Meta’s Kuna Data Center Development Part 2

(Following Part 1’s overview of Kuna’s data center projects, this chapter dives deeper – exposing the obfuscation, civic failures, and unchecked power that greased the wheels for Meta’s data center approval.)

Figure: Bulldozers clear farmland on Kuna’s outskirts to make way for Meta’s sprawling data center campus. Under the code name “Project Peregrine,” nearly 1,100 acres of rural land were quietly annexed and zoned industrial for Meta’s facilitydgtlinfra.com 1boisedev.com 2.

Code Names, NDAs, and the Manufactured Secrecy

From the very start, Meta’s Kuna project operated under a deliberate veil of secrecy. In 2021, Kuna officials signed Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) with the project’s backers – effectively gagging themselves from revealing the company or project details to the public[3][4]. All planning was done through code names: Meta was “Project Peregrine,” a moniker that appeared on city agendas and documents in lieu of the real namedatacenterdynamics.com 3[6]. These tactics went far beyond keeping a few trade secrets confidential – they kept fundamental facts out of public view. Local residents had no idea that Facebook (Meta) was behind the massive “East Kuna Industrial” annexation approved in October 2021[7][8]. They were told only that the city was annexing 1,088 acres of farmland east of town for future industrial use – not that a Fortune 500 tech giant had already arranged to build a nearly million-square-foot data center theredgtlinfra.com 4.

Critically, the use of NDAs meant that even as Kuna’s City Council took public actions to enable the project (like annexation and signing a development agreement in late 2021), the meaningful details were hashed out in private. Idaho’s Open Meeting Law allows closed executive sessions for preliminary negotiations in commerce where open discussion might harm a company’s interests[11]. Kuna appears to have pushed this allowance to its limits. Officials met behind closed doors with Meta’s representatives and developers, hiding behind the legal justification that disclosing the company’s identity or plans could spoil the deal[11]. In practice, this maneuver sidelined the public entirely until the deal was essentially irreversible. When the City Council finally voted on the annexation and an accompanying development agreement in fall 2021, those items were presented in generic terms – the agenda made no mention of Facebook or the true scale of the project[12]. The public hearing for the annexation was perfunctory, as few citizens grasped what was at stake. Only months later, in February 2022, did Meta drop the secrecy and announce its $800 million data center to great fanfareboisedev.com 5datacenterdynamics.com 6. By then, all key approvals were in place, and Kuna’s citizens were left asking why they hadn’t been told sooner.

The justification most often given for this cloak-and-dagger approach is “competitive necessity” – claims that if word got out, land speculators would drive up prices or rival cities might swoop in with better offers. But those arguments collapse under scrutiny. The principal land parcels for Project Peregrine were already under contract via a local developer (Gardner Company) well before any public vote, meaning land prices were locked indgtlinfra.com 7. Indeed, Gardner had methodically secured nine separate parcels in the project area and petitioned for their annexation on Meta’s behalf. The specter of speculators driving up costs was largely moot – yet the public was still kept in the dark. Likewise, while Idaho officials insisted on confidentiality to “win” the project in a competitive site searchboisedev.com 8, this begs the question: At what point does winning at all costs undermine the public interest? If a Fortune 500 company’s investment is predicated on operating in total secrecy until a choreographed press release, perhaps the public victory is more hollow than advertised. Transparency is not anathema to economic development; states like Oregon and others have attracted data centers without turning their local approval processes into backroom deals – though even there, big tech has tried to impose NDAs, especially around resources like water (as we’ll examine shortly).

What the NDAs did achieve was a delay of public awareness until it was too late to affect the outcome. This wasn’t about protecting genuine trade secrets (like a proprietary cooling design); it was about controlling the narrative and avoiding controversy. For example, one major point of contention – the data center’s water use – remained hidden under the NDA curtain. When a local reporter asked how Meta’s pledge to “add more water than we consume” would actually work, officials deflected, citing proprietary informationboisedev.com 9. In fact, the city had quietly signed an agreement letting Meta build its own water system and keep usage details under wrapskidotalkradio.com 10. Only later did an Idaho Statesman investigation reveal the outlines of this deal and raise questions about how much aquifer water Meta would pump[20][21]. Similarly, Kuna’s mayor and council were briefed on Meta’s enormous power needs in closed sessions, and Idaho Power filed a secretive application with state regulators for a special high-megawatt service contract under the name “Brisbie, LLC” (with key terms redacted)[22][23]. All of these critical impacts – water, power, land use – should have been subject to public scrutiny. Instead, by the time details emerged, the approvals were done and dusted.

The effects of this manufactured secrecy were palpable. Once Meta’s identity finally went public, Kuna’s City Hall was flooded with angry emails from residents[24][25]. Many were incensed that a company synonymous with controversial social media practices was parachuting into their town without public inputboisedev.com 11. Others were alarmed about groundwater wells running dry or increased traffic – concerns they never had the chance to voice at the proper time[24]. “A lot of us felt blindsided,” one local observer noted, “as if the deal was made behind our backs – because it was.” In a telling detail, Kuna’s own Economic Development Director admitted that even the Kuna School District “didn’t understand the size and scope of the project” when it agreed to a token $500,000 mitigation fee from Meta’s second data center project (Gemstone)[29][30]. The school board accepted what sounded like a generous donation, not realizing they were dealing with a multi-billion-dollar development; only later did they realize how low that sum was relative to the project’s impact, and they pleaded for more support[29][30]. This is a direct, real-world consequence of the NDAs: key community stakeholders were negotiating and deciding with incomplete information, all while the true stakes were withheld by design.

In sum, the cloak of NDAs and code names served the interests of Meta and the deal-makers, not the citizens of Kuna. It ensured that by the time the public knew what was happening, their ability to influence decisions had all but evaporated. Idaho’s Public Records Act makes clear that agencies cannot contract away the public’s right to know – an NDA doesn’t trump state law[31]. Yet Kuna’s handling of Project Peregrine pushed right up against the spirit of those transparency laws[32][11]. Important records were withheld under dubious claims of “trade secret” or “competitive harm,” and public meetings revealed as little as legally possible. A Fortune 500 company’s identity is not a legitimate secret in a democratic process[32][33]. Nor is the total water consumption of a project that could draw on shared aquifer resources – courts have explicitly ruled that basic utility usage by a large industrial customer is not a protectable trade secret[32][33]. By exceeding the bounds of necessary confidentiality, Kuna officials deprived their constituents of a voice when it truly mattered. The outrage and distrust that surfaced post-announcement were the inevitable byproducts of this obfuscation.

Shell Companies and Obscured Ownership Trails

The secrecy around Project Peregrine was reinforced by a labyrinth of corporate entities that obscured who was actually behind the project. Rather than Meta Platforms appearing as the applicant or land purchaser, a special-purpose entity was slotted in as the face of the project. In Kuna’s case that entity was Brisbie, LLC, a Delaware-registered company wholly owned by Meta[34][35]. Brisbie, LLC was the name on the annexation application, the development agreement, and the design review papers – not “Facebook” or “Meta”kunacity.id.gov 12. It was Brisbie that contracted with Idaho Power for 120+ megawatts of electricity, under a heavily redacted deal approved by regulatorsdgtlinfra.com 13. And it was Brisbie that formally acquired the Kuna land in December 2021, buying out the options that Gardner Company had assembled. In other words, Meta’s hand remained hidden at every transactional step until the company was ready to unveil itself.

Why does this matter? Because it meant that if a curious citizen or journalist in 2021 made a public records request about “Meta” or “Facebook” in Kuna, they’d come up empty – the city’s files would only show Brisbie or the code name[35]. It insulated Meta from scrutiny and accountability during the critical negotiation phase. If the deal had fallen through, Meta’s name would never have been attached publicly at all. Moreover, the use of a shell LLC sometimes complicates oversight. For example, Kuna’s agreements were technically with Brisbie, LLC; if Meta had decided to back out or sell the project, the city might be left holding a contract with a thinly capitalized entity. This is a common tactic with Big Tech projects: use intermediaries and subsidiaries to mask the true party and limit liability. The Dgtl Infra report on the Kuna project noted how Gardner Company (a Utah developer) fronted the annexation for “Project Peregrine,” and only after approvals did Meta’s Brisbie LLC step in to take title to the land. All official dealings in 2021 were thus between the City of Kuna and shell companies – Gardner’s entities and Brisbie – while Meta’s boardrooms in California remained comfortably distant. The public never saw Meta’s name on a document until the project was irreversible[35][39].

Such SPEs (special-purpose entities) are standard practice for corporate real estate deals, but here they served a broader obfuscation strategy. Meta could truthfully say it had “no official projects in Kuna” when pressed by media prior to announcement, because indeed Meta itself wasn’t on the paperwork. Meanwhile, Kuna officials could technically claim they weren’t dealing with Facebook per se. This kind of intentional circuitous ownership trail is part of treating the public process as a mere formality – by the time Meta the parent company publicly engages (breaking ground with a smiling photo-op), the substantive deal is long done in the shadowsdatacenterdynamics.com 14. It’s noteworthy that even in the Idaho Public Utilities Commission filings for the data center’s power supply, large portions of information were filed under seal as “trade secrets,” and the docket was captioned for Brisbie LLC[41][42]. Regulators and customer advocates could not fully examine how the massive new electric load might affect other ratepayers, because critical cost and usage figures were hidden at Meta’s request[43][44]. All of this underscores how intentionally opaque the project was at every turn: fake names, surrogate buyers, confidential contracts. The result is that Meta faced almost no public accountability during the local approval stages. Its name value – which could have galvanized public scrutiny – was kept off-stage until the deal was effectively sealed.

It’s also instructive to compare how the second Kuna data center project was handled. The 620-acre “Gemstone Technology Park,” proposed in 2024 by Diode Ventures, followed a similar playbook initially: it had a code name (“Gemstone”) and an LLC (Gemstone Technology Park LLC) doing the talking[6][45]. Diode Ventures itself is a development arm of Black & Veatch, often working for clients like Meta and Google[46]. This raised speculation that Gemstone’s ultimate end user might be another big tech firm (or even Meta again), though Diode never confirmed a client during the rezone process. Regardless, Diode’s approach mirrored Meta’s: negotiate quietly, sign NDAs with the city, and reveal as little as possible until approvals are in hand. As Kuna’s Mayor would later admit, “We knew something big was coming, but we couldn’t talk about it,” regarding Gemstone – a virtually identical scenario to Project Peregrine four years prior. The key difference was that by 2024 the community was more alert to these tactics, and some officials pushed back during Gemstone’s hearings (as we’ll see later). But the use of shell companies and consultants to shield the true players remained standard operating procedure. In both cases, the public had to play detective to piece together who was really behind these enormous projects in their backyard.

A Rubber-Stamp Council? Oversight Failures at City Hall

Kuna’s elected officials, notably Mayor Joe Stear and the City Council, bear scrutiny for how they handled – or didn’t handle – their gatekeeping role. Rather than acting as stewards of the public interest, demanding rigorous review, they largely functioned as facilitators of the project. Decisions that should have prompted searching questions were rushed through with minimal debate. Consider the annexation of 1,088 acres for Meta’s campus in October 2021: this was one of the largest annexations in Kuna’s history, yet the council approved it unanimously in a single meeting[47]. There is no evidence the Council asked who the real tenant would be or what the environmental impacts might entail – at least not in open session. If those questions were asked at all, they were posed in executive session, and whatever answers were given never reached the public record. Approving a massive industrial zoning on prime farmland in abstract (under a project codename) is highly unusual. Normally, a rezoning of that magnitude would come with at least a conceptual plan or traffic studies and would draw public comment. In this case, the Council’s message to citizens was essentially “trust us.” They granted blanket entitlements for a project they couldn’t publicly name, trading away any leverage they might have had once the secret was out.

One glaring oversight was the lack of environmental or public impact analysis. Data centers are resource-intensive – huge power draw, heavy water use, noise from giant cooling units and generators. Yet Kuna’s officials did not commission independent studies on these fronts. For water, in particular, the omission is stark. Meta’s data center will pump millions of gallons of groundwater for cooling, akin to the usage of a small city, but no hydrogeologic study or aquifer drawdown analysis was ever made public[48]. Idaho’s Department of Water Resources and Kuna’s staff did not release any assessment of how round-the-clock pumping might affect the local aquifer or nearby wells[48]. There was no requirement for an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) because no federal funds or permits were involved, and Idaho law doesn’t mandate an EIS for purely private projects[49][48]. That left the burden on the city’s own process – but under Idaho’s lax land-use statutes, the city wasn’t explicitly required to scrutinize aquifer sustainability either[49][50]. Kuna’s leaders could have chosen to demand answers anyway; they chose not to. When approving the development agreement with Meta, the Council could have required ongoing monitoring of groundwater levels or limits on water use. Instead, they effectively accepted Meta’s word that the project would be “water positive” and beneficial (Meta touted plans to reuse treated wastewater for irrigation and fund a creek restoration miles away)[51][52]. Those measures sound nice on paper, but without independent review they amount to corporate PR. Indeed, critics noted that Meta’s much-vaunted “net positive water” pledge largely involved restoring a Boise River side channel – good for trout habitat, perhaps, but doing nothing to replenish the overdrawn local aquifer the data center taps into[52][21]. This gap – no serious environmental due diligence – suggests Kuna’s officials prioritized accommodating Meta over fully vetting the impacts on their community.

A comparison to other projects highlights this discrepancy. In Oregon, when Google tried to keep its data center water usage secret via NDAs, the city of The Dalles faced public backlash and a lawsuit by the media[53]. Ultimately, a judge forced disclosure of Google’s water numbers, revealing astonishing usage – enough water in 2021 to cover the entire city of The Dalles in 3 inches of water[54][55]. Here in Kuna, no one on the Council or staff took up that mantle of public interest advocacy. Not a single City Council member insisted that Meta’s water consumption be disclosed or studied before approval. The Mayor, Joe Stear, and Council President Richard Cardoza (at the time) were unabashed boosters of the project. Mayor Stear, when pressed about residents’ concerns after the fact, said he hoped the good would outweigh the bad and emphasized Meta’s investments in the communityboisedev.com 15. That comment betrays a mindset: get the deal done first, deal with downsides later. Council President Cardoza, for his part, had a track record of pro-development votes and reportedly close ties with regional business circles. Neither he nor the Mayor pressed for conditions that might “burden” the deal, such as detailed environmental assessments or binding guarantees on water limits. This kid-glove treatment is inconsistent with how the city might handle a lesser project – say, a new subdivision – where traffic impact studies or drainage plans would be picked apart. It’s as if the sheer scale of Meta’s investment cowed local officials into a rubber-stamp posture. They treated Meta as a benefactor-in-waiting, not as an entity to be scrutinized on equal footing.

When the second data center (Gemstone) came for approval in 2025, we see a small shift: two council members actually voted no, and there was debate about whether the site was appropriate[57][58]. Council President Chris Bruce (who succeeded Cardoza) argued that the Gemstone project should have been located in Kuna’s existing industrial zone (i.e. near Meta’s site) instead of leapfrogging into virgin farmland[57][59]. He and another council member voted against the rezone, showing at least some willingness to push back. But the Mayor broke the tie in favor, and even those dissenters did not fundamentally challenge the lack of transparency up to that point. Notably, it emerged that Gemstone’s $500k school contribution was negotiated when the school board had no idea the project would be a multi-building tech campus[29][30]. Only at the final hour did council members urge Diode to increase that token payment to schools, belatedly recognizing it was paltry[59][60]. This pattern – officials waking up to issues after the deal is nearly done – is a direct consequence of how they conducted the process. By acquiescing to secrecy, they handicapped not just the public but even their own ability to negotiate robust community benefits. It’s telling that in the Gemstone case, the Council attached conditions for things like road improvements and landscaping buffers[61][62], but did not require any comprehensive environmental review or water monitoring plan. They accepted a company-provided public works memo that the data center would use its own well and treatment (thus “no burden” on city utilities) and left it at thatboisedev.com 16. Essentially, if an issue wasn’t put in front of them by the developer or staff, the Council didn’t go looking for it.

All of this amounts to a failure of oversight. Elected officials in Kuna were so eager to land Meta’s investment that they ceded their responsibility to vet and demand safeguards. They treated the project as an inevitability – something to accommodate, not actively shape in the public’s interest. One might argue that Kuna is a small city without extensive resources or experience dealing with multinational corporations. But that is precisely why due diligence and transparency were crucial. Instead, local leaders leaned heavily on trust: trust in Meta’s promises, trust in state officials’ assurances, trust in their own hope that this would “put Kuna on the map.” When public institutions operate on blind trust in private power, it’s the public that usually loses. As we’ll explore in the next section, this dynamic was not unique to Kuna – it’s part of a broader model in Idaho that prioritizes wooing big business with minimal friction, often at the expense of rigorous local governance.

Idaho’s Big-Tech Playbook – and Its Local Casualties

To fully understand how Meta’s project sailed through with so little scrutiny, one must appreciate Idaho’s economic development model. The state has fashioned itself as an eager host for large corporations, offering a buffet of tax breaks, light regulation, and – crucially – secrecy in deal-making. In the late 2010s, Idaho realized it was missing out on the data center boom that was benefitting neighboring states. Unlike Oregon or Washington, Idaho still taxed sales of data center equipment, putting it at a disadvantage. So in 2020, the Idaho Legislature passed a targeted Data Center Tax Exemption to eliminate sales tax on data center capital investments over $250 million[65][66]. This incentive, strongly backed by the Idaho Department of Commerce and local business groups, was explicitly designed to lure a “hyperscale” data center – and it worked. “With the passage of its data center tax incentive in 2020, Idaho is now very attractive for data centers,” one tech industry CEO said at the time, noting companies immediately started scouting Idaho once that law was in place[67][68]. Meta was chief among them. Internal timelines indicate Meta began negotiations on Project Peregrine in 2017 and got serious by 2019, but likely the final go-ahead hinged on securing those tax breaks[68][69]. Director of Commerce Tom Kealey virtually admitted as much when Meta’s project was announced, highlighting the new incentives as a factor and calling the outcome “the culmination of a three-year project” to land Metaboisedev.com 17.

What did Idaho’s incentive buy? In raw terms, Meta’s $800 million investment will avoid roughly $40–50 million in sales taxes (the exact figure depends on how much of that investment is equipment and construction materials, all exempt at 6%)[71][72]. The state and its taxpayers effectively paid that sum – via foregone revenue – to secure Meta’s presence. This kind of corporate subsidy is now standard in the data center industry, but Idaho embraced it with particular zeal. On top of that, the state provides intangible sweeteners: an official culture of pro-business friendliness and minimal red tape. Governor Brad Little’s administration, along with federal delegation members like Senators Risch and Crapo, fell over themselves to praise Meta’s arrival with boilerplate quotes about jobs and growthkidotalkradio.com 18. The clear message was that Idaho would do whatever it takes to be “open for business” for Big Tech. That includes tolerating unusual levels of secrecy if a company demands it. Idaho Commerce routinely works under code names when courting companies – a fact not unique to Idaho, but here it’s practically codified. Idaho Code §74-206(1)(e) (the Open Meetings exemption) explicitly allows closed-door strategy sessions for economic projects, which local governments interpret as carte blanche to sign NDAs and hide negotiations[11][75]. In the Meta case, Commerce Director Kealey and Kuna officials coordinated tightly. The press release was joint, with Commerce providing cover for why the secrecy was necessary (“competitive process,” “Idaho grit won out”)boisedev.com 19. This state-local tag team exemplifies Idaho’s model: attract investment first, ask questions later (or never).

The problem is that this model can steamroll local self-governance. Kuna’s experience shows how state policy and laws tilted the playing field. For one, the generous tax break meant Kuna city itself had no leverage via taxation – normally a project of this size might negotiate a PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) or other offsets if it strained services, but here Meta’s equipment was tax-free and the property had been bare land (thus initially low property value). To make matters worse, Idaho passed House Bill 389 in 2021, capping local property tax growth and thereby hampering fast-growing cities’ budgetsboisedev.com 20. Kuna suddenly couldn’t fully capture the new property tax revenue that Meta’s project would eventually generate due to these caps. The city and its overlapping districts (fire, etc.) were essentially put in a bind: they’d get a huge new industrial user needing services, but state law limited their ability to raise funds from that growth. The result? Kuna had to go, hat in hand, to Meta and negotiate voluntary payments for police and fire. Indeed, Meta/Brisbie agreed to a one-time $8.2 million public safety mitigation payment – spread over 20 years – to help fund a few police officers, because the normal tax mechanism wouldn’t keep up. Likewise, the Kuna Rural Fire District had to strike a separate deal to get Meta to pay for fire protection, since the data center site sat just outside city limits and wouldn’t automatically pay fire district taxes. This amounted to $162,000 the first year, ramping up to ~$324,000 in year two and growing 3% annually – enough to fund three firefighters for the station that will cover Meta’s facility. These side deals are welcome funding infusions, but notice the dynamic: the company decides the amount and terms, not the community through its normal tax process. The state’s policies effectively disempowered Kuna from simply taxing Meta like any other major business to pay for its impacts. Instead, local leaders had to negotiate in the shadow of NDAs and urgency, securing what they could. One can’t help but see this as a systemic failure: Idaho’s rush to incentivize and limit taxes created a vacuum that had to be filled by private negotiations rather than democratic budget decisions.

Another consequence of Idaho’s model is a weakened public accountability framework. By prioritizing speed and “business-friendly” processes, the state provides little guidance or requirements for vetting large projects. Unlike some states, Idaho has no state-level environmental policy act that would force a review for something like a 100 MW, water-guzzling data center. Nor does it require public disclosure of economic cost-benefit analysis before granting huge tax favors. It took until 2025 for Idaho to even tweak its incentive: that year the legislature amended the data center tax exemption to sunset after 7 years for new projects (a reaction to concerns of an unlimited giveaway)[88][89]. But tellingly, Meta’s Kuna project was grandfathered with a permanent exemption[72][90]. In other words, the horse had bolted – Meta got the sweetest deal, and only afterwards did lawmakers decide maybe future deals shouldn’t be so open-ended. Even attempts to impose minor transparency requirements have faltered. In 2023, an Idaho House committee narrowly voted down a bill that would have prevented data centers from using urban renewal districts for financing[91][92]. Some legislators were evidently uneasy with how these projects might leverage local tax tools, but in the end deference to “not scaring off business” won the day. The pattern is clear: Idaho’s default instinct is to accommodate and incentivize large corporate projects, often at the expense of robust oversight. Local bodies like the Kuna City Council operate within that paradigm. When state leaders are cheerleading a project (and have perhaps quietly signaled to locals that this is a big win for Idaho), it’s a brave city councilor indeed who would slam the brakes and demand an independent traffic study or environmental impact hearing that could delay the project. Instead, the pressure – explicit or implicit – is to make it happen. Mayor Stear’s celebratory remarks at Meta’s groundbreaking, thanking Meta for choosing Kuna and highlighting the city’s willingness to expand infrastructure for them, reflect how thoroughly the city leadership internalized the state’s growth-first mantradatacenterdynamics.com 21.

The cost of this approach is only now coming into view. By minimizing hurdles for Meta, Idaho and Kuna also minimized the points at which the public could influence outcomes. They traded away transparency and leverage in hopes of economic gain. The next section will examine whether those gains (jobs, tax base, etc.) are living up to the promises – but even without that analysis, it’s apparent that critical governance principles were compromised. Local self-determination suffered: Kuna’s comprehensive plan said industrial development should be in a specific area (east Kuna), yet when a second project wanted a different site, the momentum of “big investment” overrode the plan[59][95]. Civic scrutiny suffered: questions about water, energy, and community values got sidelined or answered only after decisions were madeboisedev.com 22. And a precedent is set: other companies see that Idaho will guard their anonymity and cut them breaks, so they may expect the same red-carpet treatment. This dynamic can erode public trust in the long run. Communities might become cynical, assuming deals are cooked in back rooms – which, in this case, they were. In Kuna, one can already sense a divide between officials who tout the data center as a “catalyst” for prosperity and residents who resent how it was foisted upon them. That divide is a byproduct of the state’s model when applied without caution. It’s a model that treats citizens more as spectators to economic development than as participants.

Promises to Kuna: Grand Visions vs. Ground Realities

Meta’s arrival in Kuna came wrapped in promises – some explicit, others implied. Now that we’ve dissected how the project was pushed through, we must ask: What was the community told they would get, and what have they actually gotten so far? From the outset, Meta and supportive officials painted the data center as an unequivocal win. The headlines boasted of “$800 million investment” and “high-quality jobs” for Kunaboisedev.com 23. Meta’s press releases and spokespeople highlighted about 100 permanent jobs would be created – positions in operations, maintenance, and security – along with over a thousand construction jobs at peak building activitykidotalkradio.com 24commerce.idaho.gov 25. These jobs were consistently described as “good-paying” and part of diversifying the local economy beyond its bedroom-community status. Mayor Stear and others latched onto that talking point: that Kuna needed employment centers so residents wouldn’t all have to commute to Boise, and Meta’s data center would kick-start that shift. Another promise was infrastructure: Meta pledged (and did) invest around $50 million to $70 million in a new water and sewer system for the city’s east sidedatacenterdynamics.com 26. This infrastructure, built by Meta and then donated to the City, was touted as a “catalyst” that would help Kuna support more growth and attract other industry. It’s true that such a system would have been hard for the city to finance on its own, and city leaders celebrated getting a modern utility backbone essentially for free. Additionally, Meta emphasized its commitment to 100% renewable energy (through a special green tariff with Idaho Power) and to “restore more water than we consume.” Specifically, Meta pointed to funding local water restoration projects (which turned out to be a partnership with Trout Unlimited on a creek) and the fact that the data center’s cooling design would use ambient air for half the year, making it 80% more water-efficient than typical data centers[102][51]. These claims were meant to reassure: Don’t worry, we’ll be a green and responsible neighbor.

On the community side, Meta also dangled the carrot of civic engagement and philanthropy. Representatives spoke of launching a Community Action Grant program to support local schools and nonprofits once the data center was operationalboisedev.com 27. Indeed, by 2025 – even before operations began – Meta had started funding some local initiatives. For example, Meta agreed to that $8.2 million safety payment which city officials could frame as “Meta helping pay for our police station and officers”boisedev.com 28. And Meta’s community development head, Darcy Nothnagle, made rounds promising that “the impact of our data center isn’t just felt online. We want to make sure we are impacting the community positively.” She cited plans for education grants and partnerships with local schools, and even the involvement of Meta employees in the community. Such messaging all paints a rosy picture: a wealthy tech company coming to a small town, bringing jobs, building infrastructure, boosting budgets, helping kids, and doing it all sustainably. It’s a standard playbook for hyperscale data center projects – emphasize the upside, deflect the downside. And because the project was shrouded until late, those promises largely went unchallenged in the early stages.

Now, reality check. As of 2025, Meta’s data center is still under construction (expected to come online in phases over the next year). So some promises are simply not yet testable – the 100 jobs will only exist when the facility opens its doors. It’s worth noting, however, that Meta abruptly paused construction in early 2023 amid a company-wide shift in strategy[108][109]. They decided to redesign the Kuna data center mid-stream to accommodate new AI hardware requirements, which delayed the project significantly[108][110]. During that pause, hundreds of construction workers were sent home for a time, and local contractors faced uncertainty about when or if work would resume. Meta eventually resumed building with a scaled-back first phase (875,000 sq ft instead of an originally planned 1.5–2.7 million)[108][109]. While Meta says it still envisions multiple future phases, the immediate reality is a smaller facility than initially advertised and a timeline slip. For Kuna, that meant delays in those permanent jobs and perhaps fewer of them in the near term. The fanfare of “1,200 construction jobs” also deserves context: those jobs are temporary and many are filled by out-of-area specialists who travel from one data center build to another. The economic boost of construction is real but short-lived; the more critical figure is the permanent jobs. At 100 or so, that’s modest – it won’t transform the employment base of a city of 30,000. And there’s reason to believe even that number can be fluid. Data centers are automating and consolidating functions; some newer facilities operate with surprisingly few staff through centralized management. If Meta’s design or business needs change (for instance, if AI workloads reduce certain maintenance needs), the job count could fluctuate. The point is, 100 jobs was an estimate provided to sell the project, but there’s no binding guarantee. Next chapter’s analysis will show whether those jobs justify the public cost, but suffice it here to say it’s a drop in the bucket of area employment – more akin to a mid-sized grocery store’s staffing than a major employer.

On infrastructure delivery, Meta has indeed built the water/sewer facilities as promised. Those assets will benefit Kuna, assuming the city can afford to operate and maintain them long-term. However, it’s important to note that the primary beneficiary is Meta itself. The water system was custom-built to serve the data center’s needs (high-volume, specialized treatment for cooling reuse)kidotalkradio.com 29. The fact it’s oversized enough to also serve future customers is a positive externality, but not pure altruism on Meta’s part. Moreover, while Kuna gained new pipes and pumps, it also gained new responsibilities – maintaining that infrastructure, ensuring water rights for it, etc., which will incur ongoing costs. The city wouldn’t have taken that on without Meta’s impetus, so it’s a net positive only if the tax and rate revenues from growth in that area offset the future upkeep. Since Meta’s equipment is tax-exempt and its water usage is not generating traditional utility revenue (Meta isn’t a typical water customer paying standard rates; they built their own system), one could argue the long-term costs are shifted to the public in subtle ways. For example, if that east side network needs expansion or repair beyond what Meta built, Kuna will foot the bill. So yes, a boon, but one that comes with strings attached.

Promises of sustainability and limited impact have also met reality. The renewable energy piece is largely being fulfilled – Meta’s presence directly led to Idaho Power creating the Clean Energy Your Way program and contracting a large solar project to cover Meta’s usagedatacenterdynamics.com 30. This is a plus for green power development in Idaho. However, it doesn’t change the physical strain on the grid. Meta’s data center still requires massive transmission upgrades and new substation capacity[114][115]. Those upgrades carry risks: if Meta ever pulls out or downscales, Idaho Power ratepayers could be left with underused infrastructure unless clawback clauses (whose details are secret) truly protect the public[116][117]. On water, Meta’s “restoration” pledge materialized as funding an off-site conservation project that doesn’t replenish the aquifer Meta uses[52][21]. It’s an arguably hollow offset – enhancing a creek’s flow for ecology, which is good, but doing nothing to replace groundwater. The core fact remains: the data center will consume large quantities of water, and Kuna imposed no limit or local mitigation requirement. They are trusting Meta’s engineering that reusing water on nearby crops and using cooling technology efficiently will minimize harm. Trust, rather than verify, was the approach. If a few years down the line nearby wells start seeing declines, Kuna will have little recourse except to ask Meta for help or appeal to state regulators. This was a foreseeable risk that robust upfront scrutiny could have addressed.

Another promise was that Meta’s data center would be a magnet for other businesses and an inflection point for Kuna’s economy. In one sense that’s come true: Diode’s Gemstone project arguably chose Kuna because Meta blazed the trail, proving the area’s viability for data centers. City officials touted Meta as the “first large anchor” in their new industrial area that would attract others. But here’s the catch – if the follow-on development is just more data centers, Kuna could be doubling down on the same model (few jobs, heavy resource use, tax breaks) instead of diversifying into a broader industrial base. Some in Kuna hoped Meta’s presence would lure manufacturing firms or tech offices. That hasn’t materialized; instead, it lured another data center developer looking to capitalize on similar incentives. Whether that’s positive or not depends on one’s perspective, but it’s a narrower outcome than some boosters insinuated when they spoke of innovation and “other industrial users” coming.

Finally, consider the social license: was Meta truly welcomed, as the press quotes suggest, or merely tolerated because it came bearing gifts? The intense negative feedback after the announcement – angry emails, social media backlash, even an effort by some residents to organize against the project – indicates Meta has not won hearts and minds across the boardboisedev.com 31. Concerns over Facebook’s corporate behavior (privacy issues, content moderation controversies) meant that a segment of Kuna’s population was ideologically opposed to Meta’s incursion, viewing it as anathema to their small-town values. Those sentiments were brushed aside by city leaders who saw only the economic upside. Over time, Meta can certainly improve its local standing through community engagement – funding school programs, sponsoring events, etc. It has begun doing that with its grants to the school district and local nonprofits (e.g., for technology in schools, support for a food pantry, etc., reported in 2025). But these goodwill efforts, while appreciated, are relatively modest and don’t erase the process missteps. Winning a community’s trust is harder when your first impression involved secrecy and exclusion of the public. That is another subtle cost of how this project was executed: goodwill was forfeited. Meta now has to backfill trust through its actions, and any stumble (say, an incident of groundwater overdraft or a noisy generator test at 2 AM) could reignite public ire quicker than if the project had been community-vetted from the start.

In weighing promise vs. reality, we see a mix. Some promises (infrastructure, renewable energy alignment) are being kept on paper, yet the tangible benefits to the average Kuna resident are either not felt yet or are smaller than advertised. Other assurances (minimal impacts, broad economic boon) remain unproven or debatable. As a result, the narrative that Meta’s data center is an obvious big win for Kuna is far from universally accepted on the ground. It falls to investigative scrutiny – like this chapter – to highlight those cracks in the story. And crucially, it sets the stage for a quantitative reckoning: Are 100 jobs and some tax mitigation payments truly worth the multi-million dollar tax breaks, the water and power use, and the loss of transparency? Those are the moneyball questions that the next chapter will tackle with hard data. Here, having exposed the opaque and shaky process that got us here, we foreshadow that analysis: the numbers behind Meta’s deal may reveal that Kuna and Idaho gave away far more than they’ll ever get back. The justification for all the NDAs, fast-tracking, and red-carpet treatment ultimately hangs on whether the promised benefits materialize and outweigh the costs. As Chapter 6 will demonstrate, when we dissect the economics and jobs impact, the grand promises made in Meta’s press releases begin to look like a poor bargain for the public – one further obscured by the very tactics we’ve laid bare in this narrativeboisedev.com 32[67].

In closing, the story of how Meta’s Kuna data center was approved is a case study in power imbalances: a powerful corporation and growth-boosting state versus a small community’s right to open, informed governance. The tactics – NDAs, shell companies, secret talks – ensured the power prevailed with little challenge. Kuna’s officials, rather than serve as referees, became the company’s agents in many respects. Only time will tell if the community’s initial lack of say will be remedied by genuine long-term benefits. But as this chapter has shown, the process was skewed from the start, and when process is compromised, outcomes often follow suit. The outrage one feels reading this isn’t due to hyperbole or inflammatory language – it builds from the simple, cumulative weight of the facts: a deal made in darkness, justified by dubious claims, and enabled by those entrusted to protect the public interest. Sunlight, as ever, is the best disinfectant. And now that we have pulled back the veil on Kuna’s data center deal, it’s incumbent on citizens and leaders alike to insist that never again will such a monumental decision be made with so little public scrutiny. The Meta data center may indeed operate for decades in Kuna; the question is whether Kuna’s governance learns from this episode and recalibrates the balance of power and transparency for the future. The next chapter will arm us with the numbers to further inform that public debate, quantifying whether the “great new jobs and opportunities” touted by officials match the reality of Meta’s tightly negotiated, and heavily subsidized, foothold in the Treasure Valleycommerce.idaho.gov 33.

Sources

City of Kuna meeting records, development agreements, and public archives; Idaho Public Utilities Commission filings and orders; Press releases and statements from Idaho Department of Commerce, Meta, and Idaho Power; Reporting by BoiseDev, Idaho Statesman, KTVB, and KIVI on Kuna’s data center projects; Analysis by industry outlets (DataCenterDynamics, Dgtl Infra) on project details; Idaho state code (Open Meeting Law, Public Records Act, tax incentive statutes); and legal case documentation on related transparency disputes (e.g. The Dalles, OR vs. Google).

[7][57][20]kidotalkradio.com 34boisedev.com 35datacenterdynamics.com 36[68]dgtlinfra.com 37commerce.idaho.gov 38[6][11][32]boisedev.com 39

dgtlinfra.com 40 Facebook (Meta) Plans $800m, 960k sqft Data Center in Kuna, Idaho - Dgtl Infra

boisedev.com 41 Meta/Facebook to pay extra for police & fire in Kuna

[3] [4] [6] [7] [8] [11] [12] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [39] [41] [42] [43] [44] [45] [46] [47] [48] [49] [50] [51] [52] [53] [54] [55] [57] [58] [59] [60] [61] [62] [75] [91] [92] [95] [102] [108] [109] [110] [114] [115] [116] [117] Meta and Gemstone Data Centers in Kuna, Idaho – A Comprehensive Investigation.docx

file://file-KvVUzoFXNXQRRmS8fzexQx

datacenterdynamics.com 42 Meta/Facebook announces new data center in Kuna, Idaho - DCD

boisedev.com 43 Facebook parent Meta to build datacenter in Kuna, Idaho

boisedev.com 44 Meta Facebook to get tax breaks, looks at water treatment in Kuna, ID

kidotalkradio.com 45 Facebook Officially Arrives In Kuna

kunacity.id.gov 46 kunacity.id.gov

boisedev.com 47 Data center could bring multi-million deals to Kuna

[65] [66] [67] [68] [69] Idaho’s AI Data Centers_ Promises and Realities.docx

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[71] [72] [88] [89] [90] Meta’s 1 Million Sq Ft AI Data Center in Idaho – Power, Costs, and Tax Incentives.docx

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commerce.idaho.gov 48 Meta Announces Kuna as Location of New Data Center - Idaho Commerce