TECH

Unwanted neighbor: Unbearable 24/7 data center noise sparks lawsuit from furious residents

For residents of Dowagiac, Michigan, home no longer equals quiet refuge, it now sounds like a clogged vacuum cleaner running full blast in the living room, 24 hours a day. Frustrated by a relentless, high-pitched hum emitted by a nearby server facility, local homeowners have filed a lawsuit against the site’s parent company, Hyperscale Data, seeking legal relief from round-the-clock noise pollution.

The site, operated by subsidiary Alliance Cloud Services, started serving as a cryptocurrency mining center in 2021 and then graduated to an AI data data center in 2024, which required continuous, industrial-scale cooling fans, unleashing an unrelenting wall of sound that neighboring residents describe as psychological torture. 

"It sounds like someone set up a vacuum, like in your living room, and the vacuum filter is clogged up, so it's a high-pitched whining," resident Lindy Valenzuela explained in an interview with WXYZ.TV, noting that it feels as if operators simply turned the machinery on and walked away. Fellow neighbor Billy Finn compared the living conditions to a movie scene where prisoners are tortured with sound inside a cell.

In response to growing public outcry, the city of Dowagiac instituted an industrial noise ordinance setting strict limits of 65 dB during the day and 55 dB at night. City inspectors subsequently issued fines against the facility for violating those thresholds, though Hyperscale Data continues to challenge both the citations and the municipal sound-measuring methodology. In the video above, one can see that the reporter's noise meter is hovering just above 50 dB, although we believe noise levels and pitch (i.e. whine) are two separate metrics that need to be accounted for here.

During a tense city council meeting, Hyperscale Data CEO William Horne attempted to reassure the community by highlighting planned sound mitigation efforts, including the purchase of adjacent acreage to serve as a natural acoustic buffer. Horne then made a sweeping proposal to dissatisfied neighbors: if mitigation efforts failed to make their homes enjoyable, the company would buy their properties outright.

That buyout offer did little to soothe anger in the room. For many families, leaving is neither simple nor acceptable. One plaintiff noted that their family has lived in the neighborhood for nearly a century, supported by generational roots that money cannot replace. Another neighbor, caring for a 17-month-old toddler with a second baby on the way, emphasized the sheer disruption of relocating. Residents repeatedly asked executive leadership why community complaints went unanswered for two years before lawsuits were filed.

The Dowagiac battle reflects a broader clash across the country as tech firms scramble to build energy- and cooling-intensive AI infrastructure near residential zones. Similar class-action lawsuits have surfaced in states like Wisconsin, where residents living near massive server complexes report not just audible noise, but infrasound—inaudible, low-frequency vibrations that travel hundreds of feet through the ground, vibrating homes and causing physical discomfort. Granted, some companies, such as Microsoft, have been making inroads to reduce the impact their data centers have on neighborhoods.

Microsoft’s $7.3 billion AI data center...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.

mundophone