Residents in 3 U.S. Cities Sue Data Centers Over Noise as AI Buildout Tops 1,500 Projects
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · Jun 17
Residents in 3 U.S. Cities Sue Data Centers Over Noise as AI Buildout Tops 1,500 Projects
3 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Jun 17
Summary
Last month, residents in three small U.S. cities sued nearby data centers, saying persistent low-frequency noise has become intolerable.
The complaints center on the industrial fans needed to cool heat-generating chips and, in many cases, diesel generators used because local grids cannot meet the facilities’ heavy power demand.
More than 3,000 data centers are already operating in the United States, with over 1,500 more in development, turning what was once a mostly unseen digital backbone into a growing neighborhood nuisance.
The lawsuits highlight a local cost of the AI boom as communities push back against the physical footprint of facilities built to process billions of operations and store vast amounts of data.