Site icon TheVoiceOfJoyce

TheVoiceOfJoyce No one knows how many people employed at Data Centers. They’re closed to the public. Damage, sometimes the city minimizes water usage and no one knows how much revenue they generate. We do know, we’re promoting another industry that’s promoting climate warming. Fairly soon, more methane emissions will be released and our global temperatures will increase. A lot of money is going to industry and too little to people. Use anti trust, bring back competition and better paying jobs. That’s rebuild our infrastructure, our clean energy and restore good paying union jobs.

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Drive into downtown Gallatin, and it looks like a quintessential, historic Tennessee town square.

It has the state’s oldest silent movie theater, a former drugstore and soda fountain, and a barbershop.

But four miles northeast is a very modern — and very controversial — neighbor: the hyperscale data center for Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.

Gallatin Mayor Paige Brown says the data center is bringing in transformative revenue, but some residents and elected officials aren’t so sure, citing a lack of transparency about how much revenue the city has received and where it’s gone.

That, coupled with concerns around quality of life, is a common, now almost familiar, narrative playing out around the country.

WHAT TO KNOW

Meta is one of several corporations housed in the Gallatin Industrial Center.
Photo: Lisa Autry / WKU Public RadioThe ‘Fort Knox’ of Gallatin

Meta Gallatin is a 900-acre campus with four buildings spanning nearly 1.7 million square feet. It is equivalent to 10 Walmart Supercenters.

Reporter Lisa Autry, from our partner station WKU Public Media, visited Gallatin to check it out, because it’s similar in size to a data center proposed in Cave City, Kentucky. That data center is currently in litigation.

The Gallatin campus, Lisa writes, feels like Fort Knox in Kentucky: highly secured, with perimeter fencing around its thousands of computer servers.

A company representative denied a request to tour the facility, and a former worker who initially agreed to be interviewed later declined, citing an NDA that she signed.

Even a neighboring homeowner also declined to comment, citing fear of retaliation. Another neighbor, Elizabeth Holmes (no, not that Elizabeth Holmes), said that after a blast from the facility shook her one-story brick ranch, “Facebook sent me a $2,500 check, and I had to sign a statement that I wouldn’t sue them for anything.”

Locals have also complained about the lack of transparency around how much energy the Gallatin campus uses and how many people it employs. (Mayor Brown said the workforce was over 100 people; Meta itself said there are currently “approximately 65 operational roles.”)

The water usage, meanwhile, is known: It accounts for about 2% of the city’s total water usage. For City Councilman Pascal Jouvence, that’s too much — and, he said, “they can do more per the contract with the city, and they’re still building.”

Mayor Paige Brown argues Gallatin residents with home sprinklers use more water than Meta during the peak summer months. “They are a very heavy water user, but we never would have agreed to serve them if it compromised our customers in any way,” Brown said in an interview.Dive into the full story

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On today’s episode of the NashVillagerpodcast 
with host Nina Cardona 🎙️ 

How much access do non-English speaking residents have to speak with our state and local government? Nashville residents come from all over the globe, and they speak many languages. That can make communicating with the government a little tricky. Plus, the local news for Sept. 9, 2026, and this week’s edition of What Where Whens-day.

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FROM THIS IS NASHVILLE

This Is Nashville is diving deep into hyperscale data centers. And the future of data centers lies in more rural areas, which is why the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom has been checking in with communities in the region that have gotten big data centers — as well as those who are preparing for their arrival. In this episode, we get updates from Gallatin, Memphis, West Virginia and central Kentucky.  

Catch This is Nashville with host Blake Farmer on YouTube,
or listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 
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