Meta Puts Another $3 Billion Into Eagle Mountain
Meta announced September 14 that it is doubling its planned Eagle Mountain data center spending, pushing total Utah investment past $3 billion.
The numbers: 1,200-plus construction workers at peak, 300-plus permanent jobs once the expanded campus is complete. Meta has been building in Eagle Mountain since 2018.
Three hundred permanent jobs for $3 billion works out to $10 million per job. That is the math worth keeping in your head while reading the rest of the announcement, which is heavy on community spending. Meta says it has put more than $50 million into local infrastructure (roads, water systems), $6.2 million into schools and local organizations, and $4.85 million into Eagle Mountain's Affordable Housing Fund, which it says helped 66 families with mortgages.
New this round: $450,000 for a Walden Park astronomy park (seven telescopes, retractable roof), $600,000 to buy three acres for a future elementary school with the Lake Mountain School District, $1.5 million to the Lake Mountain Education Foundation plus $50,000 a year. Telescopes are nice. Payrolls are better.
The serious questions for a desert data center are water and power, and Meta's answers are specific enough to check. New buildings get closed-loop liquid cooling with dry cooling, meaning no operational water use for cooling. The company projects total annual water use below one typical regional golf course, and says two restoration projects on Hobble Creek and the Provo River have restored 726 million gallons a year. On power, Meta says its electricity use is matched 100 percent with clean energy, that it has added 1.7 gigawatts of renewables and 600 megawatt-hours of storage across 13 Utah sites, and that it pays the full cost of its energy so other Rocky Mountain Power customers are not subsidizing it.
That last claim is the one to verify over time. Data centers have a habit of arriving with promises and leaving with rate hikes. Meta says it fully funded new generation and grid infrastructure in Eagle Mountain. If Utah County power bills stay flat, the company earns the victory lap. If not, $3 billion buys a lot of astronomy parks to hide behind.
What to watch: who fills those 300 permanent jobs. Meta says listings go through its careers page. Utah workers or imported labor: that is the difference between a win for Eagle Mountain and a win for Meta's HR department.
Sources
- Meta, "Deepening Our Investment in Eagle Mountain, Utah" (Sept 14, 2026)