Tech companies and local officials are covering data center talks in NDAs

Former sheriff's deputy Shannon McManus looks out over the data center project construction site in Boyce, La., last month. He's one of the local residents who has objected to nondisclosure agreements that kept negotiations for the project from the public. Jay Marcano for NPR hide caption

By fields of cotton and soybeans where his bees forage and pollinate, Foster Hensel pries open the lid of one of his beehives, setting off a rising hum from inside.

"You hear the difference in the sound?" he asks, pumping the bellows of a small smoker to try and settle the bees. "They're getting a little aggravated."

What has Hensel concerned is a few miles down the road. In Boyce, a small town in Rapides Parish in central Louisiana, construction is starting on a 300-acre data center site.

The beekeeper worries the new warehouse-like facilities will raise his utility bills or change the local environment. And he asks why there's not more information.

"Let me quote a good writer, Shakespeare — there's something rotten in Denmark," Hensel said. "There's something wrong with that."

The negotiations between the data center developer — Dallas-based Applied Digital Corp. — and local officials were shielded under nondisclosure agreements (NDAs).

In Rapides Parish, the secrecy left residents with unanswered questions and distrust of their local leaders. But the use of NDAs for negotiations on data centers is common across the country, according to experts and those in the industry. And the practice has faced opposition from the public and some lawmakers.