Meta Lebanon data center, Lebanon, Indiana

Meta is building a 13-building, 1,500-acre data center campus in Lebanon, Boone County, Indiana, inside the state's LEAP Research and Innovation District, confirmed at a groundbreaking on February 11, 2026 as a project of more than $10 billion designed to deliver 1 GW of power once operational. On September 14, 2026, a 33-year-old construction worker from Oklahoma was killed after being struck by a pickup truck on the site near County Road 400 West and State Road 32.

The Boone County Board of Commissioners adopted a one-year moratorium on new data centers in unincorporated parts of the county on June 15, 2026, running to June 15, 2027, but it does not touch the Meta campus, because the state, not the county, made the land available: the Indiana Economic Development Corporation bought it for LEAP, had Lebanon annex and rezone it, then resold it to Meta.

"We're dealing with, and subjected to, 24-hour construction noise, stadium lights and constant traffic," Leslie Hine, who lives half a mile from the site, told county commissioners in June, adding that her father-in-law's fields had flooded because of the construction.

Meta says about 4,000 construction workers will be on site at peak and about 300 people will work there once it opens, with the first phase online in late 2027 or early 2028. The Lebanon City Council approved tax abatements for the first phase in 2024; Mayor Matt Gentry said that phase would generate more than $80 million in property taxes and more than $33 million in community impact payments over 15 years.

Water is the biggest fight: Citizens Energy Group has a $550 million deal to pipe up to 25 million gallons a day from Indianapolis to Lebanon Utilities by 2031 for the LEAP district's two tenants, Meta and an Eli Lilly plant, and Meta itself asked in 2024 for up to three million gallons of water a day for the data center.

After Indianapolis and Zionsville residents objected to LEAP's wastewater draining into Eagle Creek Reservoir, Lebanon Utilities said in May 2026 the discharge would not go inside Eagle Creek Park, and Zionsville's town council voted 7-0 on September 21, 2026 to ask Lebanon to drop plans for discharge into the town's own waterways; the final call rests with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.

Construction is going ahead; the open questions are where Lebanon Utilities will discharge LEAP's treated wastewater, which needs a state permit, and whether Boone County lifts its data center moratorium when it expires on June 15, 2027.