- Residents near Milwaukee, Wisconsin, file class-action lawsuit against Microsoft over “excessive noise” from its Fairwater AI data center
- The complainants also denounce light pollution at the facility.
- Microsoft says it has taken “immediate action to address strong concerns”
While an inherently useful technology, AI presents many challenges, including the impact of data centers on the local landscape and environment. Microsoft’s new $7.3 billion AI data center in Milwaukee is demonstrating some of those challenges, having racked up complaints during construction and now a class-action lawsuit from Wisconsin residents.
Residents of Sturtevant, near Milwaukee, Wisconsin, are located just 1.5 miles (2.4 km) from the Mount Pleasant “Fairwater 1” data center, which went online in April. Following noise during construction, the facility itself has since been blamed for “not just excessive, but constant and widespread” noise.
More than 1,000 homes in the Mount Pleasant area are affected and are represented by three citizens who filed the lawsuit.
How noisy is Microsoft’s Fairwater 1 data center?
According to the filing, “Through its operation and maintenance of the Data Center, Defendant has emitted, and continues to emit, excessive and unreasonable noise on Plaintiffs’ properties, thereby causing property damage through private nuisance and negligence.”
While no formal test results have been released, one resident stated in the lawsuit: “It sounded similar to the hum of the engine of a freight train parked nearby. We heard it 24 hours a day and finally realized it was coming from the Microsoft campus.” This followed a six-month period in which previous problems related to noise and dust had disappeared.
Meanwhile, one resident told Wisconsin Public Radio that light pollution is a problem, noting, “It was so dark out there that you could see all the stars, and now you have a hard time seeing the stars in all the light.”
The filing (reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) notes that the Fairwater 1 data center “generates significant noise pollution from diesel generators and heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, including chillers, cooling towers, air handling units and condenser fans.”
Microsoft has not yet responded
As demand for cloud AI increases, more facilities like Fairwater 1 need to be developed (up to 15 Microsoft data centers are planned for the location).
So far, Microsoft has responded to previous complaints about noise and dust with street cleaners, but these concerns have made their way into the filing, along with accusations that Microsoft failed to “implement adequate sound barriers, shields, or walls that absorb, mitigate, and/or prevent the escape of noise, resulting in the external emission of excessive noise beyond its property.”
On the other side of this argument, however, are the 375 employees at Microsoft’s Mount Pleasant facility, many of whom live locally.
While Microsoft has not yet responded to the lawsuit, it previously posted on its blog that it “will continue to work on short-term mitigation and […] “We will also install additional sound reduction components and continue to monitor sound on site.”
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