching a $30 billion investment. Meta intends to pay for the three new natural-gas turbines Entergy Louisiana will build to power its facility, but the $550 million cost of transmission lines feeding the data center will be passed along to utility customers.
Ratepayers could also be left with any remaining costs for the new power plant if Meta decides to leave after its 15-year commitment to operate its data center, according to its arrangement with the Louisiana Public Service Commission.
This article originally published in the March 2, 2026 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
