|
  
|
| 
4/3/2026
WT Staff
 Got water questions? Give us a call at 877-52-WATER (877-529-2837), or email us at info@wtla.us
Friday, April 3, 2026 407 pm CDT
Drinking Water Facility Profile
River Road Water System
This SDWA Serious Violator facility is expected to supply potable water to a 4 million sq ft data center in rural Louisiana. What could go wrong?
"We at the River Road Water System work around the clock to provide top quality drinking water to every tap. We ask that all our customers help us protect and conserve our water sources, which are the heart of our community, our way of life, and our children's future."
River Road Water System, Richland Parish 2024 Annual Water Quality Report
As Western States brace for a treacherously dry year with anticipated water shortages, elevated wildfire risk and conservation measures expected, Meta Platforms, Inc. is building another data processing center, supporting the brand's global mission to "build the future of human connection and the technology to make it possible".
Meta currently operates with 7 remote data processing facilities situated in the most severely water-stressed locations in the US. In spite of the intensive water volume required to support these operations, estimated at 5 million gallons per day for a 1 million sq ft facility, the company is working to satisfy demand for more remote computing capacity. Meta is currently building a 4 million sq ft megalith in rural Louisiana. Richland Parish is a sparsely populated farming region, less than 20,000 people reside here in the Northern Delta, between the Mississippi and Red Rivers. Drinking water is provided by one of eleven SDWA licensed public facilities, all drawing on the same groundwater aquifer.
Meta reported annual revenue north of $200 billion in 2025. This is not too bad for a rebrand of some guy's twenty-year-old website. A college student's digital hang-out went live to other introverts in 2004, largely to share photos of the ones that got away. Facebook encouraged users to share intimate personal details for all the world to see, which strangely become so familiar and routine for humanity that one felt strange to be non-conforming, while discretion and personal privacy became the new anti-social.
Global norms tilted sharply across countries and cultures as Facebook grew, adding an instant messaging tool, and a personal photo album sharing app linked to the wholesale demise of self esteem for the majority of young women drawn into its grasp. End-to-end encrypted global VOIP video phone and file exchange tool, WhatsApp got the business crowd comfortable with exchanging confidential documents on the platform, while all those transmissions pile up on the cloud (some guy's computer) waiting for quantum computing to open them up.
Just like McDonalds, the Meta brand is now served to billions around the world. By their own admission, Meta has risen above the 2D screens of our past, launching into the next wave of connection, "immersive experiences in mixed reality and innovation" with machines running code on our limited public trust resources, claiming a place of global significance worthy of depleting our clean drinking water.
The newest data center in the Meta fleet is called Hyperion, located north of I20 in Louisiana, halfway between the Towns of Delhi and Rayville. The River Road Water System provides the potable water connections in this part of the country. Its 2024 Annual Water Quality Report indicates the existence of a Source Water Assessment Plan (SWAP) for the aquifer, accessed by this facility from one of two wells. Copies of the SWAP are available to the public, see below for contact details. The SWAP rates the drinking water supply at "MEDIUM" risk for contamination as of 2024, before the new data center.
Meta has contracted to work with LimnoTech, a self-proclaimed group of "engineers and scientists who have a passion for clean, sustainable water," including CEO Tim who likes to work with cool people. No surname is listed on the website for the CEO. LimnoTech authored at least two annual Volumetric Water Benefit reports for Meta, in 2022 and 2023. Just a single reference is listed for 44 pages of content, the World Resources Institute, for developing the notion of "Volumetric Water Benefit Accounting - a method for implementing and valuing water stewardship activities". If Volumetric Water Benefit is an accounting term, (we have not run across it in reporting water issues over the last two decades), it would make sense this could be a method for valuing water stewardship activities. The reach to the realm of implementation of water stewardship activities prompts us to take a closer look.
There are no references in this report to the massive public datasets of the national and state agencies that monitor water in the USA. There are no references to professional hydrologists, not the US Geological Survey with their extensive network of carefully managed surface and groundwater monitoring stations, nor the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) or the California Water Boards that manage the public trust, the clean drinking water resource belonging to the public in CA. Volumetric Water Benefits (VWB) are at most a concept, and loosely defined at that. VWB is tied to vague descriptors such as "improved water stewardship outcomes", without definition. Simply pledging to return 100% of the water volume used in the data center back to the watershed does not make it possible, especially in a season of water scarcity and conservation members for those already connected to the system.
All things considered, we have concerns for the people of Richland Parish.
Drinking Water Facility Profile: River Road Water System
EPA Status: Enforcement Priority
Owner: private
Location: Rayville, LA
Parish: Richland
Active Permit: LA1083008
System Type: community water system
Established: Jan 1, 1950
Population Served: 3510
Service Connections: 1170
Source: groundwater, Well #1 (North Well at HWY 852) Well #3 (Crain and Goose Hollow Road)
Admin Contact: James Hough tel 318-728-6500
Latest Compliance Inspections: Sanitary survey, complete: Jul 22, 2025 (State)
No deficiencies noted in the last inspection.
A significant deficiency in Finished Water Storage noted in the May 2023 has been resolved.
The following information gathered from federal EPA pertains to the quarter ending September 30 2025 (data last refreshed on EPA database January 26 2026)
|
Non-compliant inspections
(of the previous 12 quarters)
|
with Significant Violations
(of the previous 12 quarters)
|
Informal
Enforcement Actions
(last 5 yrs)
|
Formal
Enforcement Actions
(last 5 years)
|
|
10 out of 12
|
2 out of 12
|
39
|
-
|
Significant Non-Compliance and Violations Record:
Maximum Contaminant Level Violation Stage 2 disinfectants and by-products of disinfection rule - Apr 1, 2024 to present - unaddressed; prior violation Oct 1, 2022 to Dec 31, 2022 - resolved;
Treatment Technique Violation Ground Water Rule - Sept 14 2023 to present - unaddressed
Treatment Technique Violation Lead and Copper Rule - Oct 17 2024 to Dec 6, 2024 - resolved
Reporting Violation Lead and Copper Rule - Oct 17 2024 to Oct 23 2024 - resolved
*Note that drinking water information provided on this site is aggregated from the federal EPA database, state resources and local government sources where available.
EPA publishes violation and enforcement data quarterly, based on the inspection reports of the previous quarter. Water systems, states and EPA take up to three months to verify this data is accurate and complete.
Specific questions about your local water supply should be directed to the facility.
The EPA safe drinking water facilities data available to the public presents what is known to the government based upon the most recently available information for more than one million regulated facilities. EPA and states inspect a percentage of facilities each year, but many facilities, particularly smaller ones, may not have received a recent inspection. It is possible that facilities do have violations that have not yet been discovered, thus are shown as compliant in the system.
EPA cannot positively state that facilities without violations shown in ECHO are necessarily fully compliant with environmental laws. Additionally, some violations at smaller facilities do not need to be reported from the states to EPA. If ECHO shows a recent inspection and the facility is shown with no violations identified, users of the ECHO site can be more confident that the facility is in compliance with federal programs.
The compliance status of smaller facilities that have not had recent inspections or review by EPA or the states may be unknown or only available via state data systems.
See yellow tags on the map for more information.
|
|
|
|
All rights reserved 2026 - WTLA - This material may not be reproduced in whole or in part and may not be distributed,
publicly performed, proxy cached or otherwise used, except with express permission.
|
| 