- Residents near Milwaukee, Wisconsin file class action lawsuit against Microsoft over ‘excessive noise’ from its Fairwater AI data center
- Complainants also report light pollution from the facility
- Microsoft says it has taken “immediate steps to address the audio concerns”
While an inherently useful technology, AI comes with many challenges, not least the impact of data centers on the landscape and local environment. Microsoft’s new $7.3 billion AI data center in Milwaukee demonstrates some of these challenges by having accumulated 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 came online in April. After noise during construction, the installation itself has since been blamed for “not only excessive, but consistent and pervasive” noise.
Over 1,000 homes in the Mount Pleasant area are affected, and these are represented by three citizens who filed the suit.
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 unreasonable and excessive noise on plaintiffs’ properties, thereby causing property damage through private nuisance and negligence.”
Although no formal test results have been released, one resident stated in the lawsuit, “It sounded like the revving engine of a freight train parked nearby. We heard it 24 hours a day and eventually realized it was coming from the Microsoft campus.” This followed a period of six months during which previous noise and dust problems had subsided.
Meanwhile, one resident told Wisconsin Public Radio that light pollution is a problem, noting “”It was so dark out there, you could see all the stars, and now you have a hard time seeing the stars with 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 the demand for cloud AI increases, more installations like Fairwater 1 are to be developed (up to 15 Microsoft data centers are planned for the site).
So far, Microsoft has responded to the previous complaints about noise and dust with street cleaners, but those concerns have been included in the filing, along with allegations that Microsoft failed to “implement adequate acoustic barriers, shields or walls that absorb, mitigate and/or prevent the release of noise, resulting in the excessive emission of the property outside the company.”
On the other side of that argument are the 375 employees at Microsoft’s Mount Pleasant facility, many of whom live locally.
While Microsoft has yet to respond to the lawsuit, it previously posted on its blog that it will “continue to work on short-term remediation, and […] Also install additional sound reduction components and continue to monitor sound on site.”
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