Earlier this year, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella proudly touted his company’s $7.3 billion Fairwater data center in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, as the “world’s most powerful AI data center,” connecting “hundreds of thousands” of power-hungry chips “into a single seamless cluster.”
However, local residents aren’t even remotely as enthusiastic about the facility cropping up in their neighborhood. Last week, three residents of the village of Sturtevant, which is adjacent to Mount Pleasant, filed a class-action lawsuit, as The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports, alleging that Microsoft’s flashy data center is emitting “unreasonable and excessive noise onto Plaintiffs’ properties, thereby causing property damages through private nuisance and negligence.”
The noise being generated by “diesel generators and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, including chillers, cooling towers, air-handling units, and condenser fans,” is “consistent and pervasive,” per the lawsuit. The residents claim that Microsoft failed to mitigate the noise through “adequate acoustic barriers, shields, or walls.”
The lawsuit highlights a fierce battle that’s been brewing as major tech companies continue to encroach residential areas with enormous and extremely resource-intensive data centers. The backlash has grown into a major bipartisan issue that could even affect the upcoming midterm elections. Companies say they need the sprawling facilities to fuel a technological revolution, despite major environmental concerns, massive water consumption and noise pollution.
Just last week, a resident in a small town in Southwest Michigan measured the noise level from a nearby data center from his porch, registering a very irritating 60 decibels.
Microsoft’s facility in Wisconsin is emitting a noise “similar to the whirring engine of a freight train parked nearby” around the clock, as Amy Cimbalnik, one complainant in the class-action lawsuit, told The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
“We heard it 24 hours a day, and eventually realized it was coming from the Microsoft campus,” she added.
The tech giant acknowledged the lawsuit, telling the publication that it’s “committed to being a good neighbor in the communities where we build, own, and operate our data centers.”
Microsoft also claimed last month that it had already solved the issue, but considering the latest lawsuit was filed on July 1, it doesn’t seem to have appeased the upset residents.
According to a June 18 update on Microsoft’s official blog, the company said that it was investigating the “source of the sound,” claiming that it had “conducted tests, and put noise mitigations in place.” Blog entries from mid-April detail a “tonal humming sound,” which was being caused by “cooling fans that are currently operating at high speeds.”
“Several neighbors confirmed what our independent monitoring showed: that these mitigations fully resolved the issue,” the June update reads.
Village of Mount Pleasant communications director Sean Ryan told The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he had not received any complaints since Microsoft made changes to its property in mid-April to “resolve a humming sound.”
“Village officials stand ready to respond if people do reach out to us, and will continue to ensure Microsoft is a good corporate citizen and a good neighbor,” he added.
But that may be easier said than done. Considering Microsoft is looking to build a whopping 15 data centers in Mount Pleasant alone, the company will have to tread carefully to avoid more litigation from furious neighbors.
More on data centers: Residents Say Data Centers Are Radiating Bizarre Frequencies