Lowell residents cite air quality, noise from data center
As temperatures climbed into triple digits this week in New England, Eileen Castle watched from her front stoop as children rode bicycles past her home in Lowell, Massachusetts. Castle, 82, said she decided she will not fill her swimming pool this summer — one of the only pools for blocks around — because of concerns about the data center operating behind her house.
“I think about the air quality, the water, what effects it has on the kids in the area,” Castle said.
Castle said the data center’s industrial air conditioners and backup diesel generators operate at unexpected times, generating noise and fumes that have made the pool feel unusable.
The facility sits in the Sacred Heart neighborhood, a racially diverse area where residents said the costs of hosting the technology have become increasingly apparent.
Jonathan Koomey, a data center industry researcher, said hot weather drives up electricity demand for keeping facilities cool. When temperatures climb into triple digits — as they were expected to this week in New England — it becomes harder to push heat out of a data center, requiring more power and posing a “real risk” of power outages, Koomey said.
Koomey added that in communities surrounding data centers, there are environmental costs, local economic costs, traffic and other concerns that need to be accounted for.
MSI previously reported that nearly 80 percent of global datacenters are exposed to extreme climate hazards including flooding, wildfires, and extreme winds, according to a study from climate risk analytics firm First Street, leaving the infrastructure vulnerable to disrupted operations and rising costs. The study underscored a feedback loop: the AI boom driving datacenter construction is accelerating greenhouse gas emissions that worsen the very climate threats now endangering the facilities.