Cecil Reddick dealt with the typical constituent requests after he was elected to the Richland Parish Police Jury in rural northeast Louisiana: repair roads, upgrade drainage and demolish dams built by beavers that were now flooding roadside ditches.
Then, in late 2024, Gov. Jeff Landry and executives with Meta announced shocking news: the California-based company planned to build a massive data center to power AI computing, in fields where corn, rice, cotton and soybeans were grown.
Now, residents constantly seek out Reddick, the police jury president, approaching him at the local Walmart or interrupting his meal at Waffle House.
Richland Parish Police Jury president Cecil Reddick on Tuesday, August 4, 2026 in Rayville, Louisiana. Staff photo by Michael Johnson
“My phone never quits ringing,” Reddick said during a recent interview, adding that he’s happy to help.
It’s constituents with the normal calls, but also people asking about the police jury’s decision to impose a moratorium on new RV parks to house an army of construction workers. Calls also come from reporters, the governor’s office and out-of-town investors enticed by the prospect of earning big money from skyrocketing land values.
“This is all new to us,” Reddick said. “We’re learning as we go.”
Becoming a boomtown
The creation of what Meta now says will be a $50 billion investment has upended the lives of the nine police jurors who each receive $1,600 per month to represent about 1,500 people apiece in a parish where life for decades has centered around the farmland crops.
Most of the police jurors are farmers accustomed to the slow pace of life in a parish that has had no need for zoning laws. None of the four jurors interviewed for this article have a college degree, but they have Ph.Ds in life experiences.
Interstate 20 bisects Richland Parish, but until recently, only a handful of passing drivers had a reason to stop in either of the parish’s two towns, Delhi (population: 2,500) and Rayville, the parish seat (population: 3,200).
The parish has been steadily losing population since it peaked with 26,000 residents in 1940. The 2025 estimate: 19,500.
Local officials believe that the influx of investment and workers now swells the parish’s population by about 8,000, or nearly 50%, each workday. Locals now complain about traffic jams on Interstate 20 and U.S. 80, which runs parallel a mile north. Sheriff’s deputies now try to keep traffic moving along the two-lane highways that ring the data center, known as Hyperion.
Work continues on the Meta Richland Parish Data Center near Rayville, La., Monday, Aug. 3, 2026.
The residents and police jurors in Vermilion Parish — where SpaceX just announced plans to spend $100 billion to build a massive spaceport — are about to face many of the same issues.
For as long as anyone can remember, Richland Parish has had only enough money to take care of basic needs.
Now the police jurors have more than $20 million in the bank after sales tax collections nearly doubled in 2025. The sales tax jump provided more money than the parish had received over the previous 20 years combined, according to NELA Growth, which promotes investment in northeast Louisiana.
“We’re having to learn how to spend it, so that we spend it in the right places to improve the parish,” said Jesse Lively, a police juror. “For the first time ever, we hired an in-house engineer. He takes a lot of guessing out of what we normally do.”
The police jurors have also had to learn to address issues involving variance requests, permit fees and step-backs from property lines. They have been grappling with such questions as whether Hyperion will leave the parish short of water (the police jurors say it won’t), will raise electricity bills (they say they don’t believe it will) and whether the new power plants will make too much noise.
On that count, the police jurors want to require Entergy Louisiana to construct power plants that emit 50-60 decibels outside. Entergy favors an 85-decibel limit.
“They have to do what we tell them,” Reddick said, while acknowledging that the police jury faces enormous pressure from Meta, Entergy Louisiana and Landry to not impede construction of the data center.
From rumors to rush hour
Steve Adcock, 70, is a retired registered nurse who provided home hospice care at the end of his career. He lives on a farm.
“I’m a Christian. I try to do service for the Lord,” he said as he dug into an order of fried catfish at Big John’s Steak and Seafood, listed by tripadvisor.com as the best place to eat in Rayville. (Subway is No. 6, Waffle House is No. 7.)
Adcock was elected to the police jury in November 2023.
Richland Parish Police Jury member Steve Adcock, District 4, listens to a report during a meeting on Monday, August 3, 2026 in Rayville, Louisiana. Staff photo by Michael Johnson
Months later, he was invited to a meeting in Monroe, a half hour away, with 15-20 people in attendance. He was not allowed to bring his cellphone into the meeting.
Some business officials told the group that they represented a big corporation that wanted to move into the area, on farmland in an unincorporated area known as Holly Ridge. Adcock’s district encompasses that area.
“They said they would have 300-500 full-time employees,” Adcock remembered. “It sounded great, especially in a parish where people go off to college and don’t return. They asked how hard it would be to get parish government behind them. I said it wouldn’t be hard.”
Adcock asked: “‘Who are you?’ They said, ‘We can’t tell you.’”
The business officials asked Adcock to sign a nondisclosure agreement. He did.
Reddick, the police jury president, missed that meeting. But he soon began to hear rumors that a company wanted to invest big money in Richland Parish.
“A woman who cuts my hair told me that she heard that Meta was coming here,” Reddick said. “I knew what it was.”
A barrage of requests
Eliot Colvin drew a blank when he first got word.
Colvin, 50, is a third-generation farmer who is the longest-serving member of the police jury, having been elected initially in 2015.
As he rode in a giant green combine cutting corn, he described himself as the kind of person who willingly takes on tasks. Married, with three children and overseeing a full-time farming operation, he also serves as a deacon at his church and as a member of the local water system board. Colvin had to drop out of what was then called Northeast Louisiana University after his father fell in an industrial accident.
Given Colvin’s lengthy tenure and steady hand, other members of the police jury look to him for advice on how to handle certain matters. Reddick named him to chair a newly created economic development committee after the announcement.
But when Colvin first heard the name Meta, he knew nothing about the company.
“Somebody said it’s the people who own Facebook,” he recalled. “My first reaction: ‘Why do they want to come to rural Richland Parish?’ I didn’t even know what a data center was. I didn’t have a clue early on about the magnitude.”
Elliot Colvin answers messages while taking a moment from harvesting in a barn on Tuesday, August 4, 2026 in Rayville, Louisiana. Staff photo by Michael Johnson
Colvin quickly became so busy dealing with a hundred matters involving the economic development committee that he often couldn’t tend to the 5,000 acres he farms. Nor did his family get the time it needed.
“I had to pump the brakes some to focus on them,” Colvin said. “The farm suffered. A farm is a beast. It will consume anything and everything you give it. Your time, your body, your health, all your money. There’s always something that has to be tended to every day.”
Colvin stopped talking. He had to respond to a text message.
A Meta official advised him that a ditch alongside one of the two-lane highways around Hyperion now posed a safety problem and asked: Does the parish maintain the ditches? If so, could Colvin ask to have a worker take care of the problem?
Colvin texted back that he would ask a parish employee to address it.
The police jurors are negotiating a ticklish but big-dollar issue with Meta. The parish typically requires payment of 1% of the construction cost to obtain a permit to get started on any project.
But Meta officials balked at paying 1% of the initial $10 billion construction cost as a permit fee. So instead of paying $100 million, Meta provided $10 million.
The two sides are back at the negotiating table now after Meta announced plans to double the size of Hyperion.
Reddick said he believes that the two sides will settle on Meta paying 1/10th of 1% for the next phase, which will generate at least another $10 million.
“We’re committed to Richland Parish and to being a partner this community can count on for the long haul,” a Meta spokesperson said. “That commitment is already having a huge impact: more than $1 billion in local roads, water, and infrastructure, over $1.6 billion in work for Louisiana businesses, and resulting in historic teacher bonuses of up to $50,000 this year. We’re proud to call Richland Parish home.”
Police jurors are also trying to better prepare themselves for what’s to come by hiring a consulting firm to produce a report by the end of the year that could lead to Richland Parish having its first zoning laws.
“We’re coming into the modern world,” Reddick said.
