Amazon Madison Mega Site data center, Canton, Mississippi

Amazon's data center campus on Nissan Parkway at Highway 22 in Canton, in Madison County, Mississippi, went up so fast that some of its neighbours say they learned what it was only once construction had started. "They didn't tell us anything, even when it was in the making," said René Johnson, a retired schoolteacher who lives across the highway. Joey Deeson, who runs the Madison County Economic Development Authority, said a non-disclosure agreement with Amazon kept him from sharing certain details during development; the authority has since hired a company to pick up trash around the site and handed out air purifiers to households dealing with dust.

Johnny Sims, a county constable who lives 200 yards from the site, said his teenage daughter, who has asthma, has been to the emergency room repeatedly because of construction dust: "Amazon brought a lot of baggage with them." "They're just kind of putting us in an Alamo," said Cynthia Allen, the alderwoman for Canton's fourth ward, who lives across from the industrial park. "There's nowhere to go." Amazon's two Madison County campuses will house more than 700 diesel generators, over 300 of them in Canton, and permit applications estimate nitrogen oxide emissions at the Canton campus could exceed 240 tons a year.

The county and the company are also fighting over what the buildings are worth. Tax assessor Norman Cannady valued each of the five data center buildings at about $292 million for the 2026 roll; Amazon's own appraisal put each at around $69 million. Amazon's tax representative, James Poliyanskiy, would not share the company's construction costs, citing competition, but agreed under questioning that its figure would "come down by a significant amount" if those costs were disclosed. On August 17, 2026 the Board of Supervisors upheld the assessor's value, keeping about $5.8 million of tax revenue this year that Amazon's figure would have cost the county. "There's no better way to determine replacement costs than the actual cost to replace that facility, which they have," Cannady said, adding that Amazon can still contest the decision in court.

More is coming: Amazon says its Mississippi buildout now totals $25 billion, including an additional $11 billion for Madison County on top of the original campus.