DataOne operated 62 unpermitted generators for nearly a year, records show

Analysis ranks facility among New Jersey’s top five NOx polluters of 2025

DataOne — one of the largest data centers on the East Coast and the first in New Jersey seeking to build its own power plant — is a Microsoft-linked Vineland facility recently fined $1 million for running unpermitted generators. The facility emitted large amounts of health-harming air pollution for nearly a year before state regulators stepped in, according to public records obtained by Floodlight and reported in partnership with The Guardian. The Vineland facility’s 62 gas-fired generators became public in August after a Floodlight/Guardian visual investigation found them operating without permits; they had begun arriving in July 2025 and collectively ran for more than 46,000 hours by the time state inspectors detected them during a July 29, 2026, site visit, according to a letter DataOne later sent the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

The letter, obtained through a public records request, documents the fleet’s growth in stages. Sixteen generators started operating in October 2025, with another 16 brought online in early February 2026. By June, all 62 had been fired up. New Jersey regulators have said the tractor-trailer-sized generators were not detected during an earlier December site visit. In press releases, the agency noted the fleet was first identified during the July 29, 2026, inspection.

After a Floodlight/Guardian visual investigation found the generators operating without permits in August, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection last week fined DataOne over the fleet, though the agency did not initially disclose how long the generators had been operating or how much pollution they had released into the surrounding community. The fine mandates that DataOne apply for and obtain the required permits or cease operations, but allows the company 45 days to do so, according to a NJDEP spokesperson. During that window, regulators are permitting the facility to keep running the generators, which Floodlight’s analysis shows are capable of emitting more than four tons of NOx in nearby neighborhoods each day.

Floodlight sent technical data about the generators, obtained through public records requests, to Xiaomeng Jin, an assistant professor at Rutgers’ department of environmental sciences, and Bruce Buckheit, a former EPA air enforcement division chief. “Our best estimate is that the generators emitted about 140 tons of NOx,” Jin said. Her analysis would rank DataOne in the state’s top five NOx polluters of 2025, per EPA data. NOx are a dangerous group of smog-producing gases linked to asthma, heart attacks and premature death. “It’s the most important air pollutant in the US that affects most people,” Jin said.

At full use, DataOne’s fleet could emit more than 1,500 tons of NOx per year — nearly twice the amount that the Linden Cogeneration gas-fired power plant, New Jersey’s largest NOx emitter, is allowed to emit, according to both Jin and Buckheit. Operating the generators “results in very high levels of air pollution,” Buckheit said, and the fleet’s potential emissions are “well over the regulatory threshold for a new major source.” “That is basically offsetting all the air quality improvements [regulators] have achieved for decades,” Jin said.

New Jersey labels any facility capable of emitting more than 25 tons of NOx per year a “major source.” Obtaining a major-source permit requires extensive environmental reviews, installation of best-available pollution controls, and public comment periods — all before construction can begin. None of that process occurred at DataOne, even though the operation was capable of emitting more than half the NOx produced by New Jersey’s entire power sector, the analysts found.

For nearby Vineland residents, the confirmation that the generators have been running for nearly a year follows months of complaints about noise from the facility. Tiffany Leone-Vespa, a longtime Vineland resident who lives about a mile from the data center, said the generators sound like an airplane behind her house. “What health problems might I face in the future?” she said. “Because I’ve been exposed to all of that. My kids have been exposed to it.” More than 100 noise complaints have been submitted to the Cumberland County Department of Health since March, according to records obtained by Floodlight; many of the complaints list generators as the suspected source.

Local flower farmer Michael Atkinson, whose family has farmed a patch of land beside the data center for more than 70 years, called the facility “one of the richest and worst neighbors that I have ever had to deal with in my entire life.” “They’re just running these monster generators,” he said. “And they think, by right, they have every ability to do so at the expense of anyone else.”

While the generators may have evaded state regulators for almost a year, local officials knew about them for much longer. A City of Vineland inspection activity report noted that “phase 1 generators are online” in early February. In May, a Cumberland County health department inspector responding to a noise complaint visited the site and reported that the source appeared to be two generators, “possibly more.” The inspector noted the noise “exceeded night-time violation.”

During a Vineland town hall meeting in late January, DataOne chief executive Charles Beyney told residents that his data center would be “polluting less than a farm.” He acknowledged during the speech that DataOne was running generators and said the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection was aware — the agency had been at the site that same morning and was “on us big time.” Beyney, in remarks to the crowd, said he was “too French to just kill my lungs, the lungs of your kids and all the community around us.”

DataOne did not respond to Floodlight’s emissions analysis. The company, the first in New Jersey seeking to build its own power plant, said in a statement that it is “transitioning to low-emission, quiet fuel cells as part of the site’s permanent power solution and have the necessary approvals in place for this solution.” The company disagrees with the state’s determination and had argued the generators did not require permits, but plans to apply for them now.

A Microsoft spokesperson said the company “expect[s] our suppliers and partners to meet all applicable legal and regulatory obligations” and was working with DataOne “to support their completion of the facility’s transition to its permanent long-term power solution.” Microsoft has not described the nature of its relationship with DataOne beyond referring to it as a supplier or partner.

A spokesperson for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection declined to comment beyond the agency’s prior statements. “How did 62 generators get installed and operated and nobody did anything until now?” Leone-Vespa said. “That blows me away. Clearly somebody wasn’t doing their job.” She said she hopes independent air monitoring can help protect her community in the future. “I just don’t understand how this is being allowed,” she said. “It’s like they don’t care about the residents.”