A data center opened next door. Then came the high-pitched whine

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/11/data-centers-ai-electricity-virginia-00815219

by 1vuio0pswjnm7 • 4 months ago

95 83 4 months ago

This is where zoning rules make sense.

bilekas3• 4 months ago

Stephenson said the data center’s operations team had not seen any “abnormalities” on the day in question.
“However, we take any reports of issues at the site seriously,” Stephenson wrote

Absolutely no abnormalities because this is by design, but nobody wanted to pay attention when approving the building and zoning. Amazing what some money to politicians will get you.

I can't even imaging living within ear shot of these things. Horrific quality of life. I can't sleep when my water pump is active.

Turner said county officials didn’t understand in 2022 and 2023 exactly what it meant to have gas turbines at a data center, nor did they have zoning rules to address it.

Well then why were they allowed to vote on it ? It's incompetance ? Or just straight up corruption.

ryandrake• 4 months ago

It's getting difficult to tell the difference between incompetence and corruption, as widespread as both of them are, and how their consequences always overlap.

PaulKeeble• 4 months ago

One of the ways corruption hides its intentions is lying to make it look like incompetence. It takes a very long time for the truth to come out and it rarely does but corruption depends on people buying the lies and assuming its just incompetence.

SpicyLemonZest5• 4 months ago

What do you mean, "allowed" to vote on it? The county officials are the decisionmakers, who should have allowed or not allowed them?

It also seems worth noting that these gas turbine generators are meant to be the solution to another big complaint people have about datacenters, that they might drive up local power prices if they plug into the grid. Like you and the people in the article, I'm personally very sensitive to noise pollution. so to me this sounds like another argument that datacenters should connect to the grid after all. But I'm sure some people disagree and think it's worth it to save on electricity, and others disagree and think there shouldn't be datacenters near them at all.

The local government has to resolve the disagreement somehow and no solution is going to make everyone happy.

ToucanLoucan• 4 months ago

I mean, I'm fine with datacenters plugging into the grid, if they pay for it. I don't understand (and I mean feel free to explain it) this weird shit where a datacenter goes up and everybody's power bills start increasing. I have assumed that it's because the grid's facilities require upgrades to meet the new demand, but in the case of the "new demand" being "one structure consuming an assload of power" it feels incredibly shitty to lay that burden on the taxpayers.

bilekas3• 4 months ago

What do you mean, "allowed" to vote on it? The county officials are the decisionmakers, who should have allowed or not allowed them?

Well I'm not sure how it works there but there are requests here made before building can start. Planning permission is usually first voted on by committee and then brought to the public in the area and public forums are where people get to ask questions such as "what's the expected noise pollution". Basic stuff I thought.

squibonpig3• 4 months ago

There's an assumption underlying what you said that datacenters are gonna get built one way or another. But these aren't sewage plants or power plants or desalination plants or whatever, they aren't particularly important for the quality of life of most people. We could just kinda... not build them? How about we don't let them get built most places so it becomes fairly expensive. Make it so expensive that only say 1/5 of the amount get built. The rich techbros still have their videogen toys and nobody deals with noise pollution. It's not cheap to generate a picture of trump riding a frog, ya know, but like everyone's lives are no different from how they are now.

saltyoldman3• 4 months ago

My wife and I travel in our RV a lot and used to full time. Some RV parks - even when full - are often totally quiet and peaceful at least enough to not notice a slight background noise of cars driving around here and there.

Then a family will arrive that seems like they're at a Disney theme park and you just hear screaming kids non-stop. It's like a tornado is hitting for days. We always joke if you ask a tornado if it's quiet it will answer of course- I don't hear anything. Because there is NOTHING louder than the tornado and that's all it knows.

scottLobster• 4 months ago

Or they don't see the problem. Someone's paying 600-900k to live in a townhouse 1000 ft from the runways at Dulles Airport

https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/?category=SEMANTIC&sea...

thepryz2• 4 months ago

Reminds me of former Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner’s suggestion that deaf people buy homes near the airport.

https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/19941105/1939991/oh...

sophrosyne42• 4 months ago

A consequence on our focus on legislation rather than the more natural legal apths of addressing these problems, e.g. easements and tort law.

anakaine• 4 months ago

Towards the end of the article:

"It was only after the data center was operating, following a tour he took of the facility, that Turner said county officials realized the data center was “running in island mode.”
“It was very impressive, but it was obvious that this is not what we thought was allowed,” Turner said."

Youve stated its corruption by officials. Its rather clear, however, that when the company were told that a grid connection would take 3 years that they found a way around it that didnt require further approvals.

Conspiracy theories are fun, but this isnt one.

JuniperMesos3• 4 months ago

Maybe there's corruption by officials at the local electric power company and that's why it takes 3 years to get an industrial grid connection. Or maybe there isn't actually any corruption happening and the local electric power company is just building out infrastructure slower or less efficiently than it could in principle be, for the ordinary sorts of reasons why things in this world are not perfect.

JuniperMesos3• 4 months ago

Why wouldn't they be allowed to vote on it? How does a zoning rule about gas turbines get enacted at all, except by some body noticing that it's a problem and then voting to create such an ordinance? (Or by voting not to do so, if they think it isn't actually that much of a problem or if there's a way to mitigate it or if the benefits outweigh the costs, just like with any other issue that's within the purview of the county officials?)

SayThatSh• 4 months ago

I've seen a few videos with the audible whine heard from people's houses even super far away from these datacenters. Guess we'll see in a few years whether they were worth building in the first place or whether they end up abandoned once the bubble bursts.

iamtheworstdev• 4 months ago

I assume once the bubble bursts they'll be turned into power supplies for bitcoin miners

catlikesshrimp2• 4 months ago

Hopefully not, but they expect that scenario. For those as ignorant as me, I started reading this https://cointelegraph.com/features/the-last-bitcoin-btc-mine

They expect transaction fees will overtake minting earnings.

thepryz2• 4 months ago

I saw more than one video about datacenter noise that were clearly crypto mining. There are some questionable designs leveraging shipping containers and what sound like a lot of 120mm fans.

Imustaskforhelp2• 4 months ago

These AI datacenters generally have invested quite a lot in Nvidia Chips and completely high end hardware by having DDR5 Chips etc.

And even more than that, the largest things for these things is how to supply enough water properly and water-cooling systems which aren't required in traditional systems.

They also are very conditional and spike the grid up and down with their use cases slowing the grid.

If the bubble bursts, which it will, It's hard to justify the billions of dollars spent on AI specific datacenters for essentially the bricks and mortars. I don't think that its very sound decision that they were worth building, it might make some compensation but not enough, in my opinion.

ianschmitz• 4 months ago

Great video from Benn Jordan on data center noise causing illness to nearby residents: https://youtu.be/_bP80DEAbuo

fedreg• 4 months ago

wow, super interesting. thx for sharing!

frm88• 4 months ago

Depressing results. Thanks for sharing.

jmugan• 4 months ago

I feel like the world needs more sound engineers. There's a constant humming of the machines and we all suffer for it. We also need more vigilance about preventing noise pollution. The beep, beep, beep may make a company feel like it is doing something for safety, but there is no counterforce that they have to answer to about what they are doing to everyone else not involved. (I know there is a better sound to replace beep beep beep but it hasn't made it to my neighborhood yet)

hunter2_2• 4 months ago

We would need to figure out a quantifiable metric for annoyance level. Municipal sound ordinances do tend to correctly utilize SPL(A) and SPL(C), with A-weighting being relevant for safety against ear injury (low frequencies have less influence) and C-weighting being relevant for annoyance level (low frequencies have more influence), but this isn't nearly enough. For example, ordinances carve out additional tolerance for burstiness, which makes sense for rare events like jackhammering but not for common events like routine plant operations. Sound with lots of harmonic content (think distortion) is more annoying than without. High frequencies can be worse if they reach you, but they're less likely to reach you (approaching a need for line-of-sight). It's complicated.

Here's a free idea for someone to run with: just as Zillow has a neighborhood "walkability" score prospective buyers might look at, there could be various pollution scores, including sound and light, sourced from some kind of Flock-like (ew) network of capture devices. Some folks are into mounting things like personal weather stations on their property, so maybe a new generation of devices capturing this type of data (with local signature-based identification of sources, and triangulation when the same thing is heard in multiple places, etc.) wouldn't be too far-fetched.

jeffbee2• 4 months ago

The constant humming that causes the overwhelming population-weighted noise pollution comes from cars and airplanes, due to the fact that in America it is currently not legal to build an apartment except within 100ft of a freeway or at the ends of airports.

saltyoldman3• 4 months ago

That gave me a chuckle

jerlam• 4 months ago

It's the Simpsons "Everything's OK" alarm: (note: loud and annoying noise) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxNp3bUDtxY

0cf8612b2e1e• 4 months ago

They could start with building codes. State of the art, beautiful new designs where you can hear every word of the meeting next door.

avidiax• 4 months ago

All the sound engineers in the world can't fix "don't care" and "want to".

A modern US city has the combined problems of cheap construction of residential buildings, with insufficient unit-to-unit and exterior noise isolation (builders "don't care"), and near-zero enforcement of vehicle noise laws (police and muffler shops "don't care", drivers "want to" be loud).

Contrast this with, say, Germany or Switzerland, where concrete construction is the norm, noise laws are often strictly enforced, and a modified car would get pulled over quickly.

_2d30• 4 months ago

The aerial photo in the article makes the whole thing a little funny to me.

quickthrowman• 4 months ago

Sane municipalities, counties, and states have noise restrictions for power generation equipment, most of the AHJs in my metro area require no more than 60dB of noise from 100’ away for a generator, that would easily prevent gas turbines from operating.

It’s common enough that generator manufacturers make different levels of enclosures to comply with noise regulations.

It’s likely impossible to use gas turbines to generate power in my state unless they’re very far away from anyone, rules linked below. The only type of land with no noise restrictions is undeveloped land, so you can operate forestry equipment but not gas turbines.

States that allow gas turbines anywhere near their residents homes does not give a shit about them, probably it’s a perfect circle venn diagram with states that reject expanded Medicare funding.

https://www.pca.state.mn.us/sites/default/files/p-gen6-01.pd...

rayiner• 4 months ago

States that allow gas turbines anywhere near their residents homes does not give a shit about them, probably it’s a perfect circle venn diagram with states that reject expanded Medicare funding.

That’s a weird thing to say given the story is about Virginia.

hoppyhoppy2• 4 months ago

*Medicaid

clcaev• 4 months ago

There are all kinds of externalities that we fail to accommodate in our market pricing.

jeffbee2• 4 months ago

The article very very carefully avoids contextualizing this site, so as a service, here you go:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Sully+Rd,+Centreville,+VA/...

toofso• 4 months ago

interesting that the data center noise is competing with a lot of airplanes and freeways

Imustaskforhelp2• 4 months ago

Genuine question but is the problem datacenters or more specifically AI specific datacenters?

Because all these talks of data-center disrupting everyday's life from all the videos I have watched somehow now involve the AI/GPU aspect which have definitely made things more energy intensive and more water intensive

But more specifically compute focused datacenters actually feel somewhat good/neutral to the region and you still need remote hands etc. so net employment.

Although one of the ideas I have with that is it would be better if the owner of the said datacenter either belonged to the community/cared about it and wasn't a massive corporation for example too.

It's the AI bubble which is the issue which has caused a Datacenter frenzy as nameless corporations take massive debts to build them and scramble to do so and cause issues in the process.

squibonpig3• 4 months ago

Vast majority of the new ones are for AI

downrightmike4• 4 months ago

The only thing Microslop's CEO cares about is that he can't get enough buildings to fill with machines

catlikesshrimp2• 4 months ago

In this case it is mostly the gas plants. They could have installed them far away, keeping the datacenter in place, or even better, use solar power. Or they could have built infrastructure in the middle of nowhere for datacenters to reside. In the end the problem is that maximum profit doesn't care about humans.

hettygreen• 4 months ago

Can anyone provide a breakdown for what all these new data centers are used for?

Is this storage? If so, storing what?

Is this for AI/processing? If so, doing what?

gib444• 4 months ago

Low-frequency noise is insidious and an assault on your sanity. Wind turbines are bad for it. And hea_t pump$ to a lesser extent.

Blocking low-frequency noise requires very heavy, well-designed construction, and retrofitting a typical dwelling to achieve large reductions is difficult and expensive.

This means all the blame goes onto the perpetrators – the developers, the politicians – because for all intents and purposes, residents can't do anything to stop it.

fudged71• 4 months ago

This just happened up north, apparently the largest proposed AI data center in Canada (Synapse's $10B 1GW campus in Olds, Alberta) was just put on pause after the Utilities Commission rejected its power application on March 6, 2026 due to noise pollution concerns from 20 gas turbines, 10 steam generators, and up to 600 diesel backups near 800 homes (just 200m away). The assessments failed to model cumulative worst-case noise. The proposal will be revised and resubmitted of course but the concern isn't going to go away.

lostmsu• 4 months ago

Seriously, why do they have to build a DC 200m from homes? Is Alberta out of space?

bravetraveler• 4 months ago

I offer you a chatbot in this troubling time

krunck• 4 months ago

Person who probably has never lived next to an industrial site disappointed to find they don't like living next to an industrial site.

This is why we have zoning laws.

renewiltord• 4 months ago

Haha this is because of the on site gas turbines because we’ve decided that any power infrastructure is evil. You gotta love the NDFA that is the market finding the gaps in law to reach utility.

I live near a datacenter myself in San Francisco. No problems here.

ratg13• 4 months ago

Gas turbines emit an array of pollutants including nitrogen oxides, methane, carbon monoxide, unburned hydrocarbons, and formaldehyde that you should not be breathing.

You might not feel it right away, but the closer you are to these things, the more your health is going to suffer over time.

phil215• 4 months ago

The point OP was making is that due to off-site power generation like it should be - there are no gas turbines built co-located with the datacenter they live near. As such, a datacenter is roughly as obnoxious (likely less so due to less traffic) as an office building or warehouse. Until recently most folks living near such a facility likely had no idea.

It's when we decide building any power infrastructure anywhere is evil we get absurdities like standing up jet engines in datacenter parking lots as insane workarounds.

It's basically impossible to build anything at scale when it comes to power. Solar, wind, transmission lines, nuclear, you name it. There will be a group of folks vehemently against it that ties most projects up so they don't even get proposed to begin with.

downrightmike4• 4 months ago

Person in sacrifice zone, sees no problems.

bluepuma77• 4 months ago

The US seems like a pretty huge area for the number of people living there. Why do they need to build a data center 100m from a house, why not build it 1000m away?

downrightmike4• 4 months ago

utilities cost more to run further

_DeadFred_• 4 months ago

I think you mean 'the utility hike due to the datacenter wouldn't be able to be shared split with the house then'.

A data center opened next door. Then came the high-pitched whine

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