Data centers in Ascension Parish, Louisiana: 1 project mapped

Imagery: Esri, Maxar

Ascension Parish began writing data center rules in August 2026 before anyone had publicly asked to build one. At its August 6 meeting at the courthouse in Donaldsonville, after several people spoke against data centers, the parish council approved a resolution asking the Planning and Zoning Commission to draft guidelines for what it calls "high impact development facilities", the Gonzales Weekly Citizen reported. "For the record, we do not know of a data center who wants to build anywhere in the parish," said council chair Chase Melancon. "If they were to apply for a data center in the parish right now, we have nothing as far as setbacks, noise. We don't have anything to hold them to." He said training sessions with officials from places that host the facilities "showed us that we're not ready to even have the conversation." Council member Joel Robert suggested a moratorium until the rules were finished.

In September the zoning commission recommended amendments requiring any data center applicant to hold two public meetings before applying to rezone land, requiring the operator to independently generate, operate and maintain its own power, and lowering the allowed noise level from 50 to 45 decibels, WBRZ reported. The council introduced the code amendment at its September 17 meeting in Gonzales. "Right now, families in the parish learn about industrial projects only after the decisions are already made behind closed doors," resident Barbara Bourgeois said, asking for transparency. "At least 11 of our own elected and appointed officials have signed NDAs."

The first named project arrived in the middle of that process. On August 31, ONE Nuclear, a Florida-based developer, announced a binding letter of intent with an unnamed "prominent Louisiana landowner group" for site control of Project Cayman: a 2.88-gigawatt gas-fired power plant and a 700MW, 2.88GWh battery system alongside a data center campus, near the 17,000-acre RiverPlex MegaPark on the west bank of the Mississippi, POWER magazine reported. The company did not disclose who would build or use the data center. Despite its name, the project is gas; ONE Nuclear says its strategy is to build gas plants for industrial sites that could later move to small modular reactors. It said it would hold public information meetings with parishes and agencies through the end of 2026. The company's merger with Hennessy Capital Investment Corp. VII, already approved by Hennessy's shareholders, was expected to close by year-end. On the same west bank, Hyundai has begun pre-construction work on a $5.8 billion steel mill in the Modeste area.

Every project above is drawn from public records, filings and local reporting. Each row links to what it is based on. Statuses change, so check the source date before you rely on one. Found something wrong? Write to [email protected] and it gets fixed.