Residents of Dowagiac, Michigan, just filed a lawsuit against a data center that allegedly generates a high-pitched whining sound — and has done so 24/7 for the past two years.

The data center, which is owned by Alliance Cloud Services LLC, a subsidiary of Hyperscale Data, used to be an industrial building that sat behind a row of pine trees across the street from the most affected residents, according to ABC-affiliateWXYZ. The site started development in 2018 and was eventually turned into a cryptocurrency mining center in 2021. But in 2024, something changed drastically when the building started emitting noise pollution around the clock. Residents say it sounds like a vacuum cleaner in their living room, and the company has offered to buy up homes from unhappy residents.

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[–] 11 points 3 months ago (8 children)

More reasonable: roll back to before the datacenter was permitted for construction, find substantially equivalent houses in the general area - 20% more square footage, 20% higher value per square foot, and track their values over time until the present, and whatever the peak was, offer 20% more than that plus moving expenses... effectively 175% of "fair" value + maybe $20K.

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  • [–] 31 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Why be "reasonable" with unreasonable people?

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    So far what they've done sounds like they're trying to be somewhat reasonable. They bought a bunch of acreage as a sound buffer zone and they offered to buy people's houses at a price we don't have information on. We don't really know how unreasonable they're going to be.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Plus .5% of all future profits.

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