(CTN News) _ Facebook’s parent company plans to nearly double the size of its Eagle Mountain data storage facility, pushing investments by Meta to $1.5 billion.
A few hours after ebullient Meta employees welcomed visitors for a first-time tour inside one of five enormous H-shaped server buildings that stand starkly in an expanse of sagebrush and desert, Facebook’s Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the purchase on Facebook Friday.
By the time the Eagle Mountain data center is completed, it will have reached nearly 4.5 million square feet, making it one of 15 Meta data centers globally that are used to store data for billions of users of Facebook’s, Instagram, WhatsApp, and other social media platforms.
As part of enlarging the new remote campus, 1,750 construction workers will be employed at peak and 300 jobs will be created once the campus is finished.
Eagle Mountain mayor Tom Westmoreland said, “This is a big day for everyone involved.” Since Meta broke ground in 2018, his small and young community has grown dramatically.
This is something very different,” the mayor said, “and we couldn’t do it on our own.”
As part of the company’s commitment to return twice the amount of water the site consumes back to the Provo River watershed,
Meta is giving $200,00 to ongoing efforts to restore water flows through Utah County’s Hobble Creek.
In addition to other water replenishment and conservation efforts it has undertaken amid Utah’s drought, the grant will restore 467 million gallons of water to the watershed yearly.
It is important for Facebook’s to be good neighbors, according to William Marks, a Meta community development manager at Eagle Mountain.
