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Sound emitted 24/7 from a 30 megawatt data center in Dowagiac MI
by /u/BenFord333 | 115 comments | 2026-06-14T00:19:45+00:00 Central
Comments
| /u/uhohnotafarteither Poor guy saw his home's value drop to essentially zero. Ain't no one buying a house to deal with that noise 24/7 |
| /u/ComprehendReading The data center will. For $5. |
| /u/Bodine12 Homeowner: "What do you mean, $5? It's worth $500,000!" Data Center: "Lol no, you've got a data center next door." |
| /u/tRfalcore blackstone will buy it for 5$, then buy it by itself for $700k, setting the area home prices back to insane prices |
| /u/Godharvest Blackrock (i aint scared of no ghosts) just wants the land the house is on. They'll just burn the the entire neighborhood down and buy the entire lot. Then blame it on some random arsonist (who get all the girls. real ones remember) |
| /u/snubda The Ambassador Bridge- which connects Detroit to Windsor, CA across the river- was built by a billionaire named Matty Moroun. He didn't have the land on the Canadian side that he needed, so he bought houses one by one, allowed them to go into total blight, sank the property values of the homes around it due to the blight, and bought all of the land he needed for pennies on the dollar. Billionaires suck. |
| /u/CameronsTheName How is my house only worth 50 dorra !? https://preview.redd.it/6hjz7n29y57h1.jpeg?width=384&fo rmat=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a1a484a52f364de529352a7b7c0dcf7aba 4eca34 |
| /u/LEO-PomPui-Katoey https://giphy.com/gifs/40dEau6bZRO3S |
| /u/Computers_and_cats Time to start looking through city ordinances and find something that covers noise restrictions. The risk of downtime alone would make the data center want to pay anything to get rid of the person. Assuming we have a functional government of course. |
| /u/CaptainRelevant Common law nuisance probably covers it even if there is no statute. The guy just needs a lawyer. |
| /u/PhalanxGroup Funny part is a lawyer would probably be useless. These DCs literally spent a good percentage of a states annual revenue buying your local city councils, to green light all types of lifted red tape. Like fuck the environment, all the water for half the state, using an army's worth of power, with no real obligation to give a shit about locals shit. Like digging up Native American graves and sending them to the local dump shit. Good luck trying to get anything out of them when the judges are pretty much bought too. |
| /u/sweet_home_Valyria This is very unusual. Something about the sense of urgency with these data centers, I just find unsettling. What am I missing. |
| /u/LaurenMille The whole AI bubble is far too big, and the only way to stop it from popping and burning trillions of dollars is to keep investing more and more money in it. That's not to say it won't pop, but the people building data centers now are praying they won't be the ones holding on when it all blows up. |
| /u/Voices-Say-Im-Funny So AI is like a complex example of an MLM. |
| /u/Amanda316 Sunken cost fallacy. |
| /u/GTCapone Yeah, iirc the big chip contract one of the AI companies signed with NVIDIA requires them to hit something absurd like multiple MW of new datacenter power usage every year for 5-10 years. If they miss the mark they lose the discount on the chips which is billions of dollars. |
| /u/_MrDomino Line must go up, and AI is the "investment" propping up the stock market. |
| /u/CaptainRelevant If the homeowner sues to shut it down, I agree they'd likely not prevail (edit: practically speaking). But if the homeowner sues for the loss of value of their house, they would prevail. The data center keeps operating and the damages are paid for. |
| /u/Jackol4ntrn These data centers were probably built in mind that whatever residence was close and fined the data center, it would be pennys compared to the profit bought in. |
| /u/ComprehendReading At 68dB, they may be below nighttime noise restrictions. I do not doubt that the engineers considered this when building, or the lawyers and accountants included it in their ten year plans. |
| /u/31513315133151331513 YMMV, but the when I read my local statutes they said between 9 pm and 9 am no noise from your property should be audible on a neighboring property. |
| /u/Clembert-Hamlamp Fucks sake I thought you must be wrong but Waco allows over 80 |
| /u/AccNumber77 That is fucking crazy... At night? Over 80dB????????????? Might as well start firing off gunshots at that point holy shit. |
| /u/underlander > Might as well start firing off gunshots well that may be the point |
| /u/Billionaires_R_Tasty Assuming we have a functional government of course. https://giphy.com/gifs/ZbLhpAtDZpayzF7wIL |
| /u/naturetreesandweed A fine for noise is just a mild tax for a wealthy datacenter owner |
| /u/leksoid not only that, but also constant exposure to such noise will cause health problems |
| /u/SpehlingAirer It will also absolutely fuck with wildlife and insects |
| /u/sushisection farmers in texas are reporting stillborn calves |
| /u/NefariousnessLate375 That's so sad. How is the sound killing the fetuses? |
| /u/xombae My dog freaks out any time an electric vehicle goes by, she can hear it coming before I can. Something about the tone just freaks her right out. I imagine if it was very very loud, 24/7 and she couldn't see where it was coming from, it would start to affect her health. It's gotta be affecting the animals sleep, at the very least. |
| /u/SporesM0ldsandFungus Absolutely the stress on mother. On top of being painful pitch, the cows can't be sleeping properly or enough. They can't communicate with each other. They can't properly listen for predators or other dangers. This means they are in a constant state of fear. This reminds me of men in the trenches of WWI who would be driven mad by the continous thunder and rain of artillery shells exploding. It was so constant, they called it "drum fire" like a drumroll. |
| /u/Kytalie This would keep me awake. I wouldn't just hear it, I'd feel it as well. I would likely lose my sanity very quickly from lack of sleep. |
| /u/Paizzu Benn Jordan has released a few videos documenting how even the inaudible (infrasonic) noise can cause long-term health problems. |
| /u/toomanyteeth55 I'm not against data centers but why the fuck isn't there proper zoning for them. Like across the street from a residential neighborhood is ridiculous |
| /u/Lurcher99 Ask the elected officials that allowed this. |
| /u/Rowing_Lawyer There have been many Reddit accounts that have assured me data centers are not a problem and only benefit the communities they are in. I hope they buy all these homes from the homeowners for at least market price |
| /u/netterbog I'm a litigator, and thought there's no way this isn't a lawsuit yet. It is. https://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/2026/05/residents- sue-michigan-data-center-over-excessive-noise.html |
| /u/sgee_123 I'm a Plaintiff's attorney and also immediately thought that this sounded like a pretty air tight nuisance claim. |
| /u/ElectricalGas9730 No, see, the problem is that the data center isn't airtight. Keep up. 😜 |
| /u/CrownstrikeIntern Did y'all not even realize the DOW is OVER 50K!? HAVE YOU SAID THANK YOU YET???? |
| /u/TheGloomyWoodpecker 50,000 dollars. That idiot thought the DOW uses dollars as a unit of measurement. |
| /u/dirtytounder Right!? Everybody knows it's 50 thousand freedom units |
| /u/JD_tubeguy https://preview.redd.it/9piqst03267h1.jpeg?width=620&for mat=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bea1127e562d9af3a1040be610546098731 69728 |
| /u/joeyx22lm "Why are you guys laughing?" |
| /u/joealese why aren't you wearing a suit?! you come here asking us to make the days center quieter and you won't even wear a suit????? |
| /u/outside_cat Did they even say thank you for the data center? |
| /u/CymatixOne The issue is the claim of "National Security".. it's exactly like "Emergency Powers", in which we can do w.e the fck we want because it's basically a (insert conflict, emergency, skirmish, etc..) war-time justification. |
| /u/PaidUSA There is surprisingly a few judges who have explicitly called out that the nebulous idea of national security cannot be used as a cudgel to hand waive the constitution. So there's not a 0% chance that defense fails. |
| /u/Fit_Database_8612 Voting has consequences. |
| /u/Flomo420 the real problem is all these uppity fucking poors getting in the way of the big beautiful data stealers centres |
| /u/OriginalBlackberry89 https://giphy.com/gifs/3wYdosMbKgNtS |
| /u/TripticWinter https://giphy.com/gifs/vPKtSdRzsXvdm Probably not good for the birds either. |
| /u/hstmqrqe What are the chances they pay off the residence and change nothing? |
| /u/TheElusiveFox Why pay residents when you can pay judges and politicians? |
| /u/iSK_prime Yeah, you call the cops about this they'll tell you there's nothing they can do, not their problem and have you considered living with it, or moving. Douse it in gas, light a match, you are gonna catch terrorism charges. |
| /u/VerySuccor And moving is now out of the options without a sizable chunk saved up. No one is buying that place except the datacenter at 1/4 price of course. |
| /u/Karijus The actual financial damage has to be tens if not hundreds of thousands per resident |
| /u/NRMusicProject "You see, it's a civil issue, not criminal. Police don't deal with civil issues." Read: We don't go after people richer than you. |
| /u/hotdiggydog I think it's 185%. The Data Centers are now going to decide where people live. The insanity of this administration sobbing and crying about wind farms being a nuisance for golf courses but welcoming this to be built where people live is VERY Amuhrica #1 USA USA USA YES YES YES |
| /u/naughtyhegel I used to be a paralegal and I wondered what I'm gonna have for dinner. |
| /u/TraditionalArea5798 You should ask chatgpt /s |
| /u/ChickenNoodleSloop What would the likely end result be? Compensation? What kind of settlement? |
| /u/CozParanoid Years of litigation while you live in noise and go insane. |
| /u/Independent_War_4456 That will take no time at all to drive people crazy. That area is ruined. |
| /u/AccNumber77 Just as planned, now they can purchase all the nearby homes to bulldoze and replace with more data centers. |
| /u/mikeballs And not only can you not bear to live in your own home, your property value is probably completely shot because who the hell else would want to live there now? Good luck moving. Sounds like a nightmare. |
| /u/RaindropsInMyMind That's such a fucking nightmare, I can't imagine. You can't even sell the house without taking a loss because the value is tanked. |
| /u/Independent_War_4456 Nobody is gonna drive up to that and think oh this is nice. |
| /u/Flomo420 that giant god awful warehouse is bad enough now imagine having to endure the noise even when looking away |
| /u/RaindropsInMyMind "Hey sweetie, you should hear the roar of this data center I won't hear you snoring at night." |
| /u/ImYourHumbleNarrator You can't even sell the house |
| /u/Sea_Pineapple_9472 This kind of stuff drives people to snap. Mark my words. At some point some developer is going to put one up and make someone from the surrounding area snap, and were going to get a news story of someone bombing or setting one of these places on fire. |
| /u/KeyMyBike More likely, it will result in a domestic tragedy, and it will be blamed on something completely unrelated |
| /u/Pr0xyWash0r that can also be an unfortunate benefit. As people living close go crazy and burn them down. |
| /u/ideaguyken They agree to buy the affected homes, knock them all down, and use that property nobody wanted to make the data center bigger! https://giphy.com/gifs/felyWZRMgfd28 |
| /u/Nexus_of_Fate87 Then the homes that were just past the sound range are now in the sound range, rinse and repeat until all of Michigan is one big datacenter. |
| /u/AlphonseLoeher The lawyers on both sides get richer |
| /u/da_muffinman What is the noise from exactly, the cooling fans? |
| /u/King_Chochacho Yeah, fans for cooling giant HVAC units. Also seems like a lot of them are being built with natural gas turbines for power generation "temporarily". |
| /u/s1ugg0 The honest truth is we have been building data centers with sound absorption and coolant reclamation for decades. They are just cutting corners because they are burning so much money. |
| /u/Odd_Ad5668 This needs to be more widely known. They SHOULD be recycling the water they use, not draining reservoirs and aquifers. |
| /u/UwUHowYou Yeah, its easier to flow municipal water through and dump it rather than cooling it down for reuse |
| /u/Shinjitsu- I once worked at an assembly factory that made commercial HVAC units. One of the lines I was on made a unit that was literally the size of a truck trailer or bigger. You'd never know how loud it was inside from the outside. The entire front had to be kept business friendly too. I can't wrap my head around how cheap the entire operation has to be for this to be so loud. And with it running so cheap, it's crazy the whole thing is THIS big. |
| /u/tedivm I've visited 30mw and even larger datacenters is Santa Clara, CA and you wouldn't even know they were there from the outside. The people who built this data center made a choice to not give a shit about their neighbors. |
| /u/inspectoroverthemine They're cutting corners because they're allowed to. If they're allowed to emit noise and air pollution, and destroy the water supply to save a buck they will do it every single time. The only way this stops is to pass and enforce regulations that don't allow it- and make non-compliance 10x more expensive than remediation. |
| /u/HistoricalSuspect580 don't worry I'm sure the current administration will create and enforce regulations against these data centers in the best interests of its constituents! 🤓 |
| /u/Allegorist I imagine after a few years of outrage and litigation they may be forced to fix this type of sound. However, an issue that will likely slip under the radar and avoid serious litigation is their problem with infrasound. Infrasound is generally considered noise below 20 hz, so it is not generally audible in the traditional sense, however prolonged exposure is linked to a variety of negative health effects. Also, since you can't "hear" it, you have no way of gauging how loud it is, and often it is quite loud since they aren't accounting for or mitigating it at all. It also carries farther, and penetrates through structures. Here is a great video specifically regarding infrasound from data centers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bP80DEAbuo |
| /u/DistributionNo9474 They should take it all the way to the Supreme Court ... oh wait never mind |
| /u/Emma-nz Luckily state-law nuisance claims aren't reviewable by SCOTUS |
| /u/dankhimself Yoooooo, oh my god it's literally this. https://i.redd.it/5vocil9o757h1.gif |
| /u/BenFord333 eeeeeeeeeooooooohhhhhhhhh |
| /u/MahoganyWinchester MOCK? YEAH. ING? YEA. BIRD? YEA. YEA? YEA. |
| /u/thecakeisali Call the police every night at 10:01pm to report a noise ordinance violation. |
| /u/buddhistbulgyo Ask the police to follow the law and be cool about it. Ask the city council what the details are about noise ordinances. Push and organize the community to increase fines and change the law so it's a noise ordinance for every complaint. Go get 'em. |
| /u/Maethor_derien Except 60db is probably under the noise ordinance. |
| /u/PotatoTwo My town is (as measured from the street/edge of the property) 60db during the day, 55db at night. |
| /u/ProduceNo1629 City council passing new rule at 65db tonight. No envelopes with money were involved, they promise. |
| /u/polopolo05 Welp time to run for city council. Btw from 60 to 65 dbl is about doubling the total volume. Decibels are logarithmic. So the sound volume doubles every 6 dbls. going from 55 at night to 65 is 4 times as loud. Thats as loud as living on the side of a busy freeway. |
| /u/Lazy_Physics_Student So 3dB should be a doubling of energy. Not 6. |
| /u/polopolo05 6 is the amount its doubles to the human ear. |
| /u/Lazy_Physics_Student 65 is absolutely cooked by the way. They dont let you build shit where i live if your predicted noise level is more than 5dB above the quietest 10% of the respective period of day. For most urban residential cases near industry you'll cap at about 52ish for noise limits. And even if the background level was a constant drone at 60dB the amenity level for urban areas would kick in and prevent you going over 60dB(LAeq period) during the day (60-5(industry in the area)+3(converted to 15 minute period)) so your noise limit caps out at 58dB day 48dB evening and 43dB night. The only exception to this is if you are an isolated residence in an industrial zone. Get ready for 68db max. |
| /u/Various-Dust285 Get the neighbors on board and schedule the calls. They should be getting calls literally every minute for hours |
| /u/macT4537 How is this legal? Terrible. |
| /u/Santa_Hates_You They just do it and if fines happen they pay them. |
| /u/EquivalentOwn1115 If the punishment is just a fine, its only a crime if youre poor |
| /u/DeviRi13 Eh, fines would work if they were income-based such as Finland's system for speeding tickets. A hundred bucks to me and a hundred bucks to the owners of these data centers are not the same. |
| /u/SoundOurDireReveille Because the owners of said data centers have bought and paid for all of our local and federal governments, all branches and levels. |
| /u/scorchedbeanz Idk a thousand dollars and a couple calls to the right crackheads could get that shit shut down in a jiffy. Even if it's temporary. Send a message |
| /u/Sir-Cornholio Copper thieves assemble! |
| /u/Jaded-Platform6044 They prefer to be called copper connoisseurs. |
| /u/iRambL I don't understand why these are anywhere near municipal areas |
| /u/SpehlingAirer There is quite literally no good place to put one unless you engineer it to be sound proofed, recycle its own water, provide its own electricity, and etc etc. Good thing these companies care about all that and not only money! /s |
| /u/RevolutionaryEggSoup There are data centered scattered all over the UK, we have far less space so we have to put them near people - however - you would not know you were walking past one because they do not make this noise. It costs a bit more but it's not impossible |
| /u/AwayYoghurt5901 This absolutely should be criminal |