ST. FRANCISVILLE - Tuesday afternoon, Hut 8 hosted the first of several job fairs as construction gets underway on the new $10 billion data center in West Feliciana.

Along LA-964 in St. Francisville, you can find a construction site for the state's newest data center with a big Hut 8 sign out front.

Now the company behind the facility is looking to fill its workforce.

"It's about 900 construction jobs per phase, and we're aiming for two phases, as well as about 200 positions for both, that will be permanent," Hut 8's Senior Director of Public Affairs, Hailey Miller, said.

Hut 8 says its main priority is to hire locally and keep the jobs here.

"Everything from kind of office administrative work to security, construction personnel," Miller said.

The idea of data centers has been a very controversial topic around the country recently. Groups like the Alliance for Affordable Energy say it is due in part to a lack of communication about them.

"There hasn't been much transparency about this project. We're excited to see jobs are being developed out of it, but we'd really like to see if the utility has an intention to service that much power," Alliance for Affordable Energy Executive Director Logan Burke said.

West Feliciana Parish President Kenny Havard says that a lot of the concerns about data centers are valid.

"When it comes to electricity consumption and demand on the grid. Then you have water, and you have noise," Havard said.

However, Harvard is confident in the Hut 8 center and the ability to keep the noise that data centers tend to generate from being a problem for residents.

"For us, where the data center is located is right next to a paper mill, so the noise, and it's about two and a quarter miles to the nearest house, so the noise shouldn't be a problem," Havard said.

Miller says Hut 8 is conducting noise studies to make sure it understands any ramifications of noise within the area.

"If and when there are any kind of concerns in this area, we'd make sure to mitigate those," Miller said.

Another concern that Hut 8 looked to address was the issue raised about water consumption.

"The only water that we will use on site, the municipal water, will be used for standard items like toilets or sinks or kinds of fire suppression systems, when it comes to the cooling, all that water will be trucked in from off site and kind of filled in. It doesn't have any strain on local resources," Miller said.

Miller says that the center will use a closed-loop system when it comes to water.

"The way that it works is the water is actually trucked in; it's a water-based solution. It's trucked in from off-site, usually in a neighboring community. It could be anywhere in the United States, for example. That water is trucked in, the system is filled once, and then that water circulates continuously for about 4 to 7 years. Then the water is pulled from there and taken off-site and disposed of, and then it will be refilled," Miller said.

Hut 8 says they're aiming for the center to be fully operational by the third quarter of 2027.

WBRZ asked Hut 8 why it chose West Feliciana for the data center.

"West Feliciana has the workforce, and it has a welcoming local government. Really had the right location for us to be a good partner for years to come," Miller said.

Meanwhile, groups like the Alliance for Affordable Energy say the reason data centers are coming into areas like Louisiana is major tax breaks.